Was MCU Thanos Right About Snapping The Universe?

In Marvel Comics, Thanos was clearly the villain. In love the conceptual being Death, Thanos wanted to kill half the universe to win her approval. (Short version: didn’t work, and Thanos was played like a piano in a public space.) In the Marvel Cinematic Universe fun ideas like that aren’t allowed, and every villain has to be “complex”, an often misused term that means sympathetic villains and scumbag heroes. In the MCU, Thanos believed that killing off half a planet would end a draw on resources.

Ignoring how morally abhorrent it is to kill half a planet or half a universe’s population, Thanos in the MCU believes he’s doing the right thing, short term horror for long term reward, as he believes his people would have been saved if they had killed off half of its population, and believes he was proven right when he became the last survivor. What’s scary is that some people actually push Thanos’ perspective.

Here’s a point/counterpoint, though even the guy arguing Thanos might have had a point had a better solution. That would be MatPat back when the movie came out and he still hosted Film Theory. I bring this up for a counterpoint video that doubles down on his solution, courtesy of Multiversal Wisdom, a channel that evolved into an AI voiced Batman (not representing any one voice actor) usually going over how he’d defeat every hero (should they turn bad) and villain (not often enough) in the multiverse. Sometimes he also just explores a character and in a recent video he took on MCU Thanos’ plan and shown that his plan is actually quite stupid. I thought it only fair to play both sides, and MatPat isn’t the monster some other promoters might be, so here we go.

Even MatPat points out that Thanos could have just increased resources, since the Infinity Stones can create as well or destroy. AI Batman brings up the same solution, but unlike MatPat points out the flaws in the mad titan’s mad plan.

The only flaw in Batman’s reading is that he keeps bringing up half of groups. There is no rhyme or reason to who got snapped except for story drama and plot convenience for the Infinity War and Endgame movies. It might not be half of doctors, for example. It could be less…but it could be more. Thanos didn’t snap half of each division of humanity, he snapped half of everybody around the universe. Even if each planet only lost half the population, we don’t know what half. Morality wasn’t a factor so what if the cop who just grabbed a serial killer is snapped but the killer isn’t? He or she gets free and goes back to killing. What if one of the medical scientists found a cure to a disease? What if the pilot and co-pilot, as Batman suggests, both disappear?

Left Behind, which tries to represent the Rapture of a smarter deity than Thanos, aka God, shows cars emptying in traffic, and no loving God would that. Someone getting taken would be convinced to pull to the side or not take their bus driving job that day. God wouldn’t want to kill other people while bringing his remaining followers home. After the Rapture there’s supposed to be one last chance for people to turn to Him. Thanos is not a loving god, so he doesn’t care. That means more than half the universe would end up vanishing in the aftermath.

So I’m with Batman on this one. MCU Thanos is just as bad as regular comic Thanos. It’s just that comic Thanos made no move to disguise his intentions. Even when his actions aren’t about pursing Death as a lover he’s about power, control, occasionally revenge, and he has used more than the Infinity Gems (what the Stones were called in the comics) to achieve that goal, tormenting Adam Warlock and Silver Surfer, his biggest non-squirrel powered opponents, when they stand in his way. Thanos is not the hero, and comic Thanos is okay with that while movie Thanos wants to be the hero of his own story. They’re both evil, but I “respect” comic Thanos more for at least being honest about being evil.