Jonathan Majors Added Dashes Of Previous MCU Big Bads To His 'Kang Soup'
As Kang the Conqueror, Jonathan Majors arguably has major (excuse the pun) shoes to fill in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He's not just following the last memorable Big Bad, Thanos (Josh Brolin), but every villain — memorable or not — that's graced the MCU in its eleven-plus year history. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has been outspoken about Majors' role in the MCU moving forward, and how integral he'll be in the phases to come, all the way up to "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" in 2025 and probably "Avengers: Secret Wars" in 2025.
Such a task would be daunting for any actor. How do you establish yourself as a unique antagonist when so many have come and gone? How do you set yourself apart from the other villains that the Avengers have faced in the past, whether it's Thanos, Ultron (James Spader), or Loki (Tom Hiddleston)? More than that, how do you distinguish Kang from his many multiversal variants, one of which we've already seen in the "Loki" season finale? The solution, Majors found, wasn't necessarily to fight against the familiar, but to use it to inform his take on Kang.
What IS a Big Bad, anyway?
Majors recently spoke to CinePop (via The Direct) about his approach to Kang, who will make his MCU debut in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania." Majors explained:
"I had an idea of, just for me, what I wanted to bring to the MCU through Kang. And there's a certain requirement that has to happen. I think Ultron, Loki, and Thanos, I think those would be the quintessential baddies or anti-heroes. They all had very interesting qualities to them and some of them shared qualities, which is just a necessity for taking up the mantle. And so once I took those out and put those in the Kang soup, I then looked at, 'What is it we need for this time period?'"
When asked what this current generation of moviegoers needs from a villain like Kang, Majors laid out quite an interesting thought process:
"I'm 33 years old, right? So our generation, what we represent, what is a big bad to us? What are our children going to see? What are our partners going to see? What are our leaders going to see? What is it that our 'zeitgeist' needs? What are we conjuring up? What's in the unconscious of our time now? Marvel has, in my opinion, the largest platform in entertainment. And so, to bring the big bad, the big bad has to represent so many things and has to be connected to so many things."
The threat to come
Majors looked to the events of the past, as well as current events, to further inform his antagonist in Kang. "I read the newspaper," the actor continued. "I looked at history books ... I talked to people, I look at my child, talk to my partner. What is it we're afraid of in this time? What is it that's scaring us? Any big bad is a manifestation of our deepest insecurities as society."
Given that Kang has a near-omniscient grasp on the future, his role in "Quantumania" could definitely reflect our general fear of death, even of time itself. Kang feels at once like a definitive villain, one that could bring about the end of the MCU as we know it, and a character with infinite paths of potential. To our heroes, particularly Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), he represents something terrifying. But in the scope of the story, he could be exactly the breath of fresh air that the MCU needs moving forward.
"Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania" arrives in theaters on February 17, 2023.