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Kevin Feige Calls Thanos Marvel's Emperor Palpatine

Spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy!

There was one huge cameo in Guardians this past weekend. I am, of course, referring to Howard the Duck– never before has a cameo struck an audience quite like that… except for when Thanos revealed himself in The Avengers.

I guess Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige had more to say about the latter than the former at the comic con roundtable interview. He went to describe Thanos’ role in Guardians of the Galaxy as similar to Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. Here’s what he said:

The idea [of this portrayal] was to be basically just another step forward based on what we saw in Avengers. In Avengers we saw the back of his throne and the turn toward camera, three-quarter smirk. We wanted Ronan to be the bad guy [in GotG]. We wanted to focus on the creation of the Guardians team itself, so didn't want to spend too much time with Thanos.

But we wanted to showcase that there's a guy behind the guy behind the guy. The Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back, [behind] Darth Vader. So we wanted to see a little bit more of him, a little bit of attitude. See him, and hear him for the first time. And just to get which is one of my favorite shots in the whole movie him leaning back on his throne and smirking, which he does on every cover of every Thanos comic book, which is cool.

If Thanos is the big bad of Avengers 3, Marvel may pull off one of the most hyped movies of all time. The were very coy about whether we’d ever see Thanos between Iron Man and Captain America: The First Avenger before debuting him in the mid-credit scene in The Avengers in 2012. Feige already said it should be about 3 years between Avengers: Age of Ultron and Avengers 3 placing the third film in 2018.

That’s six years since we’ve first seen Thanos but ever since we saw Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury in the Iron Man post credit scene Marvel fans have been dying to see Thanos since 2008. Ten years is a long time to tease an audience and even Star Wars really didn’t make a big deal out of the Emperor until The Empire Strikes Back.

The looming question is what will Marvel do once Thanos is dealt with? The Infinity Gauntlet storyline has been weaving in and out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Phase 1 and Phase 2 so it’ll be interesting to see if they make another trilogy of phases after Phase 3.

Avengers: Age of Ultron premieres May 1, 2015.

[Tip of the hat to /Film]

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