Josh Brolin will go down in history as one of the greatest cinematic sci-fi villains of all time after playing Thanos in the MCU. He’ll be standing in the Hall of Fame, right next to Darth Vader and Khan. But now he’s hinting that he might be angling to play another cosmic villain. In fact, the one that inspired Thanos in the first place—DC Comics’ Darkseid. Recently, reports surfaced that after turning down the part of Hal Jordan in the upcoming Lanterns series, DC Studios was still in talks with Brolin for another role. He then shared a fan-made image from prolific artist BossLogic to his Instagram stories of himself as Darkseid. Which to us, means he’s at least open to the idea of playing the Lord of Apokolips.
The great Jack Kirby created Darkseid as part of his New Gods series for DC in 1970. Although his New Gods series didn’t last long, Darkseid continued to grow in popularity in other comics. The character slowly became the DC Universe’s biggest villain. Marvel Comics actually asked creator Jim Starlin to come up with a Darkseid of his own for them, and the result was Thanos. Both characters became popular, and eventually, Thanos would become less of a direct copy of Darkseid. Nevertheless, the two despotic alien overlords are very similar. So similar, that it’s a surprise Josh Brolin would even want to play the role. Aside from that amazing paycheck it would provide, of course.
Right now, we can’t think of a suitable Darkseid project in the works at DC Studios, ever since Warner Bros. canceled Ava DuVernay’s proposed New Gods film. But even if that is revived for DC Studios, we think James Gunn should not try to repeat what worked for Marvel. Especially as Brolin already played such a very similar character in the MCU to great success. If we’re just going to go by voice, we think iconic character actor Keith David is ideal as Darkseid. If they want a younger actor who could do some mocap work, and not just voiceover? There’s Javier Bardem, who would totally crush it. If Josh Brolin wants to be a bad guy in the DCU, we think he’d be a much better Deathstroke. Someone, please cast him for that. He’d be perfection.
