Avengers: Infinity War Will Show Thanos As A Kid

He probably won't be quite as cute as Baby Groot, but Thanos will appear as a child in Avengers: Infinity War.

Josh Brolin, who plays the purple-skinned "Mad Titan" in the upcoming Marvel ensemble blockbuster, recently opened up about his villainous character to Entertainment Weekly, and he confirmed we'll get to see Thanos during his younger years on Titan. Of course, it wasn't exactly a storybook childhood. 

"He's different from his family," Brolin said. "They're all Titans and they all look similar, but he was born deformed. You see how he grew up, you see he was like the Quasimodo of this time, or if you've ever read Perfume [Patrick Süskind 's 1985 novel about a serial killer who craves beautiful scenes but is disgusted by the smell of humanity], it's a great parallel to Thanos. He stuck out. He was an anomaly. He was a freak. And that lent to this apparent insanity."

Thanos witnessed the destruction of his home world, and that put him on a mission to "save" the universe by completely annihilating half of it. That's why he wants all of the Infinity Stones: they'll give him the ability to bend space, time, and the very fabric of reality.

But while Thanos may look like a dumb brute, Brolin said he's actually the smartest guy in every room. "You see this lughead and this guy who you pigeonhole right from the first cosmetic reaction to him," he said. "And what I see is this in this guy's eyes — this super, super, super intelligence. There's this constant contrasting thing about this Neanderthalic lughead who's way more intelligent than anybody else in the movie, by far."

Thanos also has more heart than you might think. Remember, this is the guy who adopted Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) and then raised them to be killing machines. "Obviously he has a grand plan, like somebody who's pulling in kids for their own selfish bloodshed," Brolin said. "But he has a capacity to love very much and very deeply."

We'll get to know Thanos much better when Avengers: Infinity War hits theaters on April 27.