Guardians of the Galaxy: Have We Been Seeing Thanos All Along?

With Thanos's only big-screen appearance to date limited to a mid-credits stinger [...]

By Russ Burlingame

With Thanos's only big-screen appearance to date limited to a mid-credits stinger in Marvel's The Avengers, any whiff of the Mad Titan -- who will be played by Josh Brolin in Guardians of the Galaxy -- has been met with enthusiasm and curiosity by fans.

His first official appearance on a piece of promo art, photographed with a cell phone camera and uploaded to social media, made the rounds over the weekend and was one of our most popular stories.

...But today's five-minute extended clip from Guardians seemingly revealed that Thanos has actually been right there in front of us the whole time and we just didn't know what we were looking at.

He's projected next to Gamora as they discuss her relationship to him and to Nebula in the clip released today (a part of the 17-minute IMAX sneak peek released earlier this month), and immediately fans started to wonder (including some on our social media pages) whether that projection had been there going all the way back to the very first trailer's reveal on Jimmy Kimmel Live four months ago.

Turns out that, no, Thanos hasn't been secretly making appearances in every trailer since Captain America: The Winter Soldier was in theaters. In that first trailer, most will remember that it wasn't mentioned that she's Thanos's daughter (indeed, Thanos may not have been actually mentioned or depicted until the 17-minute preview), but the other thing? They cut heavily around her introduction, leaving very little there...and no Thanos projection.

Guardians of the Galaxy is due in theaters on August 1.

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