Josh Brolin played one of the most formidable movie villains of the last few decades when he starred as Thanos in the MCU – and now his dad James is starring as an antagonist himself in the new Pixar film Lightyear.
Specifically, Brolin Sr stars as Emperor Zurg – who Toy Story fans will already be familiar with as Buzz Lightyear’s sworn enemy – and in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com, the veteran actor revealed that his son has already been winding him up about who makes the better villain.
“Oh, that’s already come up in the public eye now,” he revealed when asked if he imagined there’d be arguments about the matter. “You know, Josh is a real… what would you call it, an Instagram guy. You’ve seen his writing on the net and everything and he’s a wonderful writer. He has a great sense of humour.
“So I have a feeling this is going to parlay into something – because I’m not good at leaving all these messages and pictures yet, although my appetite is piqued now, because maybe this is gonna be like a bar fight!”
Interestingly, Brolin had no idea which character he was going to be playing when he was initially cast in the film – claiming he was brought into Pixar’s studios having only been sent some cryptic excerpts from the script.
“I didn’t know what any characters were, all I knew is I had a job,” he explained. “And I showed up there. And I had a lot of trust in the fact that Pixar had been working, developing this film for a long time. And they were right down to the point where they needed to animate along with a soundtrack.
“And because of their privacy rules that they made, I was not to know anything about who I was playing until I got there. I got some dialogue the night before, and it was actually mailed under strict confidence by a messenger so nobody else could grab it out of the mailbox, and started to work over at the Pixar Studios in Burbank, which was absolutely empty, except for me and the two people helping place the mic and set up the monitor, with the five creative executives who were now going to tell me what to do and who I was.
“I’d never done anything like this before, which made it kind of exciting and fun and gave me an excuse to say, ‘Hey, I didn’t know that,’ you know?”
And Brolin clearly enjoyed the experience of working with the animation studio – claiming he’d love to work with them again in the future, whether reprising his role as Zurg or voicing another character entirely.
“I think I would do anything they would ask me to do at this point,” he said. “And I do feel that Pixar is in the process with this film of graduating to thriller and family films combined. This isn’t just kid stuff anymore, this is exploration of the future and maybe even exploration of the past and the esoteric, you know?”
Lightyear is out now in UK cinemas. Watch the original Toy Story movies on Disney Plus, available for £79.90 for a year or £7.99 a month.
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