Why did Thanos, with the power of all the infinity stones, never think to try doubling the amount of resources in the world?
If you have the power of reality, spacetime, the mind, etc., surely you could snap in more fresh water, food, metals, plants, etc.? Was he just stubborn and didn’t want to let go the idea he proposed on his home planet?
Also, how does Thanos survive “snapping” but regular people using the power don’t? Does that imply that the type of people on Thanos’ planet is “superior” to everyone else (in my opinion, nobody should survive it because the stones are essentially the power to control every aspect of the universe itself)?
One thing of note, Thanos in Infinity War shows that you could use the stones individually (and also other characters, like Vision using it as his brain/the power source for his thinking bits and Dr Strange using the time stone to manipulate time) and that doesn’t kill Thanos or any other character it seems. Why is that, are the stones meant to be more powerful together? Also, what happened to all the stones, were they all returned to their hiding place (and if so, why weren’t they used for doing good stuff, like space stone could be used for fast travel, soul stone could bring back the dead, mind stone could solve the mysteries of the universe, reality stone could make awesome virtual reality games…)
And finally, and definitely very important, why is Thanos purple? Seriously though, why? Is it because of the comic books (like Hulk being green), or is there another reason? Did he just need to stand out from everyone else?
Back on Titan, Thanos told his people "you need to kill half the population to save our civilization from disaster." The people of Titan dismissed Thanos as insane. Thanos, being actually insane, decided he was going to prove he was right by going around massacring halves of populations.
In other words, he's not doing this to actually help anyone, he's doing it just to prove he was right. Solving the universe's problems by other means wouldn't do that so that's not an acceptable outcome for him.
The comic had better writing. Thanos killed half the universe so he could fuck Death. He thought she'd love that shit since she's, y'know, death. I'd do the same for a goth girl.
Big Titty Goth Girl! FTFY
I - and since regretting it - rewatched the early MCU movies recently. The first time you really see Thanos mirrors the first frame, and the line immediately before he turns and smiles talks about how to invade Earth is "to court death." Given the comic book version, I'm not sure they had the whole 50% motivation thought through yet.
I'm not sure they've thought it through yet, although I do like the argument elsewhere in the thread that Thanos did it to prove he was right, not to save the universe.
They definitely hadn't thought his motivation through by the time of Guardians of the Galaxy, where it's stated that Ronan killed all of Drax's people for him.
One of the motivations from the comics doesn’t make sense anymore. Remember that Death revived Thanos because she thought it was unjust that more people are living now than have ever died.
That’s one of those cool sounding factoids that people used to throw around but which is now pretty well debunked. They _couldn’t _ go with that for the movies.
He was just jealous of Wade Wilson, who Lady Death actually likes. XD
I love that title and have read it a hundred times. But I wish the writing didn’t veer into archaic high-falutin’ language like it does. Some realism and modernity really added something to Thanos in the movies.
I think what was missing was his obsession with Death. The MCU didn't include his infatuation and Death's hold on him. He wanted to impress her and she held him to it in the comics.
I love how this whole premise never gets questioned. By anyone. None of the super smartest people in the movie were like, "no that won't work." The premise just gets accepted as true, but it would be bad.
"I'm going to eliminate half of all life in the universe" hey thanos did you know that scarcity in modern society isn't driven by population at all, and is in fact an artificial condition imposed on the lower classes by the ruling class that hoards those resources?
No its just like, "well killing people is wrong but it would probably work, people might be sad though." No Disney, fuck you. Don't let people believe this shit. Thanks for your endless support for cultural fascism, ya fucks
This is a formal reply from the cancellation authority. We’ve reviewed your comment and found you obscene. Please report to the nearest authority for cancellation.
Comment in question : scarcity is an artificial construction.
We do express the people here at the cancellation authority are not trump supports we protect the billionaires as they are our chosen gods. Any deviation is therefor blasphemy. Please collect your check from George seros and exit stage left. We appreciate your acceptance.
Y'all mind if I just uncancel myself like our lord and savior Jesus Christmas?
Every time I see that image I think of the tag line
“Screw your sins I’m getting the hell out of here”
"When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
Dude just wasn't very smart
In the comics, he was trying to impress his girlfriend, Death.
No girlfriend. She barely noticed him. The ultimate incel
Thanos is simping for Lady Death who doesn't give a thought about him at all
Doesn't Deadpool fit in there too? Amusing cause he's not in 'those' movies. Never read those comics but just reading about Thanos, Deadpool and Death seems neat.
Death doesn’t even notice Thanos exists, but finds Deadpool amusing. Thanos is watching his crush go on dates with the class clown.
The short answer is that they had to come up with something more palatable to a movie audience than “I’m evil and have a crush on the literal Lady of Death.”
Hah, came to comment this. Honestly, the comic got pretty wild, especially once Nebula got a hold of the gauntlet.
Go on
Ok, here is my tl;dr of the last part of the story from the comics. The gist is that after the snap, every remaining hero + Dr Doom do an all out attack on Thanos along with all the "cosmic" super bosses (Galactus, Chaos, Order, all sorta wacky beings) and they were going to win until Doom tried to steal the gauntlet and fucked it up. Thanos kills every hero and traps the all cosmic weirdos and then becomes the new "God" of the universe. When he does that and leaves the gauntlet sitting there, Nebula (that he had been torturing) grabs the gauntlet and tears the whole universe up and takes over. In the end, Dr Strange saves Thanos and convinces him to help fight/trick Nebula and restore the universe. I am sure I missed stuff, but it was pretty crazy. One of the more fun things I remember was Wolverine sticking his claws right into Thanos through the neck and for a sec Thanos thought he was dying until he remembered he could essentially just make himself "not dead" and then he turned Wolverines claws/bones into Play Doh.
Wait… I never read the comic. Please explain
As a casual viewer I just heard from you basically “you’re forgetting he’s in love with literal death personified into an tangible entity”
I’m sure you understand without context that leaves me with a lot of questions.
I once had my hair braided illegally in the Bahamas. That’s a true story. Do you have questions? I’m sure you do.
In the comics, Thanos is in love with Lady Death (sometimes called Mistress Death) who is a personification of death. Thing is, she doesn't return his affections. So, he kills half the universe as a way to try to win said affections. I think the writers for the MCU probably felt that was a little too hokey to fly with modern/mainstream audiences.
Thank you!
Btw my hair braiding was more of a union kind of agreement I violated but I’d argue anything a cop cuffs you about is fair to call illegal. I did it purposefully as well just to tell the story.
How you frame a story matters lol.
Is lady death an X-men style hero, juggernaut, or spiderman?
Born, stumble apon, or inflicted? That matters to me for some reason.
Edit: door dr strange. (Sought)
Lady Death is an anthropomorphism of death. The marvel comics version of the grim reaper. Not a hero, just a thing that exists.
They don't call him the Sane Titan.
And he's purple because he's an alien who Jim Starlin gave purple skin.
but why the testicle chin?
Excuse me, the proper term is ball-chinan.
Semantics aside, I believe the correct answer is "ribbed for death's pleasure"
Too bad she doesn't want it.
same reason expanding the highways doesn't relieve congestion. Induced Demand.
FWIW, he basically did double it. I mean, if you have x resources for a population, and you halve the population... they now have twice the resources...
Comic book universes have never been great on internal consistency. Most technologies and superpowers we see would have ushered in a new golden age for humanity.
or rampant fascism. I don't think Superman is a particularly realistic character- all powerful and only mildly a dick?
First... Not everyone is just hiding being a dick because it's socially unacceptable. Most people just aren't dicks and don't want to be. Just like most people don't have to be told not to kill others, that's just not something they'd do. They don't have to be threatened with prison, or eternal damnation, or anything like that to stop themselves.
Second... Superman is an alien. How do we know what is normal for his species? The only insight we have is the comic universe.
I would murder everyone if it weren't for those pesky laws!
Yes officer, this comment right here
I would murder anyone who looked at me cockeyed!
People wouldn't treat each other with dignity without religion!
There are some obvious historical counterexamples.
Accurate whether you got the sarcasm or not.
I see now I read the opposite of what is written (people would treat each with dignity without religion).
If it weren't for those stupid-ass laws, there would be no murder, at all!
Okay. But…
People with superpowers are still people, and most people are a mix of good and bad.
And some people are absolutely vile (see maga, Johnson, Theil, Trump,)
And some are positively saintly. (See most dogs.)
You would expect superpeople to be similar. So if we see fascist people getting power occasionally and ruining the world; you’d expect superpeople to do so too
There are a mix in comics. The good are superheroes the bad are supervillians. And some of them are in the grey. Batman doesn't kill, but has no problem beating the shit out of henchman. Red hood killed people for good reasons, most of the time. He is sometimes a hero and sometimes a villain. Poison Ivy is a villain who often helps women and doesn't hurt kids.
Also Deadpool. Just yeah, great guy who is an unrepentant killer.
Did Lex Luthor write this
He was raised by kind people. Not everyone is a dick
where in my comments did I say everyone was a dick?
look at a large number of the older Superman panels. he's frequently a dick to the people in his life.
There’s many versions of Superman though.
Because his original motivation was to impress a girl he liked. Death is a hot chick that he was in to but she wasn't interested in him. So he figured killing half of all life would impress her.
They decided to make his motivation more sympathetic for the movie. They didn't think through how his new goal could be better served with the godlike powers he gets.
They really should have leaned more into the "Mad" part of The Mad Titan tbh
Yeah. He also had an awesome helicopter.
Because the only way Marvel movies know how to ratchet up the stakes is having more and more people die.
So if a new one comes out… everyone needs to die in the marvel universe.
It’s the only logical progression.
After that they’ll have to start killing the audience.
I think batman already did that last bit
Fortunately there is another universe we can go to. Isn't the multiverse fun?
Because it’s a pretty dumb story at its core. Because they wanted the “worst villain” but couldn’t come up with something more interesting or intelligent than “misguided environmental terrorist.”
As others here have indicated: he was also courting the personification of death itself.
So he's a "death obsessed environmental terrorist." I think that's worse.
That’s in the comics. We’re talking about the movies, where the personification of death is not a factor.
On doubling the resources, I think that falls into the "obvious, but wrong, answers contain the word 'just'".
let's say you double the resources. without being specific, you just doubled light and the mass of the sun and the mass of the planet and killed everyone.
ok, let's say you get more specific, drinkable water. double it. in place? there goes every pipe and reservoir on the planet.
plant nutrients? now the concentrations could be toxic for the plants and now they're dead.
double the asteroid belts? a lot of these species are space faring, after all.
each species and planet would need a custom solution, and that takes work. In addition, the main issue isn't the availability of resources, it's how they're allocated.
just doubling all the resources could end all life in the universe.
Same thing could be said about Thanos just halving the population. You’re making an assessment on your own charitability to the interpretation of the alternative presented, not the alternative itself
oh, I was not implying the snap was a GOOD alternative 😂
4)They were destroyed by Thanos at the beginning of "Endgame" - it's the reason they have to go back in time to get them, and place them back in the past afterwards, so that the timeline doesn't get fucked up.
5)Because space aliens can be whatever color they want to be :-)
So if you want to handle the infinity stones safely, you just need a lot of lead…
If you want to try and rationalize it, I think he might say that the psychological scarring is necessary for all existing societies to change to more sustainable models, or risk another such culling in the future. Due to exponential growth of life, doubling resources, especially while societies continue to abuse those resources wouldn't probably wouldn't do anything long term (in his mind).
I am skeptical if such psychological damage can make enough long term inter generational impact, but hey it's a theory.
The psychological scarring is an interesting point, but that only works if you know why the snap happened.
By the end of Infinity War most of Thanos's army and underlings have been defeated. Thanos then (within a few days/weeks) goes into retirement. So he's not spreading word of his accomplishments or reasoning.
Carol mentions at the start of Endgame that a lot of other worlds need her help. So she could spread some information on what happened, but I'm not sure it's going to really stick. You need the trauma of Thanos actually showing up (or his underlings and then the Avengers filling in the gaps).
That's a good point too. Perhaps there's more interstellar communication going on out there with the likes of Nova Core and other technologically advanced space faring groups that word would spread. Surely people would be curious as hell as to why half of life turned to dust randomly and go looking for answers.
I imagine many societies with no definitive answer would probably end up in religious hysteria.
Before the snap Thanos wasn't necessarily a secret, he was just slowly but surely culling 50% of people on many worlds, one world at a time. Even nicknamed The Mad Titan. Maybe people would put two and two together.
But yeah, I mean I'm just trying to make excuses for a psychopath's crazed plan lol, that's all I got!
He likes killing, and he likes thinking of himself as s benefactor who is just so much smarter than everyone else that he’s the only one who sees the solution, who can rise above petty emotions and do what needs to be done. Sure he’s killing trillions, but only to save them from something worse that would have happened (he reasons).
Most people wouldn’t mind killing someone if there was a moral justification for it and they could get away with it. Just look at how people react to videos of someone stealing a bike: everyone in the thread is ready to literally murder that person. Because they think they have justification. Well, Thanos thinks he has a justification too. And he’s murdered millions up close already - not with a snap - there’s no going back now. In order for his mass murder to be excusable there has to be a larger purpose to it. There has to be.
He’s a knot of different psychoses mixed together. Primarily narcissism plus homicidal tendencies. He’s fully insane, if that did not come across somehow. Totally pinched off from the rest of reality, living in his own self-reinforcing loop. He’s got a lot of power and that makes him more and more immune to reality intruding on his fantasies.
Logic doesn’t come into it. Not only could he have created more resources… he didn’t even think that populations would just grow again and bring everything back to the same place. No he’s blindly playing out the track he’s on. The only way out is forward, because he can’t justify anything behind him otherwise. When the universe isn’t grateful for what he did, and his fantasy of being the benefactor falls apart, notice that he is ready to destroy the entire universe and become god, because how else can he escape the crushing blame for what he’s done.
With all the food we throw away now, it's not a resource peoblem anyway. And that's too much logic for a Disney movie
Fair enough
Have you ever had to much stuff lying around and you thought to yourself "I should really buy some shelves to stow everything away"? Then you get more shelves and after everything is in its place you're left with some extra empty shelves. Now will those remain empty? No, they will be an invitation to get more stuff and fill that space up.
Same thing goes for rescources. Doubling the rescources doesn't mean that life will suddenly thrive and everybody will live happily ever after. In a very short time life would also double and you'll end up with the same problem but way more crowded.
And how does "doubling the rescources" even work? Snapping half the life away is easy, just turn them into dust. But does doubling the water mean rivers overflow, oceans rise? Hydrogen is a rescource, does every star goes supernova because it suddenly has twice the amout of mass?
Doubling the rescources doesn't make any sense. In the Marvel universe there is probably at least one species that sees at least one element of the periodic table as a "rescource". You'd essentially have to double the mass of the entire universe which most likely would result in a universal gravitational collapse.
Also what would the lesson be that life takes away from this? That each time life expands beyond its means somebody will come along and give you more rescources? Thanos wanted to teach life the opposite lesson. That living beyond your means will result in a culling instead of a reward. It was his way of solving greed, even if he could've used the stones to eradicate greed directly, he is called the "Mad Titan" for a reason.
Thanos is probably purple be because his armor is golden/yellow and purple/yellow are complimentary colors that look good together. Its probably a design choice to make his character more recognizable.
I think you are thinking to hard about stories that aren't meant to be thought about a lot. Whether you half the population or double the resources it is just a temporary "fix" anyways. It's just a plot device for creating conflict and killing off fan favorites without actually killing off fan favorites in the end.
Imagine snapping half the population and they were all conservatives that got snapped, we will actually double our resources.
The 0.01% have stolen $75,000,000,000,000 from US workers in the last 45 years. The US national debt just hit $38,000,000,000,000.
Math seems to check out
What will the movie be then? 3 hours of the Avengers thanking Thanos?
You won't get a satisfying answer to this. It's because the story had to happen. He's evil.
plot convenience
Because he was a very stupid person
And don’t tell me that the stones can’t bring back the dead, because they certainly can (see when they reversed Thanos’ snap)
I guess the answer to that is the stones can reverse what the stones did, so the people that haven't died by the finger snap, can not be revived with the snap.
They probably could if that was the command. However Tony wanted to keep what had happened in the five years since the snap so he didn't lose his daughter, so the second snap couldn't be to put things back like it never happened.
In the comics all the snapped people were contained within the soul stone. They never mention anything like that in the MCU, so it's just that way "because".
Technically they were snapped, not dead. I do think the stones could have brought people back from the dead though, or something along those lines.
Jesus-Zombie-Christ....Fucking vanilla! How do you even get hard without wiping out half the life on a planet?
Because people are annoying AF. Cutting the number of idiots in half was a great move.
Maybe he did