Listen, I couldn’t stand the Mad Titan. He was the best worst villain but why? For me, it was because he had a point…just didn’t go about it the right way. Let’s talk about it.
So, since we were first introduced to him in The Avengers, we’ve wondered what his motive was. What did he want? What was his evil plot, and in most cases, it’s usually a plan that we can’t get behind. In this case, it wasn’t completely wrong.
If you recall, Thanos is from Titan and he gave this impassioned speech about how his planet once thrived and then took a turn. Resources became scarce and he decided to take it upon himself to do something about it. Now, here in lies the problem. His solution was to eliminate half the planet.
For years, we have all heard about global warming and how because of the increase in demand from all of the things that we’re making for the increase in population has contributed to the demise of the land and atmosphere around us. Never once did I think, “Let’s kill people” but that’s just me. Years ago, when I was in middle school, I learned that the leader of China, at the time, enforced a rule that families could only have one child per household. We watched a movie where a Chinese woman battled with being pregnant a second time. It followed her and her husband as they fled their home in order to protect their toddler and unborn. How the movie ended? Someone died at the end but I can’t remember who because, to be honest, I fell asleep. Mr. Floyd was a very strange teacher for a middle school Social Studies class.
Anyway, I figured there was a better way to save the planet than by killing people, but of course, this is a movie and there has to be a greater threat to the world for Carol Danvers AKA Captain Marvel to be involved, although she was no real help at all but I digress.
Now, I know we can’t really use China as a shining example of sustainability in that regard but what would have been better, villainy aside? Leave some conversation below!
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The way I see it, the fact that you’re questioning whether or not he was truly mad is what makes him such a good villain. The most compelling villains, not just in the MCU, but in all of fiction, are those who believe they are doing the right thing and that they are ultimately the good guys, but no one else can see why.
Thanos doesn’t consider himself mad, he sees himself as a visionary and the only one with the capability to “save” the universe. In his mind, the heroes are really the villains who are bent on maintaining the status quo, which will ultimately lead to much greater destruction in the long run. Does he have a point? Maybe. What makes him “mad” is his unwillingness to listen to the other side, seek alternative solutions, cooperate with the heroes to determine if the exhaustion of resources is the ultimate fate of the universe, or even see the flaws in his own plans.
Granted, Thanos and the heroes sitting down and hashing out pragmatic solutions to universal resource allocations would have been a really boring movie, so from a storytelling perspective, we need him to be a bit insane, and MCU Thanos trying to “save” the universe by killing half of it is far better than the comic version where he’s trying to kill half the universe as a means of wooing the personification of Death.
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Oh the comic version would have never worked. I had that conversation with some coworkers of mine. I love Thanos as a vilian. I really didn’t like him because I got what he was trying to do and I agreed but I aint like the method chosen
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