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Avengers: Endgame

chibipoe said:
That isn't even a valid comparison. In Strange's case, we know he checked the future, ergo, anything that he didn't try is clearly something that he knew didn't work.
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Yes, and I don't believe that. Once Endgame established he could trivially teleport even interplanetary distances - something we all had to effectively discount last year precisely because of how much it expanded Strange's options beyond "stay on Titan to get fistfucked" - and act based on his script-peek cheats there is literally zero reason he couldn't have just teleported the whole Titan group to Wakanda where they could potentially save Vision but definitely all team up to slow down Thanos long enough for Thor to come own him with Stormbreaker during a period where a non-headshot wouldn't spell doom for half the universe.
 
serra2 said:
The Nazi philosophy is also riddled with holes and contradictions, and can also be defeated fairly easily in debate with practice. The time to engage said debate is not on the beaches of Normandy.

Like, everytime I see someone bring up the the "challenge his philosophy" thing, all that tells me is that that person would, with a decent argument, be perfectly willing to commit genocide. His plan is horrific regardless of the underlying logic, that should go without question.
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I know that, but the fact no one even tried to argue against his philosophy is still kinda weird.
 
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I just liked that they demonstrated once and for all that for all his talk and charisma, Thanos really did have fundamentally petty motivations.

He succeeded in his goals? Great, but no one's thankful to him. He didn't get the validation that he'd been seeking for years, that he was right, that the people of Titan should have listened to him. People didn't finally admit that he could have saved his homeworld, regardless of the objections of the naysayers who had dismissed his proposal at the time.

But no, they're not grateful to him. They haven't conceded to his superior logic. So he'll make a new universe with blackjack and hookers. A better, grateful universe that will tell him how right he was.

Because as long as people were bitter about what happened and hated Thanos, Thanos doesn't win, even if his killing half of everyone plan had actually made life better for people.
 
serra2 said:
Like, everytime I see someone bring up the the "challenge his philosophy" thing, all that tells me is that that person would, with a decent argument, be perfectly willing to commit genocide. His plan is horrific regardless of the underlying logic, that should go without question.
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I mean, it is possible for there to be, in fiction, completely reasonable arguments for genocide (or even omnicide) that the player might even agree with.

For example, Kerghan's argument for why all sentient life should just cease (namely, that there's a no-fine-print actually-perfectly-blissful heaven waiting for everyone who dies, meaning that the best way to eliminate all suffering and have everyone be happy is to kill everyone. This is not mad-villain-with-nothing-backing-them-up as one of your party members dies and is revived and backs up Kerghan's points about the afterlife, and all through the game you can summon spirits back and they all hate it and want to be unbanished ASAP) is not entirely unconvincing and going along with his plan to just painlessly and instantly flick off all life at once to dump everyone alive into a perfect afterlife is not even the bad ending, which is something given that's the ending where you literally kill off all sentient life.
 
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Muhkat Lomorki said:
I know that, but the fact no one even tried to argue against his philosophy is still kinda weird.
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Because it's pointless? He's a genocidal madman who views his actions through the lens of destiny.

When confronted with the reality that his actions would not create a grateful prosperous universe Thanos proceeded to double down.
He sought to kill everyone, then remake the universe under his own balanced values unaware of the previous loss.

That is what happens when Thanos's philosophy is challenged.
 
Sir Bill said:
He succeeded in his goals? Great, but no one's thankful to him. He didn't get the validation that he'd been seeking for years, that he was right, that the people of Titan should have listened to him. People didn't finally admit that he could have saved his homeworld, regardless of the objections of the naysayers who had dismissed his proposal at the time.
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TBF, the people of Titan killed themselves off in civil war when the resources of one world was getting too scarce for an obviously advanced civilisation such as them.
The species as a whole was a few marbles short of a complete set to begin with.
 
Also the only two people really in a position to call him on his bullsit are Gamora - who's likely been through the song and dance enough to realize it's pointless - and Strange - where it was clear as Thanos was explaining is rationale Strange realized reasonig with the man was impossible. Everyone else he was actively trying to kill and no one's up for a lively debate on philosophy and ethics in such situations.
 
query said:
Because it's pointless? He's a genocidal madman who views his actions through the lens of destiny.

When confronted with the reality that his actions would not create a grateful prosperous universe Thanos proceeded to double down.
He sought to kill everyone, then remake the universe under his own balanced values unaware of the previous loss.

That is what happens when Thanos's philosophy is challenged.
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I was actually curious, from a scriptwriting standpoint, why nobody tried to at least acknowledge some of the specific flaws of Thanos's plan, apart from the whole mass genocide thing, to the audience.

I mean, we had lengthy scenes in Endgame where the characters went through all the various reasons for why they couldn't do this or that in their plans, for the benefit of the audience. In contrast, the most we saw of the criticism to Thanos's Snap with regards to the ends (rather than the means) was Romanov threatening to throw a sandwich at Rogers for mentioning that the dolphins are back in the city bay.

Like, the suggestions of using time travel to change history was met with criticism of both the means ("That's sick, Rhodey") and the ends ("It won't solve anything, it'll just create an alternate timeline"). And it was repeated again and again, presumably for the benefit of the audience. We don't see anything like that for Thanos's Snap, even for the very mild comment about nature (somehow) recovering.

(I don't even know how ecosystems work post Snap anyway, so for all I know the movie writers were making it up too.)
 
Adloquium said:
I was actually curious, from a scriptwriting standpoint, why nobody tried to at least acknowledge some of the specific flaws of Thanos's plan, apart from the whole mass genocide thing, to the audience.
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Because it is already ghastly and obviously insane. He even says "well my people called me mad for suggesting this."

We also get a hefty dose of seeing the flaws rather than being told about them. Hawkeye being screwed by RNG, everyone is traumatized, life is already recovering while Thanos is incapable of doing it again. IMO it could have used one of the criminals Hawkeye was going after going off on him about their snap consequences and how he's generally killing fellow living victims and/or other people's sole surviving caretaker or child. But that's details.

Its obviously a bad plan that doesn't do what Thanos wants.
 
Adloquium said:
I was actually curious, from a scriptwriting standpoint, why nobody tried to at least acknowledge some of the specific flaws of Thanos's plan, apart from the whole mass genocide thing, to the audience.

I mean, we had lengthy scenes in Endgame where the characters went through all the various reasons for why they couldn't do this or that in their plans, for the benefit of the audience. In contrast, the most we saw of the criticism to Thanos's Snap with regards to the ends (rather than the means) was Romanov threatening to throw a sandwich at Rogers for mentioning that the dolphins are back in the city bay.

Like, the suggestions of using time travel to change history was met with criticism of both the means ("That's sick, Rhodey") and the ends ("It won't solve anything, it'll just create an alternate timeline"). And it was repeated again and again, presumably for the benefit of the audience. We don't see anything like that for Thanos's Snap, even for the very mild comment about nature (somehow) recovering.

(I don't even know how ecosystems work post Snap anyway, so for all I know the movie writers were making it up too.)
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It depends how you want to look at it.

One way to consider it would be that time travel needs explaining because time travel is an utterly fictional concept and the specific rules in play need to be clarified lest the audience fall for precisely the same trap Rhodey and Scott do with their back to the future logic. Conversely, the madness inherent in Thanos' plan doesn't really need a second glance over because it's so monumentally wrong that the audience can be trusted to go 'yep, this makes no sense at all' without needing it spoon fed to them.

Another way to view it is that the movie does actually explore it - earth has become a depressed wasteland, covered in trash and full of people who can't move on from the calamity that has destroyed their lives. With very few exceptions all of our viewpoint characters in Endgame are broken individuals; Nat, Cap, Thor, Tony, Rocket and Clint all to greater or lesser degrees are still suffering from the trauma five years on.

In a pure 'screenwriting' analysis though; I think the main problem with drawing attention to how bad Thanos' plan is, is that... it's really bad. Like it's REALLY bad, like it's so bad that it's implausible a character as otherwise seemingly smart as Thanos would come up with it. By rushing past the specifics of the plan the audience is able to just absorb the atmosphere of 'charismatic villain has monstrous plan' instead of 'complete dumbass has dumb plan that makes no sense at all' which would lower the stakes of the drama. Later, after the movie is over they can think about the specifics of the plan and realise how stupid it was but in the moment when they're sitting in front of the screen you need to maintain the plausibility of the character.
 
*LOL*

There IS in fact already fan comics on 'Milf' Carol Danvers and Spidey.

Damn....
 
The_Reptile_ said:
Also the only two people really in a position to call him on his bullsit are Gamora - who's likely been through the song and dance enough to realize it's pointless - and Strange - where it was clear as Thanos was explaining is rationale Strange realized reasonig with the man was impossible. Everyone else he was actively trying to kill and no one's up for a lively debate on philosophy and ethics in such situations.
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I mean, Gamora does tell him his plan is bullshit:
Gamora: I was a child when you took me.

Thanos: I saved you.

Gamora: No. We were happy on my home planet.

Thanos: You were going to bed hungry, scrounging for scraps. Your planet was on the brink of collapse. I'm the one who stopped that. You know what's happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear skies. It's a paradise.

Gamora: Because you murdered half the planet.

Thanos: A small price to pay for salvation.

Gamora: You're insane.

Thanos: Little one, it's a simple calculus. This universe is finite, its resources, finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correcting.

Gamora: You don't know that!

Thanos: I'm the only one who knows that. At least, I'm the only one with the will to act on it.
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When we see Gamora's planet in the flashback, it doesn't look like the apocalyptic hellhole that Thanos describes, and the visual language is clearly telling us "This is a fucked up massacre of innocents that isn't remotely cool". We don't ever see Gamora's planet post-invasion, and so we have nothing but Thanos' word to judge it on, and everything else in the film gives us zero reason to believe him.
 
Arthur Frayn said:
I mean, Gamora does tell him his plan is bullshit:


When we see Gamora's planet in the flashback, it doesn't look like the apocalyptic hellhole that Thanos describes, and the visual language is clearly telling us "This is a fucked up massacre of innocents that isn't remotely cool". We don't ever see Gamora's planet post-invasion, and so we have nothing but Thanos' word to judge it on, and everything else in the film gives us zero reason to believe him.
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There's also a blink and you'll miss it moment from Guardians 1 stating that she is the last of her kind, which is technically a reason to not believe him
 
Kodiak said:
Because it is already ghastly and obviously insane. He even says "well my people called me mad for suggesting this."

We also get a hefty dose of seeing the flaws rather than being told about them. Hawkeye being screwed by RNG, everyone is traumatized, life is already recovering while Thanos is incapable of doing it again. IMO it could have used one of the criminals Hawkeye was going after going off on him about their snap consequences and how he's generally killing fellow living victims and/or other people's sole surviving caretaker or child. But that's details.

Its obviously a bad plan that doesn't do what Thanos wants.
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What I meant was that as many, many people on forums like this have pointed out, Thanos's plan simply doesn't work even in the absolute best case scenario for him. As in, one of the chief criticisms is that since Thanos Snapped half of all life, that means even the food resources are also halved, leaving everything as it was at best.

It's like trying to fix a flat tyre by anointing it with the blood of innocents. The method is obviously monstrous, and should be criticized for that, and the consequences of that method are also horrifying and terrible. But I would have expected someone to point out that it doesn't actually fix the problem at all, much less long-term.

However, all we got was Thanos in Infinity War describing how this blood of innocents somehow managed to form a clot on the tyre to make the car run better than ever, and the only objection so far on screen is "you shouldn't use the blood of the innocents". Which is something that did need to be said onscreen, but I was hoping for something more.
 
Adloquium said:
However, all we got was Thanos in Infinity War describing how this blood of innocents somehow managed to form a clot on the tyre to make the car run better than ever, and the only objection so far on screen is "you shouldn't use the blood of the innocents". Which is something that did need to be said onscreen, but I was hoping for something more.
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Rather, he says "forming a clot of innocent blood should've worked, but it didn't because you whined about it too much."

Thanos doesn't think things went as-planned except for these meddling fools. He says life should've been thriving- it's not.
 
prometheus110 said:
I doubt he was ever included in the coin flip that decided who lived and who died. :V
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I presume @Carrnage meants before enacting the Snap. I can actually see Thanos including himself in the Snap because as far as he's concerned, at that point, he's won and he doesn't care what happens next. Look how little fight he put up when the Avengers came calling, for example. Even granting that the Stones had messed him up I'm quite sure he could've struggled if he cared to -- but he doesn't.
 
foamy said:
I presume @Carrnage meants before enacting the Snap. I can actually see Thanos including himself in the Snap because as far as he's concerned, at that point, he's won and he doesn't care what happens next. Look how little fight he put up when the Avengers came calling, for example. Even granting that the Stones had messed him up I'm quite sure he could've struggled if he cared to -- but he doesn't.
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I suspect Thanos wouldn't include himself in the Snap, a) because whatever he says he's still a huge egoist and getting snapped would deny him the appreciation of a grateful universe, and b) if he gets snapped then the Stones are left behind so somebody can effectively undo everything he did almost immediately. So if he wants his work to be permanent he has to survive at least long enough to make sure nobody can take the Stones and use them against him. Which is what he did.
 
Mal-3 said:
I suspect Thanos wouldn't include himself in the Snap, a) because whatever he says he's still a huge egoist and getting snapped would deny him the appreciation of a grateful universe, and b) if he gets snapped then the Stones are left behind so somebody can effectively undo everything he did almost immediately. So if he wants his work to be permanent he has to survive at least long enough to make sure nobody can take the Stones and use them against him. Which is what he did.
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Not to mention he has a retirement plan (as Rhodey put it) where after he was done he'd just chill out on a farm for the rest of his life.
 
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