***Spoiler Thread*** Avengers: Infinity Wars

[Calvert28]

44 minutes ago, fretgod99 said:

That he doesn’t pick who dies doesn’t have anything to do with whether his decision is evil or not. He’s deciding to kill half the universe because he alone in his supposed infinite wisdom thinks it’s for the best. It’s a straight up villain trope. Utopia Justifies the Means

The vehicle he chooses doesn’t matter. He murders for the sake of collecting power so he can carry out his ultimate plan of murdering half of everybody everywhere. He’s not less evil because he doesn’t know who is going to die; he still causes their death intentionally because his own will demands it. Text. Book. Evil.

Wow you really don't understand his character at all. He would have killed half of the Asgardians whether they had the stone or not. So no it's not for the sake of collecting power. And again killing does not make you evil. Thanos is clearly the greatest threat to current exsistance in this universe and he is clearly deranged. But you have not once proved in any of your posts that he operates outside of the social order and kills because he takes joy in it.

[Jakuvious]

8 minutes ago, Calvert28 said:

Yeaaaaa ok, go rewatch the Throne scene with him and Gammora. He actually proved his method works. I mean I can't believe you guys are actually arguing that because someone is evil that they can't be right on something.

Scale and time are still things that matter. He said it worked on Gamora's homeworld. For starters, he could be full of it when he tells that story. He also references that one planet, he never says he validates it's worked on every planet he's been to. And even if it had, that doesn't mean it's going to work on a universal scale over a long period of time.

Seriously, you're taking a comic book villains word for it that it works. Think about that.

[Calvert28]

5 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

TL;WR: Random selection does not make him neutral because his judgment over half the universe has him killing without due process. He has not analyzed which planets have abundant resources to population ratios vs which do not. Thus passing judgment on the latter could be described as neutral while passing judgment on the former is evil. He has not “sacrificed” them for the greater good, but has killed them without reason. This is evil.

Due process? They are not on trial here. And how do you know he didn't already do that? Maybe it's a plothole or maybe they go more into that in the next movie. But keep in mind he had the mind, power, and space stone's. He could have figured that out real quick. Not to mention he is widely regarded the most powerful being in the universe before this movie came out. One could assume that most of the universe in this reality has already been explored. And Thanos having the largest army, and being the most powerful may have already decided which areas to snuff out. I mean this is his life's mission, he has been planning this for a long long time.

5 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

=================

Thanos as neutral law bringer to the universe would specifically analyze the resources of a planet and determine the resources that would establish it as having enough supply for its demand. If it does not have sufficient supply THEN he steps in. THIS is the side he chooses. He chooses to interfere with EVERY population everywhere and passes judgment on them.

Being neutral does not mean he needs to analyze anything. Only that he is indifferent to the entire thing. Infact him wiping half of everyone if he did do it like that means that he was neutral. Meaning that no research, no influences could sway him one way or another. Just complete indifference to whos gone.

 

5 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

It is not “neutral” to act without knowledge. Thanos assumes that by wiping out half the universe that supply will be in balance.

I think you are placing to much emphasis on neutral and im curious about what your idea on that is if you would explain it. Thanos is Lawful, he is operating under his own code, spare half the universe. Him being neutral does not mean he needs to do research on who to wipe out. Being neutral would be not caring about who stays or who goes.

5 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

However what if 3/4 of Earth is wiped out, leaving an over-abundance of untapped resources, whereas elsewhere only 1/4 of Planet X’s population is wiped out, leaving them still with a shortage of resources.

I think I see where you are coming from here. No Thanos wipes out half the population of every world. So 1/2 for everyone living on each planet.

5 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

Even if he wipes out exactly half of the population of every planet. What about those planets that had a great amount of resources for their population? He has killed them for no reason.

Yea it's messed up. But once again if he did it like that he remained neutral on who lived and who died.

5 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

What about a planet that was so overpopulated that even killing half of their population would still not result in an a fair distribution of resources? He would “unjustly” still be allowing too many of their population to survive.

What does this have to do with him being Lawful Neutral or Evil? Being negligent does not make someone evil. It's a simple concept for a "Master Plan" for him. He operated within the boundries of his rules without biased. His method obviously has flaws, as no theory or plan is ever perfect. But if your plan supposedly results in a success of saving a very high percentage of people. What does the small percent that didn't survive matter? You can't save everyone, if that were the case then he wouldn't have needed the gauntlet to begin with.

5 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

Thus the only way for him to truly remain neutral is to be a harbinger of judgement. He would have to travel from world to world and analyze their specific resources to population to past his neutral judgment over them. Random selection in this case does not accomplish moral neutrality because it proceeds without due process.

Wait what? Being neutral is not taking a side and passing judgement is actually taking one.

[diamondbull424]

@Calvert28

All of this is based off Dungeons and Dragons character alignments. Here is the official alignment descriptions. I will quote them and explain why Thanos is lawful evil.

Quote

Law implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include closed-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability. Those who consciously promote lawfulness say that only lawful behavior creates a society in which people can depend on each other and make the right decisions in full confidence that others will act as they should.

Chaos implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility. Those who promote chaotic behavior say that only unfettered personal freedom allows people to express themselves fully and lets society benefit from the potential that its individuals have within them.

Someone who is neutral with respect to law and chaos has a normal respect for authority and feels neither a compulsion to follow rules nor a compulsion to rebel. They are honest but can be tempted into lying or deceiving others if it suits him/her.

Thanos is obviously not fully lawful because he does not adhere to established traditions and instead is willing to create a new order. But he is close minded. He judges the entirety of the universe as being unfit to solve its own problems. He uses a code of honor when fighting (Hulk equals 1on1 fight, his respect of Stark, and honoring Strange’s request). I don’t believe there seems to be a lot of dispute on this one. I can further elaborate but I don’t believe I need to, clearly Thanos is lawful.

Quote

Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

Evil implies harming, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient or if it can be set up. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some malevolent deity or master.

People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.

Clearly Thanos does not have respect for life and assisting others so he’s obviously not good. Thanos also cannot be confused with neutral because like I stated earlier he kills Gamora, someone he loves, to achieve his corrupt goal. A neutral character might kill, but only those they have no close ties to. What’s more neutral characters are against taking innocents lives. Thanos is willing to wipe out half the universe in order to achieve his aims, be they innocent (not currently an overpopulated planet) or not. Also again, Gamora is innocent and defenseless when Thanos pushes her to her death. He was willing to disregard his personal relationship AND take an innocent life. This is NOT neutral.

Thanos’ goal involves killing half the universe, he is willing to oppress others to do this (“Adopts” children from ruined planets and has them battle each other for his praise), and will also harm victims in order to obtain the things he seeks (torturing his own daughter). Thanos DOES show compassion towards Gamora, but shows little compassion for anyone else, including his own daughter, whom he tortures time and again. He also has no qualms killing the one he loves, Gamora, as well as half the universe as it is convient for achieving his overall objective. It’s clear that this all adds up to Thanos being evil.

Thus Thanos is lawful evil. Quite clearly.

Edited May 12, 2018 by diamondbull424

[dtait93]

3 hours ago, Calvert28 said:

Existing at a certain point in time you will become a product of your environment. It's a given for anyone in life. At a certain point in our time, it was perfectly acceptable to own slaves and to treat them as you will. The vast majority of people in that time would not have given it a second thought. In that time, you would have been in your rights to kill any of your slaves who displeased. And you would have been right and just living in that time. Because that was the norm and information and conditions of the time made it difficult to live. At a certain point in Greek society it was acceptable for a man to sleep a child as well as certain points in Japanese and other cultures because it "strengthened" the relationship between master and apprentice, teacher and student, etc and so forth. For a long time these things were considered beneficial, even needed to help progress us. We come to view these things today as crimes because of the knowledge we have at our disposal about these things. Because conditions have improved so very much that these thing's should not ever be "needed" again. At least that is how modern society views it in most parts of our world. Our two view points are so radically different that anyone like that living in our time would be considered insane or evil. H/e likewise the same is true for someone like us living in their time.

Insane- in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill.

So if murder, slavery, and men sleeping with little children eventually become the norm of society again, are those morally good things to do to other people? In fact, everyone who fought against those things would actually have to be the immoral ones by this line of thinking. Martin Luther King would actually have been wrong for fighting for black rights since during that time treating blacks as sub-human was a just and right thing back then. The oppression of blacks as sub-human was the, "just and right way of living in that time," so you would have to also say it was an unjust and wrong way of living to war against that notion. Also, the 9/11 plane hijackers actually did a good thing that day since they were a product of their environment which commanded that they carry out their mission in murdering hundreds of thousands of people in the name of their god.

If that is your standard then there is no right and wrong because wrong becomes right and right becomes wrong and they can continually flip flop. The definition you gave for insanity would then conflict itself. There is no such thing as normalcy because normalcy changes. There is no mental illness because the mentally ill become the mentally well and the mentally well become the mentally ill. Without an absolute standard of morality you are reduced to absurdity.

3 hours ago, Calvert28 said:

As for being evil. In the case of being mad, being so different from society that he has formed his own social structure with his own followers who share his beliefs. His views being so different from ours that there is no way that his standards and morals stack up evenly with ours so by our standards he will always be considered evil. The only certain way I believe to see if he or anyone is truely evil is to judge them not by your standards. But how well they stack up with their own.

You brought up Hitler to question that idea. Well Hitler was completely insane. H/e there are many instances that showed Hitler was an opportunist to further not only his own agenda but his image. While this does make his motives evil. The man himself is a little more tricky. From the start he started off as a guy with "in his opinion" good intentions, that generally progressed with anger and lust for power that narcissism completely took over. But after that (and this is the tricky part) he started to unravel from not only his roots that made him who he was, but from his own standards and morals where he just lost almost total grip of what was happening around him. He became evil, that much is for certain. But whether he ended that way, or more so just a rabid dog who lost all senses is another debate entirely.

You run into a problem here though and the rest of your statement collapses when you call Hitler insane. Going by what you said earlier, you can't make the claim that he was insane. His world view actually became the opposite of the insanity definition you gave earlier as his perception, behavior, and social interactions were actually normal given the environment he created. He would have to be sane according to you. You have no basis for claiming what his standards/morals were if you stay consistent because according to you those change. Why couldn't his? How can you say he lost total grip? How do you know for him he wasn't gaining grip? Maybe different things became right/wrong to him? What we know for certain was that he slaughtered millions of innocent people because to him it was right, yet we know it was wrong.

I'll use a different example by going back to the 9/11 plane hijackers example I gave earlier and I'll cite what you said about how we know if somebody is evil or not. "The only certain way I believe to see if he or anyone is truely evil is to judge them not by your standards. But how well they stack up with their own." Well if we stack up their standards against themselves, being that they were radical Islamic terrorists, it was a good, moral, and righteous thing of them to kill almost 3,000 Americans that day in the name of their god and religion. Because they lived up to their standards, according to you, they were not evil, but were actually good people for doing what they did. They were just in their actions and you have no basis to complain about anything they did. Rather, you should respect and admire their "just" living for living up to their standard as terrorists, and if they wanted to do it again you have no basis to tell them no.

[fretgod99]

17 hours ago, Calvert28 said:

Wow you really don't understand his character at all. He would have killed half of the Asgardians whether they had the stone or not. So no it's not for the sake of collecting power. And again killing does not make you evil. Thanos is clearly the greatest threat to current exsistance in this universe and he is clearly deranged. But you have not once proved in any of your posts that he operates outside of the social order and kills because he takes joy in it.

Why does he have to take joy in it? He unnecessarily kills because he thinks it furthers his megalomaniacal purpose. You injected that whole requirement. He’s committing murder, not “killing”. Murder. Call it what it is.

He would have killed half the Asgardians. What about the dwarves? What about destroying Xandar? What about the long, long history of straight up torturing his daughters for the sole purpose of it being helpful to him in dominating the universe?

Yep. Super neutral. All those things smack of a balanced character who is adhering to a strict moral code and not some megalomaniacal tyrant enforcing his will upon the innocent by subjecting them to a game of cosmic Russian roulette because he thinks he’s the only one who can solve something he hasn’t even actually demonstrated to be a problem yet.

[fretgod99]

11 hours ago, Calvert28 said:

Doesn't know that? He used Gammora's homeworld as an example his insane method actually works. That's the most unnerving thing about him that you keep ignoring. Is that his way can actually work.

Jesus christ. He proved nothing. He “proved” it worked. Did he disprove that a less violent option wouldn’t? Did he actually solve anything or did he just delay the problem? Again, it’s not like these worlds are never going to repopulate. His solution isn’t a solution, not even logically.

Dude wrote the cosmic version of a Modest Proposal, except he’s serious, and you’re lapping it up.

[fretgod99]

10 hours ago, Calvert28 said:

Due process? They are not on trial here. And how do you know he didn't already do that? Maybe it's a plothole or maybe they go more into that in the next movie. But keep in mind he had the mind, power, and space stone's. He could have figured that out real quick. Not to mention he is widely regarded the most powerful being in the universe before this movie came out. One could assume that most of the universe in this reality has already been explored. And Thanos having the largest army, and being the most powerful may have already decided which areas to snuff out. I mean this is his life's mission, he has been planning this for a long long time.

So, part of what demonstrates Thanos’ Neutrality, according to you, is the complete randomness of who dies. He’s not deciding anything, just murdering half of existence.

And also, what demonstrates Thanos’ neutrality is the fact that he’s already explores the galaxy enough to know just exactly who deserves to die. So he’s not just murdering half of existence, he’s determined who should be dead.

Seems legit.

[fretgod99]

How would you think the Avengers would classify Thanos’ alignment? How do you think his children would classify his alignment? How do you think the Agardians, Dwarves, Xandarians, etc. would classify Thanos’ alignment?

Analyze him with his culture’s framework, sure. But he’s injecting his framework on literally the rest of the universe. You don’t think their opinion would matter in determining how he’d ultimately be viewed?

[Malfatron]

1 hour ago, fretgod99 said:

How would you think the Avengers would classify Thanos’ alignment? How do you think his children would classify his alignment? How do you think the Agardians, Dwarves, Xandarians, etc. would classify Thanos’ alignment?

how would Thanos classify the Avengers' alignment? The Avengers have a myopic plan to prevent Thanos from saving half the universe. So the Avengers seem like Chaotic Evil.

[diamondbull424]

3 hours ago, MathMan said:

how would Thanos classify the Avengers' alignment? The Avengers have a myopic plan to prevent Thanos from saving half the universe. So the Avengers seem like Chaotic Evil.

Read the above alignments. Even if you flipped the roles, there’s no way you could classify The Avengers as Chaotic Evil.

1. Because you literally can’t loop a group of characters together as having the same alignment unless they all LITERALLY possess the same alignment (they don’t). Without giving this too much thought:

Original Avengers (Movies)

• Captain America- Lawful
• Iron Man- Chaotic 
• Thor- Chaotic
• The Hulk- Chaotic
• Black Widow- Lawful
• Hawkeye- Lawful

New Avengers

• Loki- Chaotic
• Heimdall- Lawful
• Falcon- Lawful
• White Wolf- Neutral
• War Machine- Lawful
• Vision- Lawful
• Scarlett Witch- Neutral
• Doctor Strange- Neutral
• Ant Man- Chaotic
• Spider Man- Chaotic
• Black Panther- Lawful
• Okoye- Lawful
• Shuri- Neutral

Guardians

• Starlord- Chaotic
• Gamora- Neutral
• Groot- Neutral
• Drax- Chaotic
• Rocket Racoon- Chaotic
• Mantis- Neutral
• Nebula- Neutral

2. Even if Thanos viewed all of them as wrong, he could not argue that these characters all have been willing to make personal sacrifices for others (even people they don’t know), he can’t argue against the altruism for the vast majority of the characters on this list, and he can’t argue that they have shown a respect for life (even if he disagrees with how they respect life).

Whereas conversely even if we assume that Thanos believes he’s “respecting life” by murdering half the universe to give the other lives a better reality, even if we assume that he believes that he’s being altruistic by giving the universe that gift, and even if we assume that his personal sacrifice is Gamora... he still has no concern for the dignity of those beings. He also could not remove the label of evil from himself as well based off of the criteria as a whole.

Edit: Also even those on Titan viewed Thanos’ morality and respect for life as morally bankrupt and evil.

There is no one (maybe the Black Order, but they have no personality of their own thanks to poor character development), not even two of his chief followers (Gamora and Nebula) that view Thanos’ morality as “good” or even “neutral”. Even he himself couldn’t view his morality as nothing more than “neutral” and that’s only if he’s deluded himself into this belief.

Edited May 12, 2018 by diamondbull424

[Malfatron]

maybe im just lawful evil then

[fretgod99]

“Fun isn’t something one considers when balancing the universe. But this does put a smile on my face.”

Sure, it’s a line from a trailer that didn’t make the movie. But it gives you a pretty good indication of how the writers think Thanos views all of this, right? He’s taking great satisfaction in wrecking the Avengers, almost like he relishes the destruction and havoc he’s creating. Almost like the writers think he’s evil. Which they probably think because they wrote him to be evil.

Compelling sure. But evil regardless.

[Malfatron]

5 minutes ago, fretgod99 said:

“Fun isn’t something one considers when balancing the universe. But this does put a smile on my face.”

Sure, it’s a line from a trailer that didn’t make the movie. But it gives you a pretty good indication of how the writers think Thanos views all of this, right? He’s taking great satisfaction in wrecking the Avengers, almost like he relishes the destruction and havoc he’s creating. Almost like the writers think he’s evil. Which they probably think because they wrote him to be evil.

Compelling sure. But evil regardless.

well, thats like analyzing Marty mcflys character based on Eric Stoltzs performance.

 

[Deadpulse]

22 minutes ago, MathMan said:

well, thats like analyzing Marty mcflys character based on Eric Stoltzs performance.

 

it is?