Josh Brolin Officially Won't Rule Out a Thanos Return to the MCU

Not once but twice now, a Josh Brolin character faces a massive population wipeout, and while one struggles to survive their apocalypse in The Dog Stars , the other skips off to an unknown planet to enjoy the fruits of his labor. While chatting with Collider’s Steve Weintraub for Ridley Scott ’s latest sci-fi thriller, Brolin makes a seamless segue from commenting on the speculated return of Thanos in Avengers: Doomsday to reuniting with the iconic filmmaker 20 years later.

In The Dog Stars , Jacob Elordi stars as Hig, a young pilot who’s lost everything after a deadly virus decimates the population . In the aftermath, he navigates the post-apocalyptic world with a military survivalist, Bangley (Brolin), tending to their makeshift homestead and guarding it against violent survivors known as Reapers.

Life has been reduced to survival until Hig receives a mysterious transmission, setting him off on a mission in hopes of a future he can’t give up on. For related coverage, explore our detailed analysis on Technology and Digital Systems.

Movie Stars Margaret Qualley Updates

The movie also stars Margaret Qualley , Benedict Wong , Allison Janney , and Guy Pearce . Don’t miss the full conversation in the video above, with a transcript provided below, where Brolin comments on whether Thanos will make a surprise return to the MCU this year, and why maybe the warlord’s ideology wasn’t “necessarily wrong.” He also discusses working with Scott 20 years after American Gangster , why he was sure the filmmaker had “lost his mind” in that time, and how they recaptured magic on-screen again.

COLLIDER: Do you think Thanos is dead-dead, or do you think there's a chance he could come back? JOSH BROLIN: I don't know how to answer that question. Okay, I'll leave that there.

I will tell you, I really think the real world has gone off the rails, and I'm beginning to wonder if he was right. BROLIN: Hmm. What's he?

Brolin You'Re Still Marvel Updates

Who is he? BROLIN: Oh, you're still on the Marvel thing. That's the segue.

And then what did Thanos do? He got rid of half the universe in order to save the other half. That was the justification — which is not necessarily wrong.

Do you know what I mean? I look at what we're doing to our planet, and I see the destruction, and I wonder. BROLIN: It brings up a lot of stuff.

We haven't talked about it a lot during interviews of, like, “Oh, what if you were in this situation? What would you miss? Would you miss stoplights?

What would you miss? Would you miss restaurants, or whatever?” We talked about it the other day: Tom Hanks getting COVID, and when Tom Hanks got COVID, people for a moment said, “Oh, we're fucked.” BROLIN: “We're done. If Tom Hanks is getting COVID...” And at that point, we didn't know.

What we saw in our minds was this movie. We saw losing everything, and like, is this the Spanish flu? Is this whatever-it-is?

And I write about it often about how we are our own worst enemies. You have your natural disasters, but then where are we perpetuating it? But people don't want to talk about that shit.

You know what I mean? And it's like, that's the stuff that I think of when I'm doing a movie like this. I'm like, “Where am I lending to something that could have massive adverse effects later?” And then where do I get selfish, where I'm riding Harley-Davidsons with gas when I could be riding an electric car?

And I can't help but ride that because I'm stuck in that idea of myself. This is so off the rails, but I actually don't think that the individual riding a motorcycle or their own consumption of CO2, whatever it may be, is the problem.

The problem, I personally feel, is that there's so much the governments of the world could be doing to help the planet, and it's on the governments to really make some big decisions and, I don't know, not put data centers where there's no water.

Just a thought. But we're off on a tangent. BROLIN: We are on a tangent, and I know that, but there were comments made about China and the wind turbines and all of that, and then the reality is they're creating their own energy.

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They're creating less pollution than they've ever created. So there's something that is forward-moving about that, but because it's China, we're supposed to not like that because “bad guys” are “bad guys,” will always be “bad guys.” But who around us is actually doing something productive in order to elongate our very short existence here?

Because it looks like we'll be the shortest-lived species in history. You want to get fucking gnarly, dude? [Laughs] I have so much to say about this because I think we're on the exact same page.

You can't help but be very concerned and upset when you see all the fires, and you look at the global warming. It's really, really scary, and I don't see any politician talking about it. They're all consumed with dumb shit.

BROLIN: Dumb shit and greed. Everyone at Disney right now is like, “Get the F off this subject,” so I'll switch it up. You worked with Ridley on American Gangster forever ago, right?

What is different about Ridley from then to now? Because what I found fascinating was that with this, on the first day, all the cameras and everything threw you off. You were like, “I don't know if I can do this.” What was he like on American Gangster that's so different now?

BROLIN: There was no difference. That's the thing, is there was no difference. Because of my jet lag, because I was with my kids, because I was underprepared, because I’d just come from another movie, it wasn't showing up on set, it was showing up at a forced rehearsal because of me, because Ridley doesn't necessarily like to rehearse.

I said, “We should get together and talk about this. I haven't met Jacob [Elordi] yet.” So Jacob and I demonstrated up, and then you know Ridley. He talks in puzzles.

It was like working with Paul Verhoeven. You had to figure out, “The fuck is he saying?” And, “ Oh , he's saying this when he just said this.” I wasn't used to it anymore because I hadn't seen Ridley for a while.

So he's telling stories about Denzel [Washington] and whoever else, and I'm going, “This fucking guy has lost his mind.” And it's so not the case.

So, once I had a decent night's sleep and I demonstrated up on the first day of set, and then how great it is to have five cameras, and what a theater experience it was to work with Ridley again, because he's into experimenting and he's into getting out of your comfort zone, and he's into living in this dangerous ethers where magic can happen, it became such an addictive process that I would imagine as an actor, when you have that many cameras, every actor has to give 100% on every take, every day.

There's no one taking a take off because you can't. That has to be such an amazing thing because I've spoken to so many actors, and they talk about how if it's not their close-up, the other actor might be giving, like, 50% or less. BROLIN: But nobody's giving 50%.

And that's why the same reaction I had, I found out, was the same reaction that Jacob had. And then Margaret, when she came into it, you saw the panic in her eyes when she started to do it, because she's never worked with Ridley.

Then, once you adjust and get used to it, like I say, there's an electricity in the air because, normally, a scene that would take a day, suddenly you've done four takes and Ridley comes out, and he goes, “We're done.” You go, “What do you mean we're done?” And between each take, maybe we've cut out a speech, maybe we've rewritten a couple of things, so you're editing as you're acting.

So you're watching yourself as you're in it. It's uncommon, man, and you would think it would be horrendous, and then you see. I’ll tell you this: Ridley took me, because he saw my distrust or whatever, and he was like, “What's your problem?” And I was like, “Nothing, man.

It's just let me do one more take,” or whatever. [Laughs] And he goes, “Come here.” And he doesn't do this, but he brought, because we share a love of cigars, into his trailer, and the scene we had just finished was already set up in rough cut.

He demonstrated me the scene that we had just finished, and it was quite good.

And he goes, “Okay?” And I go, “Okay.” The Dog Stars opens in theaters and IMAX on August 28.