Tan, with shoulders the perfect size for dragging a rifle through a forest, Marvel actor Josh Brolin might look the part of the rugged male adventurer he's been playing ever since his film debut in The Goonies, but he says he chooses projects like Zach Cregger's Weapons because they remind him of who he doesn't want to be.
"It's a lot of people getting in their own way, their own chaotic way," Brolin tells The Playlist about the Barbarian director's upcoming film, in which he plays a livid father demanding Justine, his son's elementary school teacher (Julia Garner), gives him answers after her class disappears. "I think that's my character until he finally loses something, and realizes how emotional it is for him. Does he start to open up and realize the diamond of the gift he's been given, which is his kid? Maybe."
Agreeing that he doesn't treat his own child with the same coolness that his character, Archer, deflects with, Brolin explains "that's why you do a film like this, selfishly. Because psychologically, you want to keep confronting things like this, to remind you what you don't want to be."
"I'm not gonna say I 'hate' it," he continues, "but this staunch masculinity, I get very sickened by, and the most masculine guys that I know – the toughest guys that I know – are the most emotionally available."
A new trailer for Weapons demonstrates the opposite, as Brolin describes – Archer confronts Justine while she's pumping gas, telling her not to act like a victim seconds before another grieving parent sprints through the trees, blood covering his mouth, and his eyes as large as gumballs. He begins to strangle her.
We'll know why once Weapons is out on August 8; check out our list of other upcoming horror movies in the meantime.
