New 'Avengers: Infinity War' Details Reveal Some Interesting Changes For Thanos

The Avengers: Infinity War marketing blitz has begun, and with it comes new details about ultimate big bad Thanos. Josh Brolin's motion-capture Mad Titan will finally get his day in the spotlight when the mega-sequel smashes into theaters next month. Now, brand new Thanos details have arrived to provide some insight into the character.

Thanos is going to have a lot of hype to live up to in Avengers: Infinity War. The MCU has been teasing the character ever since a post-credits scene in the first Avengers film, and now he'll finally have a chance to pose an actual threat to earth's mightiest heroes. While Thanos has popped up here and there in the MCU films, the character has remained mostly a mystery. Now, as Infinity War's release date looms, Entertainment Weekly has a new story providing some background info into the character.

Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige provides this bit of info:

"He's from a planet called Titan that's no longer inhabited because of things that he thought he could help prevent, and he was not allowed to do that. What he feared most happened, and the planet and everybody on it basically went extinct. He vowed not to let that happen again [and he] thinks he sees the universe going down the tubes. He thinks he sees life expanding outward unchecked. That will bring ruin, he believes, to the universe and to that life."

Co-director Joe Russo adds: "He's on a hunt...We're using a bit of a '90s heist genre component. Thanos is on a smash-and-grab, and everybody's trying to catch up the whole movie."

As EW puts it, Thanos "sees his mission as saving half the universe. But to do that, he wants to kill off the other half." Readers familiar with Thanos from the Marvel comics will notice this differs a bit from the comic book version (this is nothing new – all the MCU characters differ from their comic counterparts in various ways).

Thanos' backstory in the films appears to be a bit more tragic than in the comics – he thinks he's doing the right thing, sort of, in Infinity War. The comics version of Thanos, however, is caught up in an infatuation with Death – literally. As the Marvel.com Wiki explains:

Growing in power and infamy as he traveled the universe, Thanos once met Death itself, as it appeared to him embodied in a female form. Thanos was infatuated with the being, and endeavored to make himself worthy in order to earn her love in return. With an army under his command, he nearly destroyed his former home of Titan, declaring himself its ruler. He then sought out the powerful Cosmic Cube, and a number of Earth's heroes assembled to confront him.

At this point, I doubt Death itself will appear in the film. Of course, we still don't know everything there is to know about the character, so who knows? Marvel has done a pretty good job keeping Thanos in the shadows, building toward this inevitable moment. Hopefully when Avengers: Infinity War hits theaters April 27, 2018, it will have been worth the wait.