Last week it was announced that Josh Brolin will voice Thanos in Marvel’s upcoming Phase Two offering Guardians of the Galaxy; however, the Mad Titan will be playing a supporting role to the film’s primary antagonist Ronan the Accuser, and actor Lee Pace (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) has spoken about the Kree warlord during a chat with Yahoo! Movie, describing him as “a religious fanatic” and drawing a comparison with Osama bin Laden:
“I’ve never played a character like Ronan before. I like a bombastic villain, and that’s what I had a good time doing. It was the most fun playing this character… I was stronger than I’ve ever been, doing all this training, and the character is just a beast. He’s just so evil. At first when I started working on him, I was thinking, ‘We’ve seen so many great performances of villains by very talented actors in superhero movies. I’ve got to find something relatable about this guy.’ But the more I played him, the more fun I had with just being evil. Evil, evil, evil. He’s an alien – there’s no kind of human rules. There’s nothing to relate to, actually. It just became, like, the more dark I could conceive of him, the more I understood him… He’s like Osama bin Laden – he’s like a religious fanatic. It’s so cool.”
Guardians of the Galaxy is set for release on July 31st in the UK and August 1st in North America, with James Gunn (Super) directing a cast that also includes Chris Pratt (The Lego Movie) as Star-Lord, Zoe Saldana (Star Trek Into Darkness) as Gamora, Dave Bautista (Riddick) as Drax the Destroyer, Bradley Cooper (American Hustle) as Rocket Raccoon, Vin Diesel (Fast & Furious 6) as Groot, Benicio Del Toro (Sin City) as The Collector, Karen Gillan (Doctor Who) as Nebula, Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond) as Korath, John C. Reilly (Step Brothers) as Rhomman Dey and Glenn Close (Damages) as Nova Prime Rael.
Originally published June 7, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
