No Stupid Questions

Because people are annoying AF. Cutting the number of idiots in half was a great move.

Back on Titan, Thanos told his people "you need to kill half the population to save our civilization from disaster." The people of Titan dismissed Thanos as insane. Thanos, being actually insane, decided he was going to prove he was right by going around massacring halves of populations.

In other words, he's not doing this to actually help anyone, he's doing it just to prove he was right. Solving the universe's problems by other means wouldn't do that so that's not an acceptable outcome for him.

The comic had better writing. Thanos killed half the universe so he could fuck Death. He thought she'd love that shit since she's, y'know, death. I'd do the same for a goth girl.

I think what was missing was his obsession with Death. The MCU didn't include his infatuation and Death's hold on him. He wanted to impress her and she held him to it in the comics.

I love how this whole premise never gets questioned. By anyone. None of the super smartest people in the movie were like, "no that won't work." The premise just gets accepted as true, but it would be bad.

"I'm going to eliminate half of all life in the universe" hey thanos did you know that scarcity in modern society isn't driven by population at all, and is in fact an artificial condition imposed on the lower classes by the ruling class that hoards those resources?

No its just like, "well killing people is wrong but it would probably work, people might be sad though." No Disney, fuck you. Don't let people believe this shit. Thanks for your endless support for cultural fascism, ya fucks

In the comics, he was trying to impress his girlfriend, Death.

The short answer is that they had to come up with something more palatable to a movie audience than “I’m evil and have a crush on the literal Lady of Death.”

"When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"

Dude just wasn't very smart

They don't call him the Sane Titan.

And he's purple because he's an alien who Jim Starlin gave purple skin.

Comic book universes have never been great on internal consistency. Most technologies and superpowers we see would have ushered in a new golden age for humanity.

same reason expanding the highways doesn't relieve congestion. Induced Demand.

FWIW, he basically did double it. I mean, if you have x resources for a population, and you halve the population... they now have twice the resources...

Because his original motivation was to impress a girl he liked. Death is a hot chick that he was in to but she wasn't interested in him. So he figured killing half of all life would impress her.

They decided to make his motivation more sympathetic for the movie. They didn't think through how his new goal could be better served with the godlike powers he gets.

Because it’s a pretty dumb story at its core. Because they wanted the “worst villain” but couldn’t come up with something more interesting or intelligent than “misguided environmental terrorist.”

Because the only way Marvel movies know how to ratchet up the stakes is having more and more people die.

On doubling the resources, I think that falls into the "obvious, but wrong, answers contain the word 'just'".

let's say you double the resources. without being specific, you just doubled light and the mass of the sun and the mass of the planet and killed everyone.

ok, let's say you get more specific, drinkable water. double it. in place? there goes every pipe and reservoir on the planet.

plant nutrients? now the concentrations could be toxic for the plants and now they're dead.

double the asteroid belts? a lot of these species are space faring, after all.

each species and planet would need a custom solution, and that takes work. In addition, the main issue isn't the availability of resources, it's how they're allocated.

just doubling all the resources could end all life in the universe.

1. Because he's an insane villain with a fixation and a lack of sense for mathematics; halfing the population doesn't help much and delays everything for a few generations max.
2. Hulk states in Endgame that it's mainly gamma radiation, stating it's like he was meant to use them. So Thanos seems to have similar resilience to gamma radiation as the Hulk.
3. Seems to be an affinity type of thing - in "Guardians of the Galaxy" the stone annihilates normal people trying to use it (The Collectors Servant/Slave for example), but since Quill is a celestial hybrid, they can use the stone without dying.
   4)They were destroyed by Thanos at the beginning of "Endgame" - it's the reason they have to go back in time to get them, and place them back in the past afterwards, so that the timeline doesn't get fucked up.
   5)Because space aliens can be whatever color they want to be :-)

If you want to try and rationalize it, I think he might say that the psychological scarring is necessary for all existing societies to change to more sustainable models, or risk another such culling in the future. Due to exponential growth of life, doubling resources, especially while societies continue to abuse those resources wouldn't probably wouldn't do anything long term (in his mind).

I am skeptical if such psychological damage can make enough long term inter generational impact, but hey it's a theory.

He likes killing, and he likes thinking of himself as s benefactor who is just so much smarter than everyone else that he’s the only one who sees the solution, who can rise above petty emotions and do what needs to be done. Sure he’s killing trillions, but only to save them from something worse that would have happened (he reasons).

Most people wouldn’t mind killing someone if there was a moral justification for it and they could get away with it. Just look at how people react to videos of someone stealing a bike: everyone in the thread is ready to literally murder that person. Because they think they have justification. Well, Thanos thinks he has a justification too. And he’s murdered millions up close already - not with a snap - there’s no going back now. In order for his mass murder to be excusable there has to be a larger purpose to it. There has to be.

He’s a knot of different psychoses mixed together. Primarily narcissism plus homicidal tendencies. He’s fully insane, if that did not come across somehow. Totally pinched off from the rest of reality, living in his own self-reinforcing loop. He’s got a lot of power and that makes him more and more immune to reality intruding on his fantasies.

Logic doesn’t come into it. Not only could he have created more resources… he didn’t even think that populations would just grow again and bring everything back to the same place. No he’s blindly playing out the track he’s on. The only way out is forward, because he can’t justify anything behind him otherwise. When the universe isn’t grateful for what he did, and his fantasy of being the benefactor falls apart, notice that he is ready to destroy the entire universe and become god, because how else can he escape the crushing blame for what he’s done.

With all the food we throw away now, it's not a resource peoblem anyway. And that's too much logic for a Disney movie

I think you are thinking to hard about stories that aren't meant to be thought about a lot. Whether you half the population or double the resources it is just a temporary "fix" anyways. It's just a plot device for creating conflict and killing off fan favorites without actually killing off fan favorites in the end.

Have you ever had to much stuff lying around and you thought to yourself "I should really buy some shelves to stow everything away"? Then you get more shelves and after everything is in its place you're left with some extra empty shelves. Now will those remain empty? No, they will be an invitation to get more stuff and fill that space up.

Same thing goes for rescources. Doubling the rescources doesn't mean that life will suddenly thrive and everybody will live happily ever after. In a very short time life would also double and you'll end up with the same problem but way more crowded.

And how does "doubling the rescources" even work? Snapping half the life away is easy, just turn them into dust. But does doubling the water mean rivers overflow, oceans rise? Hydrogen is a rescource, does every star goes supernova because it suddenly has twice the amout of mass?

Doubling the rescources doesn't make any sense. In the Marvel universe there is probably at least one species that sees at least one element of the periodic table as a "rescource". You'd essentially have to double the mass of the entire universe which most likely would result in a universal gravitational collapse.

Also what would the lesson be that life takes away from this? That each time life expands beyond its means somebody will come along and give you more rescources? Thanos wanted to teach life the opposite lesson. That living beyond your means will result in a culling instead of a reward. It was his way of solving greed, even if he could've used the stones to eradicate greed directly, he is called the "Mad Titan" for a reason.

Thanos is probably purple be because his armor is golden/yellow and purple/yellow are complimentary colors that look good together. Its probably a design choice to make his character more recognizable.

What will the movie be then? 3 hours of the Avengers thanking Thanos?

That would have been a boring movie.

Imagine snapping half the population and they were all conservatives that got snapped, we will actually double our resources.