Lovely movies, but the "guy's a literal death cultist" required way less suspension of disbelief. Jilted incel Thanos pining after an annoyed Aubrey Plaza or whoever would have been way more timely, too.

But if we're doing it this way... 50% of the plants, algae and plankton would have died too. XKCD MUST have figured out what that'd do to the atmosphere by now, right?

[–] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

pining after an annoyed Aubrey Plaza

Can't have your bad guy be that relatable. Everyone would just be cheering against the avengers.

[–] ieatpwns@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thank you for the head cannon update. now marvels version of death is played by Aubrey plaza and it just fucking works

[–] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

That may not be just head cannon. The Agatha show is kinda hinting at it.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Isn't "an annoyed Aubrey Plaza" redundant?

[–] Vespair@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I don't get why we keep acting like this is such a strange idea. Thanos saw the universe as over-populated. So he could have changed the framework of the universe to accommodate this bloat, or he could have preserved the universe's structure as it is and tamped down the numbers to fix the bloat.

The key here is understanding that he doesn't see the universe as flawed, he sees the life as flawed; why would he fix the unbroken part of the equation to accommodate what he sees as the broken part?

It's like if your garden gets overrun by gophers - do you eradicate the gophers to get your garden back or do you decide "well I guess I'll just double the size of my garden so we can both share it!"?

Also the Infinity Gauntlet is neither a genie's lamp nor a Monkey's Paw. There's no clever tricks, no perfect wording needed. It's based on his intent. He may have said "half of all life" but any amount of nuance he wanted to enact in that moment of omnipotence, he had. I'm sure half of the plants didn't die just because he didn't say the word "sentient"

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Well, if you're gonna be really nerdy about it, keeping the ability of life to reproduce intact and culling 50% of the population once only gets you one slice of the doubling time back. I'm not the first to point out that Thanos started a galactic war to send the population of Earth back to 1975. Tony's kid would still be alive by the time humanity thwarts Thanos through sheer horniness.

He'd have been way better off by making every sentient species like 90% less likely to conceive or whatever. Except then most animals and plants would go extinct, so what's the point. It's really very unclear what "resource" Thanos is trying to preserve.

So... you know, if his take doesn't make sense in the first place, and we do know that he at least impacted animals, because the movie explicitly shows a bird showing up as a confirmation that the un-snap worked, it's not a crazy idea to ponder all the other ways it'd be weird, counterintuitive or self-defeating. Dead gut biomes, suddenly liberated E. coli, sudden deserts and unexpected outcomes of random distributions are all fun thought experiments, I suppose.

But mostly, it shows that it raises enough questions to break suspension of disbelief a little, which I think is the biggest sin of that particular change. The comic take is absurd, but at least it settles the question.

[–] Vespair@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I dunno man, "a madman thinks he understand the universe way more than he really does" doesn't break suspension of disbelief for me. I agree with you that his plans are flawed, but he's not infallible. I'm not trying to gage whether or not his plan makes sense, I'm trying to gage whether or not him believing it makes sense. History is full of arrogant men with half-baked plans for salvation; I don't see how Thanos is any different.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 4 weeks ago

That's fair, I suppose. I'd just argue that the movie forgot to... correct him? Endgame even makes a point about how nature is healing and the air is cleaning.

If the point was that he was wrong and misguided, the movies didn't make that clear. Instead it was just "he's ruthless and evil, but he maybe has a point" as an angle, which is a really weird way to frame your omnicidal nutcase.

I get why, relatable villains are more interesting, especially if you're going to have the entire movie revolve around him. It's just that they went about it in a way that raises questions.

[–] Vespair@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

To be clear though, I also agree that the comic book version of Thanos's motivation was way better. Like not even a competition. But I don't think the MCU version is so nonsensical so as to be unbelievable as a motivation.

[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Would have made waaaaay more sense if he said "half of all sentient life", but I bet focus groups revealed that the average Marvel fan has no idea what "sentient" means.

It's still a bad idea, but at least it's a bad idea that historically has been believed by a lot of people. It's got a whole name, Malthusianism.