Thanos’s plan to me seems to be the plan of a close minded psychopath. He decided on a course of action and has let nothing get in his way. Even with ultimate power and the power to make his plan a lot softer (perhaps even slowly sterilize half the people in the universe so they can’t have kids and lower the population over a course of years...or just about anything else other than instant murder) he has a vision of what he wants and a self image as the misunderstood good guy and cannot alter this view because in order to do what he’s done for years he has to be completely perfectly resolved and devoted to this idea and nothing else.
Yet he’s still a being who likes to be challenged and have fun. Cause yeah. That happens mang.
So how can he both of those things?
By being the character we saw on screen.
Who would have thought a purple CGI monster voiced by a kid from the goonies could have this kind of depth eh
Great assessment.
That's the thing- I don't see it at all like Thanos is like some gray area or that he is ultimately thinking of the good of the universe or anything like that. The dude struck me as purely malevolent but just the type of malevolent piece of shit who is wholly convinced of the rightness of his goals.
There are multiple moments where you can see Thanos is a stone-cold psycho. He takes pleasure in Gamora and Quill being forced to say their painstakingly long goodbye (even egging Starlord on, all the while knowing he's not going to let that happen). He gives Thor a look while he's choking the life out of Loki, as if to say, I'm killing your brother and you can't do jackshit about it. He doesn't blink an eye when Gamora's people are being slaughtered.
But he's the type of psycho who doesn't realize he's bad. Dude thinks he's saving the universe.
One key element early in the film is when Thanos says to Loki, "I know what it's like to lose. To feel so desperately that you're right, but to fail nonetheless. It's frightening, turns the legs to jelly. I ask you to what end? Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives. And now it's here. Or should I say, I'm here."
It's a great intro- culminating with Thanos showing Loki plainly that he has the power stone.
But I think of what he says there and I consider what Gamora mentions about her wishing every day that she would see Thanos meet the defeat he so rightly deserved but always being disappointed. It makes me consider that Thanos' knowing what it's like to lose relates directly to the fact that he lost in his bid to convince the Titans to adopt his plan to "save" the planet. That's his failure and it was formative in his life. So you have a psychopathic guy who doesn't mind, hell, who openly engages in mass murder and a formative experience where he felt that his plan which could have kept his planet from falling into desolation and destruction and you have a recipe for a very scary individual.
One could say that Thanos' seeing Titan consume its resources and die off convinced him that he had to prevent other planets from having the same fate. But I view it more as Thanos is so bitter that his home planet died off like that that he is vindictively imposing his plan of thinning out the numbers on peoples all over the galaxy.
I also can't help but always think of the contrast between the Avengers' mentality (specifically articulated by Cap) and Thanos. Cap isn't even willing to lay down Vision's life for the cause because he values all life. Thanos is willing to cause insane levels of destruction and despair for his goal because, at the end of the day, he does not give a shit about these lives, despite what he says.
He talks about making the toughest choices but I feel the only decision he really legitimately struggled with was Gamora's death. People may see it differently, but I don't think he had much of a problem with ending trillions of lives with a snap.
