‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Actor Teases Corvus Glaive And Proxima Midnight’s ‘Dark Marriage’

Michael James Shaw can’t answer too many questions. He plays the villainous Corvus Glaive in “Avengers: Infinity War,” but Marvel Studios has gone above and beyond to keep the movie as secretive as possible. Luckily, Shaw was able to reveal a little about his character, including a couple hints about his character’s marriage.

“Corvus is a part of the Black Order. So Thanos [Josh Brolin], he has a group of five generals that he acquired throughout the universe,” Shaw told International Business Times.

The alien isn’t just a minion. He has a romance with Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon), who is also helping Thanos gather the Infinity Stones to destroy the universe.

“Corvus is also married to Proxima, one of the other generals. They’re kind of like the Hollywood couple of the Marvel supervillain universe, I guess,” Shaw explained. “It’s kind of a dark marriage, but they have each other’s back in battle.”

They’ll have plenty of battles. Corvus and Proxima, along with Thanos and the other generals, will take on the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man and more in this highly-anticipated action flick. It wasn’t just the fight scenes that were a physical challenge for Shaw, though.

The Julliard alum’s character is computer-generated, but Shaw performed all of his scenes in a motion capture suit, which he considered the most challenging aspect of working on “Avengers: Infinity War.”

“Well, it’s an entirely new world, motion capture, and I guess the adjustment of figuring out what reads and what doesn’t read, how big can you be, because we’re dealing with characters that are larger than life,” Shaw said of the most difficult part of filming. “They’re outside of this universe, outside of the realm which we call normal. So it was allowing myself to go to those places.”

After researching the character’s history in Marvel Comics, the actor, who previously appeared on “Constantine” and “Limitless,” decided Corvus would be far from human. “He kind of looks like a praying mantis, so I pulled from there and created this kind of I guess you could say insect-like persona,” he told IBT.

He even went back to his school to brush up on his skills. “Immediately, when I booked the part, it reminded me of some of the physical theater we did while I was in school at Julliard,” the 2013 graduate said. “I went back to one of my professors there and sat in on a couple of classes and participated. Because a lot of the movement was based on taking a form and then from there using your imagination to figure out from that still frame how the character moves or how the character sounds, and it was really helpful in building his movement and the texture of Corvus.”

Drama school probably didn’t help him prepare for the level of secrecy surrounding “Infinity War.” As the culmination of ten years of Marvel movies, directors Joe and Anthony Russo have kept the plot secret from even cast members. Shaw didn’t get to read the script in full. He’d get his necessary script pages hand delivered a couple weeks before shooting, and he had to return the sides for shredding after filming.

Shaw didn’t mind the intense process. “It was cool. It felt like I was working on some 007 top-secret project,” he joked.

It helps that Shaw is a comic book fan. He grew up wanting to be a comic book artist, so stepping onto the set of a Marvel movie was a big deal. “In spite of my own little fanboy type of moments — like coming to set for the first day and sitting down in the chair, going over my sides and then Josh Brolin comes and sits next to me, the freak out moment — but you know, everyone there had each others’ back in a really beautiful way. Yeah, it’s not what I was expecting, but it was a wonderful experience and not so much intimidating after the first day.”

When asked who is favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe hero is, Shaw quickly revealed that he prefers villains. “I’ve always been a big fan of Thor [Chris Hemsworth], it was wonderful to work with him. But I’m kind of an even bigger fan of the villain, and Loki [Tom Hiddleston] is definitely one of my favorites,” he dished.

“They get to have more fun, you know? You don’t get to live that life on the day-to-day, so it’s fun to step into the shoes of someone who’s been hurt or scorned and what maniacal things they come up with, you know? It’s a good time.”

Watch Shaw have fun as Corvus Glaive in “Avengers: Infinity War” when it hits theaters Friday.