(WARNING: Spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War lie ahead.)
Josh Brolin is having a moment. Rather, he’s having a summer where one can barely turn anywhere without seeing his face, even CGI-rendered. Prominent roles in Deadpool 2 and Sicario: Day of the Soldado, along with Netflix’s new trailer for The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter, have followed his turn as the ultimate villain in Avengers: Infinity War. This, of course, refers to the fact this Brolin’s Thanos killed half the damn universe, and one particular death sent fans into hysterics.
That would be the disintegration of Spider-Man, which has spawned an internet meme (largely spread by teens who identify and sympathize heavily with Peter Parker) that shall not die. And it’s no wonder because Tom Holland’s distraught delivery of Spidey’s last words — “Mr. Stark? I don’t feel so good … what’s happening … I don’t wanna go. Please, I don’t wanna go” — was a real gut punch. Brolin says he didn’t know Spider-Man’s fate until the world premiere, and then came the semi-serious fear of backlash, as he told USA Today:
“I was literally sitting in the theater going, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. Spider-Man just disintegrated. That’s not OK.’ I looked at [Chris] Hemsworth and he looked at me. He smiled and was like, ‘Your career is over.'”
Yep, Anthony and Joe Russo kept the death toll so hush-hush that the film’s villain wasn’t even aware of every character that he killed in the film. The slightly funny thing, however, is that fans didn’t really target their anger at Thanos (or Brolin) and, in fact, some fans adored him to a disturbing degree. Instead, the character who received the brunt of the backlash was Star-Lord, whose anger over Gamora’s fate led him to disrupt the Avengers’ plans to capture the Infinity Gauntlet. And Chris Pratt’s Instagram account will never be the same.
(Via USA Today)