The next Avengers movie, Infinity War, looks like it’s going to be Marvel’s biggest, most jam-packed yet. Pretty much every hero from the MCU is going to make an appearance, with some reports claiming that there are going to be an absurd 67 characters in the movie. With that big of an ensemble, it seems natural that somebody’s is going to have to step up to be the nominal main character. Well, according to Marvel Studio’s big boss Kevin Feige, that protagonist isn’t going to be Iron Man — it’ll be Thanos, the baddest villain in the entire MCU.
In an interview with Screenrant and some other movie news outlets on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Feige explained that Thanos’s increased prominence in Infinity War was a result of Marvel learning to fix its villains problem — a criticism that most of its villains (save Loki) are utterly forgettable compared to the heroes.
“We’ve been criticized, if a big criticism of ours is that we focus on the heroes more than the villains, I think that’s probably true. I don’t think it will always be true,” he said. “Thanos in Infinity War is, you know, in a movie that has a lot of characters, you could almost go so far as to say he is the main character, and that’s a bit of a departure from what we’ve done before, but that was appropriate for a movie called Infinity War.”
tfw you're the main character of 'Avengers: Infinity War.'
Feige then defended Marvel’s heroes-centric approach to superhero storytelling, comparing the original MCU film, Iron Man, with DC’s The Dark Knight, which came out the same year.
“In 2008, there are two superhero movies that came out. One focused on the villain, one focused on the hero, and we at Marvel looked at them, like yeah, we focus on the heroes. We don’t mind that. We like that,” he said.
Feige was, however, was quick to state that he didn’t want to spark “a flame war,” according to SlashFilm.
