Robert Downey Jr, Tom Holland on why Thanos isn’t your typical villain

** WARNING: Minor spoilers ahead. **

MANILA, Philippines – If you’ve seen Avengers: Infinity War, you will know that the movie’s villain Thanos is not a straightforward evil guy – just like Black Panther’s Killmonger, there is more to him than just an evil ploy. In fact, the actors who play the superheroes themselves find that Thanos is a sympathetic character.

“Thanos has the best back story you could ever ask for,” said Robert Downey Jr (Tony Stark/Iron Man) in an interview from Marvel. “I don’t know everything about everything, but just suffice to say as much as any of our heroes have had a conflict that is rooted in some sort of trauma that they survived, this is the one instance where the character went left instead of right. That’s very different.”

Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man) shared the same sentiments on the Infinity War baddie: “I think that’s a really smart decision on [producer] Kevin Feige and [directors] the Russo Brothers’ part because you need to be able to justify why the villain is doing what he’s doing. And they really build up that infrastructure and build up that back story as to why he’s doing what he’s doing. That almost makes it just as hard to sort of get on the side of the Avengers.”

Tom pointed out that his character was built over the course of the previous movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) too.

“In this film, he’s [Peter Parker] grown up quite a lot, but Tony Stark isn’t ready for him to have grown up that much. So Peter questions Tony Stark quite a bit and is maybe a little cockier with him than he was in the previous movie.”

Robert and Tom’s characters share quite a close relationship, as Tony Stark took Peter Parker under his wing. They even share a tearful scene towards the end of the movie, which was apparently improvised by Tom.

Avengers: Infinity War is currently screening in Philippine cinemas. – Rappler.com