Well in the book. Thanos was in loved with Death and She wanted to balance to the universe by killing half everyone off. In the movie they just forgo the Lady Death thing.

He wants to play god for a day.

@Satch_the_man said:

Races of creatures can overpopulate their planets and then leave for space, hoping to find new worlds to colonize. Isn't that what we've done?? It seems like a sound motivation to me.

i thought most creatures [we know of] always seem to live in balance.

@Satch_the_man said:

Hey, look, it's a work of fiction -- maybe they're suggesting that aliens are just as self-absorbed as humans, I don't know!! What do your initials stand for, anyway? Pumpkin spice latte?

why abusive?

All we have to judge is what we are familiar with.....what's around us. most creatures are in some kind of balance with their environment.

Maybe intelligence creates the hubris of "tilting at windmills".

I was watching this again on Netflix, and I had a thought, Thanos's plan will not work. Killing off have the population will not make a world a better place. It's already happened on Earth before during the dark ages when disease killed off 2/3rds of the population. It didn't make life better for those who survived, it just gave some the opportunity to take advantage of those who suffering.

BLACK DEATH didn't kill more than 10% of the known world population. Europe suffered about 1/3 loss in population. There was massive social , economic and political changes because the "peasants were revolting" , just kidding, but there value leaped in society due to the dire short age of labour. One could argue it kick-started the middle ages.....and possibly gave us the genes to survive the follow on pandemics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death

@psl said:

BLACK DEATH didn't kill more than 10% of the known world population. Europe suffered about 1/3 loss in population. There was massive social , economic and political changes because the "peasants were revolting" , just kidding, but there value leaped in society due to the dire short age of labour. One could argue it kick-started the middle ages.....and possibly gave us the genes to survive the follow on pandemics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death

Your link said estimates were one-third and one-half of the total European population. So the snap. Any kind of benefits to the peasants only lasted 1-2 generations before the they again found themselves back in the position they were before...exploited and starving. The smallpox plague that came after killed even more people than the black death, so it didn't really help the people survive pandemics better. Better medical knowledge helped with that. According to history, any boon from Thanos's solution would be short term at best.

@Video-Store-Vagrant said:

SO?

So, I don't get Thanos's plan, and why he thought it would work long term.

@Innovator said:

@Video-Store-Vagrant said:

SO?

So, I don't get Thanos's plan, and why he thought it would work long term.

It's a silly half-baked premise.

Gotta try something drastic, I guess. Maybe it would not make things better, but that was the intent I believe. If you are religious at all, it could possibly be compared with the great flood that wiped out the world except for Noah's family and animals, since the people of earth were too wicked/evil.

That could raise questions about why the creator would destroy something they made, but that's a topic for another thread. I'll have to watch the movie a 2nd time to see if I still agree with Thanos.

Frankly i think the whole killing half of the universe seems a little contrived. If you got a device that can kill off the universe. Why not go all the way with it. But they did it in the comics. So they had do it in the movie. Also there a lot humans around. You kill half of us. You still have what, 4 billion people left. You kill half of any endangered species. A good chunk of them going to go extinct. Good going Thanos.