Josh Brolin's performance as the Mad Titan, Thanos, is incredibly engaging. Predominantly CGI and face paint, it somehow manages to be loaded with subtleties. The benefit of being the central character of the whole film allows him to work with more characterization, backstory, and motivation than most other superhero film baddies. It's not that surprising to see many rushing to call Thanos the best Marvel villain yet.
Certainly, he belongs up there, but "best Marvel villain" is a low bar to clear. It's like saying Man of Steel is the best Superman movie of the modern DC cinematic universe. Sure, it's possibly true, but primarily because the other two have been, by some strange circumstance, complete dumpster fires. It's hard, though, to think of too many Big Bads from the MCU that could top Thanos. I'd still personally put Killmonger from the recent (and much, much better film) Black Panther above him. He is more thoughtfully written, and thematically relevant to the film he appears in. I'd also put Loki above him, even though he has largely veered off into more classical anti-hero characterization after the first Thor. He started off more compelling, as well as more entertaining. And, look, I know I'm alone on this, but I still think the team up of Whiplash and Justin Hammer in Iron Man 2 is a solid combination, with two villains working in tandem toward thematic significance in a way the Russo brothers fail to really explore with their villain.
The big issue with Thanos is that his motivation makes no sense. Maybe that's by design: after all, few things are scarier than an unpredictable madman with an infinity gauntlet! I don't think that is the case here, however, largely due to his presentation within the film.
Thanos is the protagonist and the villain. It's an interesting structure for a superhero film. Not even Christopher Nolan ever really attempted anything like that before within the confines of superheroes. This creates a bit of a disconnect between the reality of Thanos with the film's portrayal of him. Throughout Infinity War, we are constantly meant to think of Thanos as someone operating on some kind of logic. It's cold, moral calculus; the very type that the "good guys" refuse to do. "We don't trade lives," Captain America says at one point in the film. And yet, even Dr. Strange - who started their arc by telling Iron Man he wouldn't hesitate to abandon him to save the time gem - would inevitably fall into that very narrow moral code (despite no contact with Cap, so, where exactly did Strange get his newfound ethics?)
We are not meant to feel like Thanos is making the right call, nor are we ever really given a reason to sympathize with his motivation. That makes him different than, say, Killmonger, who - while we are never meant to approve of his actions - often is presented as having a point. Same thing is true of Loki in the Thor: The First Thor. We are never on his side, but we can understand him as someone unsure of his place among multiple worlds he is not actually native to. Infinity War occasionally tries to present Thanos through this lens as well. The flashback to when he stole Gamora is slathered in, "He has a point" rhetoric. Part of this is due to the fact Thanos is the one retelling events, and he obviously views himself as the good guy. However, the Russo brothers want audiences to strangely empathize with Thanos multiple times throughout the film, too. So it isn't just a case of a character within the narrative pushing an idea. Rather, the filmmakers contribute as well.
It all falls apart when you really start thinking about Thanos's plan. His goal is to acquire the infinity gems and use them to wipe out half of all life in the universe. The reason: there is a finite amount of resources in the universe, and life continues to expand at a rate in which those resources will be gone at some point, making any life impossible. Basically, he has to end life to save life.
There are so many holes to this logic that it is hard to know where exactly to begin. First, for a guy who teeters on nihilism, it's strange that he doesn't recognize that the universe itself is not forever and there will inevitably be a point where no life is possible at all. Second, it shows a lack of any real consideration or consistency on his part. He evidently can empathize with those who are struggling to survive, but not those he is knowingly killing. Third, his plan is incredibly small in focus and opens up potential to make things worse. And fourth, it doesn't even attempt to get to the root of the issue which highlights a complete lack of foresight.
Those last two points are where it matters within the film. Thanos was, according to the film's own backstory, supposedly an intelligent person. Only he had the foresight on Titan to recognize that overpopulation would lead to its destruction. But apparently, not a single person in the Marvel cinematic universe - including the forward thinking Thanos - could see how little his plan actually addresses his primary concern.
If Thanos were truly interested in protecting life in general from the problem of shrinking resources, why would he choose a system of chance that selects people at random? One of the big characters to get wiped out was T'Challa. Yet this change has the potential to do so much more damage. Black Panther ended with T'Challa opening up Wakanda to the rest of the world, literally embarking on a campaign to *share* their resources. And now, that king is gone because of Thanos's idiotic, short-sighted plan to bring "balance" to the universe. Now, instead of a political leader making things better and establishing fair trades of resources with others, a power vacuum opens up. Wakanda could be exposed for another like Killmonger to take the throne and enact policies of violence. Or, with the lack of a strong leader with a clear vision in place, Wakanda's neighbors could use it as an opportunity to start a war to reclaim areas they felt were rightfully theirs. Effectively, Thanos has destabilized the region.
The idea that the primary cause of war and suffering is shrinking resources flies in the face of history. For example, there were more than enough resources to go around in early North America. There was plenty for the many native tribes already present, and there was even plenty for the European settlers that got there. And yet, greed drove the Europeans to take and take and take. The bountiful resources itself caused plenty of suffering. The settlers spread diseases and, quite literally, wiped out more than half of several native tribes in efforts to take those resources and those lands. They did not do that because resources were scarce.
Thanos's motivation is built around the idea that overpopulation is a problem in need of solving, but he can't comprehend concepts of greed. A quick look around the Marvel cinematic universe, you will find several stories built around the villains holding grudges because they did not get enough, despite there being plenty to share. Sure, the bad guys are the bad guys and always hold some moral defect as characters. Yet many of them have, at their core, a story of the "bad guys" getting kind of shafted. It's rarely a matter of someone seeking limited resources, or such things becoming scarce.
If the problem on Gamora's planet was that the food was being hoarded by some of the population, how exactly does killing half of them fix that? Ok, there are now more resources to go around. What's to stop that world from seeing the same exact outcome? Perhaps, like North America, it will wind up very much a situation where such a small population controls such a large amount of those resources. That because there is now a smaller population and more resources, there will be bigger gains for those who manage to get control of them. Plainly, Thanos's plan does nothing to address the root cause of greed.
The logistics should also not be ignored. Because Thanos doesn't actually care about any life, he opts to wipe people out at random. Those at the end disappear from existence by chance, just as those he gunned down on Gamora's world were sorted without any thought as to who they were executing. This is important because what if he just accidentally wiped out most of the people that know how to farm, or fish, or hunt? He just killed half the population because some people were starving, but without consideration as to who he was killing, he risked ensuring the remaining population continue to starve. Or, like with T'Challa, he might have wiped out the leaders that could help keep the peace or educate the survivors for self-sufficiency. What if he just wiped out most of the doctors? Or the person on the cusp of curing a disease or, god forbid, an actual plan to deal with either food distribution problems or overpopulation problems? There is so much downside to randomization of murder that it's hard to believe Thanos ever actually thought this was the solution. I get that it would have to abandon his quasi-nihilistic thing wherein he is supposed to think life has no intrinsic value, except that everything was being done in the name of preserving lives, so he must inherently find some do.
Even if the problem were indeed overpopulation, what exactly does wiping out half of the universe's population accomplish? What is to stop these people from overpopulating again? Maybe it's just me, but even if I were nihilistic, I might consider using the all-powerful Macguffin to sterilize half the population, or do something that otherwise reduces population growth. Wiping out half of all life while retaining reproduction rates would be like putting down a few ant traps without doing anything about the ant hill just outside your door. Ok, you can take out some ants and it's better for a few days. What do you do when their numbers are back up and they're invading your home again?
In my review of Avengers: Infinity War, I noted that I'm tired of the "have to destroy life to save life" trope increasingly common as motivation for sci-fi villains. We saw this in the MCU previously with Ultron, who was attempting to create an event so destructive that it wiped out humankind in the short term but would spare life in general on Earth over the long term. It seems increasingly common in sci-fi stories to have a Big Bad motivated by this idea that destruction leads to peace. It is not always a bad vein to tap, but it feels clunky in Infinity War, largely because it seems as though the writers didn't put any real thought into it.
A great example of this trope written well (on the most part) is BioWare's video game trilogy Mass Effect. In that series, sentient machines called Reapers are in the midsts of executing a recurring plan to eliminate all intelligent organic life in the galaxy. This is done, they claim, to prevent intelligent life from creating synthetic life that will inevitably rise up and destroy all organic life. On the surface, it sounds similar to, or even worse than Thanos's plan. There is a pretty key difference, however
The Reapers have a very specific group of lifeforms they seek to eliminate. They are not killing people through chance. Their targets are deliberate and thought-out. Lifeforms they do not deem intelligent are spared and specifically given the opportunity to evolve along a designed trajectory. After every cycle of 50,000 years, the Reapers intentionally leave enough technology behind to influence the evolutionary path of organic life. Essentially, it is a logical, predictable program. There is very little up to chance with their plan. According to their cold moral calculus, which they were built to consider by organic lifeforms, this cycle has been repeated and successful many, many times. They have factored in many variables and always got the same result. They are not getting caught up in concept of life's value, even in the face of the player's Commander Shepard defying the odds and showing organic life can be so much more than the Reapers expected. However, there is actual logic behind their plan.
The "chance" aspect of Thanos's plan is what makes it fundamentally different and more ridiculous. There isn't any actual logic to it. At its core, the only reason it "works" is if we conclude that he's just a crazy idiot. Sure, that can be scary, but it's not compelling. It's the difference between Jared Leto's Joker just acting on a whim and not being about anything (boring) and Heath Ledger's Joker being about chaos with intent and purpose (really intriguing and griping).
Thanos could also have taken a page from Mass Effect. The overpopulation of an aggressive alien race called Krogans was a big concern for much of the "civilized" galaxy. And so Salarian scientists created the genophage: an airborne toxin that genetically mutated the Krogan people in a way that effectively sterilized many and dramatically reduced their reproduction rates. Much of the trilogy examines the morality or justification of such a plan, but again, there is logic to it. People saw a problem, and they sought to address it. Thanos does no such thing.
In this way, Thanos is a pretty frustrating villain. Brolin's performance is top notch and worth watching. Yet how he is written and presented by the filmmakers is so underwhelming and stupid that it removes any of the compelling potential of him. He isn't anything other than mad. Mix in the overpowered bad guy trope he checks off, and Thanos actually embodies some of the worst villain writing out there. Sure, there are a few bold choices made in Infinity War. We don't often see the bad guys win (although one could argue we got to see Hela do this in Thor: Ragnarok with a much more potent and complex ending). Sure, we really get to see more from the perspective of "the bad guy never thinks he's the bad guy." But that doesn't itself make him compelling.
Even more, if the idea is that Thanos represents the opposite side of the Avengers' thematic coin - that our heroes don't trade lives while Thanos trades them at a 1:1 ratio - that falls completely flat so far. This, of course, should be taken with a grain of salt as we do not have a complete film yet. Infinity War is so clearly an incomplete film that it is difficult to say much until we have the second part. Still, the Russo brothers have constantly provided surface-level "depth" with their Captain America films. For all the talk of The Winter Soldier examining themes of privacy vs. safety, or Civil War looks into individualism vs. collectivism/private rights vs. government oversight, neither film takes too much time to explore in any sort of meaningful way. Plus, they both completely fall apart by the third act.
Infinity War does nothing besides establish that Thanos is the opposite of the Avengers. That's it. There's literally no more to that. It doesn't make any commentary on it. It doesn't really do anything to explore those two positions juxtaposed against one another. In fact, all it serves to do is blatantly tell audiences that Thanos is the bad guy and the Avengers are the heroes, which, ok. I guess that needed clarification 19 movies into the MCU?
If Thanos is a top five MCU villain, it's largely because they have always struggled with villains. They have never really gotten the kind of care or attention they deserve within the writing process. People are going to be all into Thanos because he actually gets the most screen time of any non-Loki bad guy, but I'd argue he's just as shallow, uninteresting, and weak as Ronan, Yellowjacket, Obadiah Stane, Aldrich Killian, or Malekith.
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