The Avengers: Infinity War -- Thanos's ultimate master plan makes no sense

Cafe Society
1

I imagine I am the last person in the western hemisphere (at least) who hadn’t seen “Avengers: Infinity War” before this weekend, but just in case…SPOILERS AHEAD.

Anyway, after 6 years of buildup since the first Avengers movie, we finally got to see Earth’s Mightiest Heroes take on the mighty Grimace himself…Thanos. The fight scenes were the usual impressive visuals and the odd pairings of heroes were fun (Iron-Man, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man / Thor, the Guardians of the Galaxy, etc.). Thanos was visually impressive, but as for his grand ambition…what the Hell???

So, the comic book Thanos was in literally in love with the Spectre of Death. His motivations were driven by a desire to woo Death and court “her” favor, and what better way to do that than to sacrifice half the sentient beings in the universe to her as a show of devotion? It’s a motivation that probably could only work in a superhero comic book, but at least it’s an understandable goal: he wants to impress his love interest with a bombastically over-the-top demonstration.

The MCU version of Thanos doesn’t have a “Death” that he worships/loves to make a sacrifice to; instead, we’re presented a “relatable” villain. He doesn’t see himself as a bad guy, rather he imagines that HE’s the good guy of this story, the guy not afraid to make the tough call that will ultimately be for the greater good (even if uncountable trillions of people all over the universe die). OK, that I can get onboard with, Thanos believing what he’s doing really is for the greater good. But from that point, it all goes off the rails…

First off, he’s surrounded by a team of minions who look great in a comic book way, but just reek of being eeeeeeevil bad guys. If you really think your the good guy, but your lackeys are bragging to everyone they comes across about how the slow painful deaths they will all receive in your name…you ought to re-think how your image is being presented to the rest of the universe.

But then, there’s the plan itself. He assembles all the infinity stones, snaps his fingers, and BAM! Half the universe just crumbles away to dust. Ummmmm…why?? There’s a brief line or two throughout two-and-a-half hour run time about the universe being finite and that there are too many life forms, but where’s your evidence for that, oh purple one? Your home planet was over-populated and it’s eco-system collapsed? That’s too bad, but why does it then follow that THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE is in danger of being over-populated?

Thanos also keeps talking about restoring harmony and balance to the universe, but what leads him to believe it was out of balance or harmony to begin with? Again, he only cites his home planet Titan as an example, but the universe is a whole hell of a lot larger than one single planet. What type of balance is he hoping to restore? Even worse, in the post-credits teaser scene, we are shown a brief glimpse of NYC after half the universe gets “anti-raptured”, and chaos begins to spread. Imagine that type of chaos happening on a cosmic, universal scale. That hardly seems to suggest a new state of harmony throughout the universe. If anything, chaos will engulf every inhabited planet everywhere. So, that alone is a direct contradiction of what he hoped to achieve.

And here’s what I hoped someone could have asked during one of those pitched battles: “Gee, Mr. Thanos, you do after all have a glove that allows you to reshape the fabric of reality. If you are so concerned about the universe being over-crowded, perhaps you could use that glove of yours to make the universe larger???” The entire team of Avengers and the Guardians to boot are forever pausing in the heat of battle to exhange snarky quips, but nobody could answer that very basic question?

But, of course, if he settled for doing that, then he would be a supervillain for our heroes to team up against. So, if Thanos MUST do something incredibly evil for the film to work, why settle for just half the universe? It seems kind of arbitrary, just kill half of all people. Why not wipe out everybody in creation except a chosen few and re-start it all over again?

Any way I look at it, this grand aim doesn’t make sense. Kill half the population of the entire universe, but the half that’s left will simply breed and re-populate, eventually swelling the population of the universe back up to its original size. So why bother? Why not just recreate the universe from scratch and control the rate of population escalation throughout all time and space?

2

You’re right.

But, you see, Thanos is crazy, evil, and a total sociopath. The whole “kill half of the population for the good of the whole” is pretty much a cover. Still, no one is a villain in their own story; just about every bad guy thinks they’ve got a good justification for the evil that they do.

And that’s his.

(The creators, IIRC, have said pretty much the same thing.)

3

I’ll admit I was kind of annoyed with the change in Thanos’ motivations. I’ve seen a number of previous examples of environmental supervillains. It makes you wonder if there’s a hidden agenda at work.

I’m not saying there’s a secret cabal controlling the world. But people writing books and scripts have to sell their products to publishers and studios. And if a story with an evil environmentalist sells better than a story with an evil libertarian, which stories do you think get written more often?

4

Nah, not necessary to invoke anything even vaguely conspiracy-like. The evil-libertarian story is a boring one, because the victims of an evil libertarian die slowly of starvation and neglect. Abandoning the poor and the weak and saying they can all go to hell is also exactly what’s really happening, so a movie about it might seem rude.

5

Understandable, but also too goofy for a feature film, even a superhero film.

Well, ask yourself, what kind of people would sign on as lieutenants to a genocidal zealot? Probably not a crew of good eggs. Following Thanos gets them power, wealth, and (it appears) exemption from Thanos’ purge. That’s a appealing pitch to amoral, ruthless thugs, and no one else.

One thing you’ve skipped over is that, in Thanos’ tale, he warned the people of Titan of the coming disaster, and they didn’t listen. From this, Thanos has essentially created a religion, with himself as prophet, dedicated to proving that Thanos Was Right All Along. That’s what made Thanos work for me, he’s a self-righteous religious extremist with a belief system that exalts him and people like him, and is utterly uninterested in science or logic. As an American, people like that are by far the biggest threat to me and my nation.

If I recall correctly, the heroes on Titan (Dr. Strange, Starlord, Nebula, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Drax, and Mantis) are the only ones who know about Thanos’ motivation, and to be fair to them, a) Thanos doesn’t have all the stones yet, b) they have a quite good counter-attack planned that nearly works, and c) they have access to the Time Stone for insight into what might work and might not.

Of course it’s arbitrary, it’s a religious ritual.

6

Unless he was lying he did tell Gamora that her world was now basically a utopia after he wiped out half the population. Can’t really argue with results. Or with crazy people, which he is. They don’t call him the mad titan for nothing.

7

In the comic books, death was the one who thought the universe was out of balance and wanted Thanos to correct it. The movies just cut out the middle man.

Also, they addressed this multiple times during the movie that Thanos is crazy:

They even foreshadowed this in Civil War:

8

It’s a stupid plan. Everything will just breed back up to the same population. It’s not as though he dropped leaflets or anything explaining what happened and why.

9

Of course, he’s crazy.

But with my nick, I’ve gotta have at least some sympathy for him. :smiley:

10

I agree that it’s not a greatly laid out plan and doesn’t really hold water as it wasn’t fleshed out, That said, there is some historical evidence of mass deaths in a shortish timeframe having great benefits to the survivors.

This a conclusion of what looks like a well sourced essay.

The Benefits Of The Black Plague History Essay

11

Maybe. Lets assume that most highly advanced planets are suffering from some level of high-population related issues. Further assuming that most planet’s societies don’t totally collapse after ‘the snap’ I think some would at least try some kind population control going forward. Also, having 50% of your planets population just instantly evaporate would probably be viewed as a religious event punishing your species for their sins. Wouldn’t be a stretch to believe it was related to uncontrolled population growth.

I wonder if Galactus is assumed to be roaming around the MCU somewhere? I know they can’t show him for contractual reasons, but if he was then killing half of the universe could be seen as an attempt to starve him to death.

12

If Thanos has all the infinity stones and can control reality so easily, it would make more sense for him to alter reality so that it can sustain so many people. Double the resources instead of halving the population.

It reminds me of a CGP Grey video about robot cars. He explains how robot cats can make traffic lights more efficient, but then points out that robot cars make traffic lights unnecessary.

This is what Thanos is doing. Instead of using the glove to implement a new solution, he’s just making is old, flawed solution slightly more efficient.

Side note: My phone also doesn’t consider unnecessary a word.

13

It is also confused about the difference between cats and cars.

14

I posted most of this in the Infinity War “seen it” thread:

I think that history points at where a villain like Thanos comes from. IMHO it echoes the context of the golden age of comics, with Captain America and the Red Scull reminding us (or at least to the ones that check history) about the good and evil forces from WWII.

Back then there were powerful people that also got it wrong. Those dictators back then were hell bent on invading other countries to get “living space” for their populations by getting rid of most of the population of the countries being invaded. And they expected to get a lot of farmers from the invading countries to settle in the conquered nations to feed the population of the empire.

It is no wonder to me that in the comics (and in the movie?) Thanos appears in the “end” to be “living as a f****** farmer” as a poster in that thread complained about. That was the same big conclusion the evil rulers of the past wanted to see after getting their living space. The hopeful thing is to remember that, as many of the comic book creators of the golden age could tell us, that they lived to see those evildoers not getting what they wanted in real life.

It has to be noticed also that IIUC, even by the time of WWII, there was evidence that the industrial revolution (and the growing agrarian revolution) was helping avoid many of the problems that the dictators of the day feared that came with an increase of their populations, the same fears that Thanos has. Unfortunately, the ideology of the dictators was already set to ignore the progress on that front. It is clear to me that Thanos wilfully ignored also a lot to conclude that he was right. Not the first powerful guy to do so.

15

You should be mad at him for flubbing exponential population growth, AKA “The Malthusian Model.”

16

Nah, robot cats are the future.

17

But even if we take that at face value, it just means that we’re accelerating our rate of resource consumption by developing exciting new technologies in the face of disaster. And you had other consequences such as the post-plague shift from labor intensive crop farming to clear-cutting local forests into pastures so you could raise livestock. Again, not the best long-term use of resources.

Then you have the unintended consequences across all the universe. From local stuff like the collapse of order and rampant disasters on Earth when half the population goes poof to questions like “What happens when some ancient but slow repopulating race gets overrun now by a race that breeds like rabbits?” Are they going to thank Thanos for dooming them? Hell, you could even question the wisdom of “saving resources” by turning the biomass of 3.5 billion people into a handful of dry dust.

It’s a stupid plan no matter how you look at it. Which is fine since Thanos is the bad guy and bad guys are allowed to have stupid plans with thin justifications they use to make their actions seem reasonable, if only to themselves. The idea is to defeat Thanos because he’s the bad guy, not help him tweak his spreadsheet until he gets the numbers right and murders the correct percentage of people.

18

Without the Lady Death information, the plan is hard to figure out. However, with knowledge of the Lady Death point of view (which is accessible to everyone who cares, which is the description of everyone who posts in a thread on the topic here in this thread, admit it.) – its not simply that the universe’s population is exploding by reproductive success – its that there’s a lack of death.

As technology advances, more beings reproduce and survive, that’s something that could be changed. But they’ve also become kinder, not exterminating lesser species, engaging diplomacy instead of exterminating wars. Thanos is reacting to evil peaceniks like the Avengers and the Guardians, the Green Lantern corps, everybody. Avengers? Who’d they avenge? Yes, the defeated the Chitari invasion of Earth. Then what? Take an army of Iron Man drones and wipe the Chitari homeworld clean and take the resources for Earth? No?! Why the hell not?

They call me terrorist. Radical. Zealot. Because I obey the ancient laws of my people the Kree and punish those who do not.

Where’s that, Tony? Wha – oh, you stopped making weapons. Cap, you up for some warring? That’s your job, right, the reason you were created? Oh, not anymore, huh. Thor, you’re the god of … ah, you’ve become cerebral. Director Fury, you got anything? Naw … huh.

19

Exactly this. People who say, “Well he kind of has a point and was trying to do good” are wrong and need to reexamine their moral compass.

20

I agree with the OP. Thanos’ plan to decimate (bifurcate?) the population of the entire universe literally makes no sense. Aside from being a bit of a “cut off the head to cure a headache” solution, it seems absurd in a (presumably still infinite) universe where instantaneous interstellar travel, interdimensional worlds, megastructures and magical science are a thing. If you can snap your fingers and Rapture 50% of the beings in the universe away, why not do something slightly less lazy and fix their problems, many of which are probably not a result of overpopulation.

I mean, in the same film, Thor visited an entire star system that appeared to have been reconstructed to the sole purpose of building a hammer.
Sure, evil masterminds are forgiven for having thin justification for their evil plans. But it might have been more interesting if we had some inkling as to how and why Thanos’s reasoning landed on “too crowded”. Maybe a montage of him going about his day, crammed into space commuter trains on his way to work, waiting in long lines at the space coffee shop, stuck in traffic, getting bumped from interstellar space fights, unable to get reservations at his favorite space restaurant. etc.

So…Stars Wars?:smiley: