Avengers Spoiler contained dont read unless seen

digitalscream

Having had a bit of time to think about it, I guess that my main problem with this film is Thanos - at least, the Thanos we see after the first act. Basically, 2018-era Thanos is a complex, nuanced character with a lot of depth that the audience can sympathise or identify with (at least a little bit). 2014-era Thanos is your typical kill-everyone-in-the-room bad guy.

Now, I get that 2018-era Thanos went from being a military man to more of a missionary (symbolised by taking the armour off at the beginning of Infinity War when he got the first two stones), but...he's hundreds if not thousands of years old. I can't see that his entire personality would change that drastically in four years when his whole philosophy and world-view has been the same for his entire life, just because he's a bit closer to getting what he wants. It just seems a bit cheap.

darthed1981

digitalscream said:

Having had a bit of time to think about it, I guess that my main problem with this film is Thanos - at least, the Thanos we see after the first act. Basically, 2018-era Thanos is a complex, nuanced character with a lot of depth that the audience can sympathise or identify with (at least a little bit). 2014-era Thanos is your typical kill-everyone-in-the-room bad guy.

Now, I get that 2018-era Thanos went from being a military man to more of a missionary (symbolised by taking the armour off at the beginning of Infinity War when he got the first two stones), but...he's hundreds if not thousands of years old. I can't see that his entire personality would change that drastically in four years when his whole philosophy and world-view has been the same for his entire life, just because he's a bit closer to getting what he wants. It just seems a bit cheap.

I'd see that the other way around personally, I don't think he changed between movies, I think we were just lucky that they chose to make Infinity War a film ABOUT Thanos, at least as much as any other character.  We understood his motivation, to build a better world in his eyes, but like all tyrants his methodology (galactic mass murder of trillions) was intrinsically evil.

Infinity War has an almost Star Trek motivation for the Avengers, and for Wakanda, stop Thanos without sacrificing your principles (by just executing Vision and destroying the mind stone, which a lot of people would have done).

In Endgame, the film was much more about identifying how much grief failing to defeat Thanos had caused the Avengers, the main characters basically being Tony, Nat and Steve (Edit: honourable mentions for Thor and Clint), and what it would take each of them to do "whatever it takes" to make it better.  I was an emotional wreck in the cinema after 11 years and 22 movies with these guys, watching them go through it all, but what sticks in my head is Natasha and that damn peanut butter sandwich, ScarJo did some proper acting there.

In this context, Thanos just doesn't need the time spent on him in the first movie to fulfil his role in the film.  He turns from a missionary to a full blown zealot (for himself) because he knows he wins (in one timeline at least) something he isn't aware of in Infinity War.