Thanos' insane plan

With the next Avengers film being released soon, it is as good a time as any to talk about the most controversial element of the previous Avenger film, Infinity War: the master plan of Thanos the Mad Titan.

As it is one of the big reveals of the film, there will be spoilers, both about its nature and the film's ending.

Note: this is only based on the films released at this date, and mostly ignores side-material.

- End of the spoiler-free zone -

The Plan

A distant menace on several previous films, Thanos was presented as the main villain that the heroes would have to face some day. As hinted, his plan consists on gathering the six Infinite Stones, magic pebbles from the dawn of times that can each control an aspect of reality. With the six together, he will literally have access to the ultimate power over the Universe.

But while you would expect the grand villain of a superhero story to want ultimate power for its own sake, for Ruling the Universe (inset maniacal laugh), or for quenching his thirst of revenge and hatred in the blood of most everyone, Thanos doesn't care about all that. In fact, he wants to save the Universe and then retire on some peaceful nowhere.

The bad news is, what he wants to save the Universe of is a Malthusian overpopulation catastrophe, and his method for that is to kill half its population. At least it is fair, as the half to die is chosen at random, and they will die rather painlessly.

What the hell !?

It is a credit to the film that some of the audience not only sympathized but actually sided with Thanos. Convincing villains can make some of the most interesting antagonists. But do not be mistaken. That plan is an insane monstrosity of a literally unimaginable scale. And it is stupid.

Malthusian catastrophes, when they arrive, are nasty things. However, they are far from inevitable, several mechanisms exist that naturally tend to curb them or avoid them completely, and there are often less extreme ways to face it. Birth control, resource rationing, recycling, technological advances, you name it. Yes, food stamps and one-child policy are rather ugly, but much less than genocide.

In addition, much of the Universe is clearly not beset by Malthusian catastrophes, making the death of many of its inhabitants pointless. Even worse, the disappearance of half the people everywhere in every sector will probably cause social economic catastrophes on a scale that may kill entire worlds. And that's ignoring all the crashing vehicles and exploding power stations that lost their drivers and operators.

And even then, at some point the population will double again and you will be back at square one. Except you retired, so it will be up to someone else to fix it.

So you get your hands on ultimate power, and you want to stop Malthusian catastrophes in the Universe. What can you do? There are many options, often with flaws, certainly, but none as bad as half-omnicide.

You can double the existing resources of the Universe. For example, duplicate existing planets and celestial bodies, or make them twice as big. You can create new star systems, with portals to them so people can go there. You can change the rules of the Universe so population growth will naturally slow down.

You can even simply conquer the Universe and manage it directly, or give the job to competent administrators, in order to curb Malthusian catastrophes before they appear on each world.

Hemimating* the Universe is a terrible solution. I mean, duh.

* Literally, "decimating" meant "killing one-tenth of". Nowadays, it is used for "killing a large fraction of", so it is not technically incorrect, but it always bothers me for some reason.

How could he possibly think that was a good idea?

Thanos is shown as powerful, charismatic leader that can command not simply fear but also absolute loyalty. He even has a grand priest who make a great main villain by himself. You would expect someone that capable to be smart enough to come up with a better plan, right?

But he didn't wake up some day, wondering what he would do to kill time, and decided that Malthusian catastrophes were a bad thing and killing half the Universe would fix the problem.

He grew up on a great, advanced world, but one that was dying of overpopulation. And that is not an exaggeration: whether it was war, pollution or some other disaster, it is now a dead world, and he may as well be its last survivor. And he knew it at the time. In fact, they probably all did, but they were too far gone to fix it.

So he offered an extreme solution. A monstrous one, but the only one that could have worked: killing half the world's population.

Unsurprisingly, they refused. However the end ultimately came, it was bad. Extinction by overpopulation is one of the most horrifying way to go imaginable. Losing all of his people to that, and somehow surviving it himself, it is hard to imagine him or anyone else not going insane.

After that, he launched a crusade, attacking populated worlds and killing half of their population. Incapable of processing the staggering losses he suffered, he tries to save them again and again. But of course, it cannot work. His people are long gone, and nothing will bring them back. I suspect, not even the power of the Infinity Stones.

At some point, probably faced with how his task was simply impossible to accomplish, he devised a new plan. Gather the Infinity Stones and finish it in one stroke. With ruthlessness, no mercy and absolute dedication to his goal, he set to accomplish it.

And so he did.

And, at last, after symbolically succeeding where he had failed them, he can finally mourn his people.

His story is a cautionary tale about monsters who want to save the world.

As driven as they are to an altruistic goal, as strong, charismatic and diligent they can be, and with the certainty they offer in their answers, it is easy to follow them. And sometimes, after all they suffered, you can't help but to sympathize with them.

But they are still monsters.