'Avengers: Infinity War' Screenwriter Explains Thanos' Grand Plan

Despite being built up as the greatest threat the Marvel universe has ever faced, Thanos has spent the past five years sitting on his space throne, occasionally popping up to get out-smarted by Ronan the Accuser and make vague threats in post-credits sequences. That is looking to change in the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War, which will put the big purple menace front-and-center as attempts to do...something. Something evil, for sure. But something.

While comic book readers already have an inkling of what that something could be, co-screenwriter Stephen McFeely has offered up the first hard evidence of what to expect from the Marvel Cinematic Universe's latest Big Bad.

Although Doctor Strange doesn't arrive on Blu-ray and DVD until later this month, special features from the home video release have been arriving online. In true Marvel Studios fashion, many of the features attached to their latest movie are all about, well, one of their upcoming movies. But hey, at least we get to hear McFeely (who penned the film alongside Christopher Markus) explain what Thanos plans to do once he gets his hands on those Infinity Stones (via Screenrant):

His goal is to re-balance the universe as he sees it. So when he figures out that the Infinity Stones could do this for him at the snap of a finger, that becomes his main goal.

For those keeping score at home, the Marvel movies have been slowly introducing the six Infinity Stones over the past few movies (the gem in Loki's scepter, the Aether in Thor: The Dark World, the orb in Guardians of the Galaxy, the eye of Agamotto in Doctor Strange) and at the moment, Thanos has obtained...none of them. Which means he's probably going to be a very busy Mad Titan in the opening act of Infinity War.

While it remains to be seen how much Infinity War will stick to Marvel comic book lore, McFeely's comments do somewhat align with what happened when Thanos first acquired the Infinity Stones and assembled the "Infinity Gauntlet." With his new godlike powers, comic book Thanos proceeded to wipe out much of the universe's population in the blink of an eye, mostly because he was trying to impress the literal embodiment of Death, whom he was crushing on something fierce.

Man, the Marvel comics can be so weird and so cool.

Will the big screen version, who will be played by Josh Brolin, live up to his paper predecessor? Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige thinks so, saying in that very exciting start-of-production video:

Thanos shows us why he's the biggest, the best, the baddest villain that we've ever had. And the most frightening villain that the Avengers have ever faced.

Avengers: Infinity War is filming now for a May 4, 2018 release date. Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War directors Joe and Anthony Russo are helming. Are you prepared for Thanos to actually stand up?