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Avengers: Endgame

@"baileym43" I disagree.

I realize thought that I was mistaken about something. Thanos never says he will destroy half of all life in the universe. He only refers to the population, saying things like "When I'm done, half of humanity will still exist". The other characters say he destroys half of life, Gamora says half of all life, but,

1) So far Thanos does not have the stones and "killing half of life" always meant going planet by planet and killing half the population, and

2) The characters refer to "all life" as all species of intelligent life that, in Thanos's view, always consumes and tips off the balance of the universe. All intelligent life are not humans, and specifying it as "all species of intelligent life" is redundant, so they refer to the population as "life".

The end showing half of the cast fading away and not any of the plantlife, as you said, supports this. This is my interpretation and what I see in the movie supports it. It all makes sense to me.

I haven't seen the Thanos analysis video.

asterixsmeagol said:
Who's to say that the magic stones can't create things from thin air? But even if they can't, he could alter all food-bearing plants to produce twice as much per acre, or adjust the metabolisms of everything to be reduced by half. Or he could transform rock into food, or reduce the fertility rates by half to reduce the population by half over the course of one generation.
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There is nothing in the movie that supports the evidence that the stones can create stuff from nothing. They can change things or make convincing illusions with the Reality Stone as seen in Knowhere, but nothing that supports creation from nothing. I don't think they can even clone stuff, make food-bearing plants to produce twice as much, because that's still creating more from nothing. Like, there's one seed, right? You can't make it two out of nowhere. Rocks are also finite. And while yes, reducing fertility rates by half would help,

1) The fact is that overpopulation exists now, and the universe is arguably in chaos. He has to fix this.

2) After he succeeded killing half of people, even if he did reduce fertility afterwards, that would be messing with nature, and regardless of that (because sacrifices have to be made, I'm ignoring that argument), fertility is also not permanent. However slowly the population rises there will be a time eventually when the population reaches to an overpopulated point again. An heir to Thanos then must take the gauntlet and do it again.

Stopping reproduction altogether would this time unbalance the universe on the other tipping point. This time everyone dies of old age, life no longer exists, plantlife/animals exist for nothing. Chaotic wild existence.

There is no other way. Thanos must kill half of all life. Mad, of course, but he doesn't realize all good things must come to an end, even intelligent life. He doesn't realize that eventually different intelligent life might rise again in the future. Such is the cycle of life. Then again, is it saving life if you kill half of all live to save the rest, or saving everyone but for everyone to eventually fall due to chaos? These questions that make you think is why Thanos is a great villain, and the fact that we are arguing this is proof of that. Sure you can nitpick, find miniscule holes (which have easy explanations like I give by the way), but at the end of the day it's about the motivation and effect of the villain and not the itty bitty details.
 
My head-canon is that since the stones appear to be sentient (which is presumably why Vision even exists), the stones "did the math" for him behind the scenes. Like a wish from a Genie or Monkey's Paw.

If not, then you'd need to consider a lot of factors. Thanos was doing his population-halving before the Snap, so those planets he visited prior to the Snap have already been handled, and can be excluded from the formula. I think the stones themselves refuse to kill him as long as he has the Gauntlet, otherwise what's the point of the Gauntlet, so he's excluded as well (so it's not so fair and random as he thinks). Because he claimed when he's done half of humanity would be left, I assume that is the logic applied per planet. Some planets may have very low populations to begin with, so halving them would dramatically increase the chances of the populations dying out completely in these locations. Some planets may have such high levels of overpopulation that halving them wouldn't fully stop the negative effects. Finally, there is the matter of who is actually left over vs who's gone, and how big of an impact that would have, for example if all employees of a nuclear power facility were Snapped, and as a result of their disappearance there was a meltdown that wiped out a much larger percentage of the population (or something smaller scale, for example vehicles losing their drivers), then the Stones failed because the end result is FAR less than half the population surviving.

So, IMO, the stones were smart enough to consider all this, and Snapped away less than 50% with the end goal to have 50% population of sentient life left per planet compared to the universe's population before Thanos started his quest.
 
addiesin said:
I think the stones themselves refuse to kill him as long as he has the Gauntlet, otherwise what's the point of the Gauntlet, so he's excluded as well (so it's not so fair and random as he thinks).
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The Russos said that the reason that Thanos gave a little smirk after the snap is because he included himself in the "lottery" and was pleased to find out that he was one of the surviving 50%.
 
Again, the population was half what it is now in 1974. I remember 1974.
 
Moe_Syzlak said:
Again, the population was half what it is now in 1974. I remember 1974.
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I didn't exist at the time lol. Could you explain this to me? I was under the impression that the world population is at an all time high with 7/8 Billion and rapidly increasing.
 
Masirimso17 said:
Moe_Syzlak said:
Again, the population was half what it is now in 1974. I remember 1974.
Click to expand...

I didn't exist at the time lol. Could you explain this to me? I was under the impression that the world population is at an all time high with 7/8 Billion and rapidly increasing.
Click to expand...

The world population hit 4B in late 1974. That’s half of today’s population. Reducing the population to 1974 levels is hardly an impactful way to bring about the change that Thanos states as his motivation.
 
People seem to put more thought into Thanos' motivations than the motivations of our politicians.....
 
musiced921 said:
People seem to put more thought into Thanos' motivations than the motivations of our politicians.....
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What do you mean? Talking about real politics is not allowed here.
 
addiesin said:
What do you mean? Talking about real politics is not allowed here.
Click to expand...

Just a joke about how in-depth and passionate the discussion is getting about the motivations of a fictional character.

Don't worry, I know the rules.
 
addiesin said:
Some planets may have very low populations to begin with, so halving them would dramatically increase the chances of the populations dying out completely in these locations. Some planets may have such high levels of overpopulation that halving them wouldn't fully stop the negative effects. Finally, there is the matter of who is actually left over vs who's gone, and how big of an impact that would have, for example if all employees of a nuclear power facility were Snapped, and as a result of their disappearance there was a meltdown that wiped out a much larger percentage of the population (or something smaller scale, for example vehicles losing their drivers), then the Stones failed because the end result is FAR less than half the population surviving.
Click to expand...

Exactly
 
musiced921 said:
People seem to put more thought into Thanos' motivations than the motivations of our politicians.....
Click to expand...

Well more thought than the actual writers at  least.
 
You guys are nitpicking too much. We don’t know how the Stones operate. There is something called suspension of disbelief. This is hardly something that strains it.
 
Masirimso17 said:
You guys are nitpicking too much. We don’t know how the Stones operate. There is something called suspension of disbelief. This is hardly something that strains it.
Click to expand...

As I noted earlier, I just think it’s funny. The hand-wringing about similar story holes in Star Wars seems to get everyone up in arms. Yet, the MCU is hailed as a storytelling masterpiece even when it, too, contains large holes in logic. 

Again, why doesn’t Antman just climb up inside Thanos and expand? Universe saved!  :p
 
Moe_Syzlak said:
As I noted earlier, I just think it’s funny. The hand-wringing about similar story holes in Star Wars seems to get everyone up in arms. Yet, the MCU is hailed as a storytelling masterpiece even when it, too, contains large holes in logic. 

Again, why doesn’t Antman just climb up inside Thanos and expand? Universe saved!  :p
Click to expand...

Lol! Yes, you're completely right. I certainly don't think Star Wars or the MCU are storytelling masterpieces. Few films are.
 
Moe_Syzlak said:
Again, why doesn’t Antman just climb up inside Thanos and expand? Universe saved!  :p
Click to expand...

Hey, you know what? Ant-Man still hasn't met Thanos. That'll certainly be an interesting fight in Endgame. Or not. :p
 
...final trailer....

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCSNFZKbhZE[/video]

...aaaawe, Tony and Steve are friends again!

So are we laying odds which one of these two will not be leaving this movie alive?  :cry:
 
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