Thanos Wins “Best Villain” at MTV Movie and TV Awards

And just like that, Thanos is already villain of the year! Well, at least when it comes to the MTV Movie and TV Awards, that is. The iconic Marvel villain took away top honors at this year’s MTV awards show, beating out the likes of Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) and Lupita Nyong’o (Us) in this year’s “Best Villain” category. Joseph Fiennes (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Penn Badgley (You) were the only other nominees.

In a bizarre twist of fate, fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were actually treated to two versions of the Mad Titan this year, thanks to the time-traveling hijinks of Avengers: Endgame. Earlier this year, we spoke with Matt Aitken of Weta Digital — the visual effects supervisor overseeing much of Thanos’ development — and he broke down the difference between the older, current-timeline version of the character and the time-displaced Warrior Thanos.

“He is kind of like a slightly different character,” Aitken says of the younger Thanos in Endgame. “But we did use the same base assets for both films. We spent a lot of time, obviously, on Infinity War working Thanos up. But then the Thanos that we see in Endgame is a younger Thanos. He’s come forward from 2014, so he’s… technically, I think he’s like four years younger than the Thanos of Infinity War. He’s more agile. He’s kind of at the peak of his physical prowess. And he’s also clothed differently. He’s wearing the armor. He’s in battle mode. We did the sequences on Titan for Infinity War where he was kind of dressed much more casually, and he’s more philosophical in those. So we had that work to do to kind of redress him in the armor.”

“We wanted to reflect his youth and his power, mainly through animation. So that’s not so much a change that we make to the base asset, but it is a change that we make to the approach on how we’re animating him.”

Who’s your favorite villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or by tweeting me at @AdamBarnhardt!

Avengers: Endgame is now in theaters ahead of Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 2nd. Captain Marvel is now available wherever movies are sold.