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.
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What they need to do is find writers who care about accurately continuing a hero’s story rather than trying to be an important contributor to a backstory that was perfectly fine without your “better idea”. The writers don’t have to be fans necessarily, and being fans might push them towards “pet characters syndrome”, though a fan who isn’t considering one character too precious to harm–while also not thrilled about torturing fictional characters and draining everything fans like about them because they want to be Watchmen–might be a really good choice. They need to be fans of the story, not the brand or the money they think comes with it just by existing. Understand why the brand has a fanbase and continue doing that. Save your own stories for your own IP.
They also need editors who want to push the medium instead of allowing themselves to be the ostracized in the pecking order and prove what comics can do that no other form of media can, a publisher and distributor who can get comics where people can find them, and a company willing to promote them not just as “where this movie came from” when they’re not going to properly adapt the comic anyway because their media is superior to those “silly comics”. To be fair, not being woke is a decent goal, considering it leads to bad writing and insulting the people you claim to be pushing for, but that’s just a symptom of a larger problem.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on February 14, 2025 in Comic Spotlight and tagged comics, commentary.
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