Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro has signed for a “lead role” in Guardians of the Galaxy. Deadline reports “he’s playing a character that is built to be part of future Marvel films, which means he has signed a deal with options that put him into multiple movies.” They don’t specify which character he’ll be playing in a movie loaded with an already impressive cast. Perhaps Del Toro will play a high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
My initial thought was that Del Toro might be coming in as Adam Warlock, who could best be described as a cosmic shaman with a tendency to die and regenerate (as one will). But Thanos, who acted as the villain behind last summer’s The Avengers sounds like a better bet, as both a direct and indirect threat to the heroes across multiple Marvel productions. And Del Toro’s growling, heavy vocal delivery would be perfect for the Titan who would love Death (the actual embodiment of mortality in the Marvel Universe). [Twitch]
We’re betting Thanos. Jim Starlin, who created the character, has said Thanos will appear in both The Avengers 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy. Damion Poitier played Thanos in an after-credits scene in The Avengers, in which he was billed as Man #1, but he was considered a stand-in with no lines.
We assumed an actor with a very recognizable voice would take over the role, and who’s more recognizable (not necessarily intelligible) than Benicio Del Toro? Just wait till you hear him say, “Gimme the Tesseract, you f**kin c**ksucker!”
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