Villain Therapy: THANOS

How do villains justify their motives? How does parenting affect your mission in life?

Licensed therapist Jonathan Decker and filmmaker Alan Seawright are tackling the villainy of Thanos from the MCU. While many people therapize Thanos himself, as a family therapist Jonathan focuses on the relationship Thanos has with his daughters, especially Gamora. Jonathan explains the purpose parenting serves in Thanos’s mission, and they both discuss his parenting philosophy. Alan describes the process of creating a completely CG character and why Thanos works so well.

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Cinema Therapy is:
Written by: Megan Seawright, Jonathan Decker, and Alan Seawright
Produced by: Jonathan Decker, Megan Seawright, Alan Seawright, and Corinne Demyanovich
Edited by: Nathan Judd
Director of Photography: Bradley Olsen
English Transcription by: Anna Preis
VFX by: Marie-Soleil Chabot

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[jju]

Thanos: I am inevitable

Jono: And I'm Jonathan Decker licensed Therapist

[AbbyRobinett-whjw]

"But it made you stronger."
"I was a child, I didn't need to be stronger."
Don't remember where I heard this but I think it fits the topic.

[hannahschrenk]

Let's be clear, he didn't adopt her. He kidnapped her after murdering her family, then abused and tortured her. He didn't alter Gamora as much as Nebula, but they do say she has some enhancements, which means he absolutely experimented on her against her will (doesn't matter if she agreed in the moment, since she was never in a position to safely disagree, making consent moot).

[IromoBeric]

There are parallel scenes that people might not have noticed. Gamora was dragged by the soldier when she was young, hitting him until he let go. Thanos then stepped in and "saved" (kidnapped) her. Years later, as an adult, Thanos drags her towards the cliff, Gamora hitting him just like she did to the guard, but instead of "saving" her as he once did, he lets go and throws her off the cliff. I believe the scenes parallel each other and emphasize the reality of their relationship.

[cheezemonkeyeater]

Something I'm surprised a lot of people miss is that Thanos isn't actually motivated by his desire to save the universe, that's just the justification for his actions. What actually motivates Thanos is a need to prove himself correct. The world he lived on died because, in his mind, they didn't do what he told them to do, so now he has to do what he wanted to do to the entire universe to prove himself right. He's driven by ego, but what's so frightening is that he doesn't *realize* that he is.
The proof is in the next movie, where Thanos learns that after his success, people weren't grateful, so he decides that he's going to destroy everything and remake the universe in a way that nobody knows what they lose so that they will praise him.

[ASMotorsport]

My favourite description of him in Infinity War remains “single dad tries to cure world hunger with his rock collection”

[bextaylor]

Man, I never realized the narcissistic family dynamic before now: Gamora is the golden child and Nebula is the scapegoat but both wanted the love and affection of their narcissistic dad, Thanos-BUT how they heal their sisterly relationship just warms the heart.

[FluffyPrincess]

so at the soul stone scene, I go with the Cinema Wins interpretation of it's not that the Stone accepts Thanos's messed up relationship as love, but rather the Stone acknowledges that HE *believes* what he's doing is love

[kycheros]

My aunt had my niece only so she would take care of her when she became old. Those were her actual words back when she made the choice over 30 years ago. She made her study something health related and basically made her nurse her after she became sick until she passed in her late 60's. My niece, who is in her late 30's, has never had a relationship or a lasting friendship, she doesn't know how to take care of herself without her mother telling her what to do. She was an asset to my aunt, nothing more.

[robertt]

One thing I always thought was interesting about Thanos's sacrifice of Gamora, is that the thing he is sacrificing that he loves, is his plan of an ideal future. In his perfect plan, at the end of it all, he would be no more, and Gamora would carry on the torch. By sacrificing her, he was sacrificing his perfect plan. His affection for her didn't have to be love for her sacrifice to represent something he loved, the outcome.

[joshawott.]

3:30 I’d push back a bit on Thanos not being sadistic. What he did to Nebula, pitting her against her adoptive sister and dismembering and replacing her body parts when she failed to measure up, scarred her physically and mentally. There was also the time where he killed all but one of the dwarves in Nidavellir and mutilated Eitri, the only remaining dwarf. To quote Red from OSP, “what part of that was perfectly balanced?” While both of these events take place off screen, they paint a picture of who Thanos is in the dark and it’s a chilling portrait

[air-headedaviator]

They’ll never convince me that Thanos was motivated by genuine care. He’s insane. Magical stones that can do anything and his instant thought is kill off half of all life, and not double the resources? Or just cap the growth rate for a while.

I still sumize that Thanos doesn’t believe he’s totally right, but that he has to be right. That he’s motivated on justifying himself

[yourfavoriteSOB]

Respectfully, I see Thanos averting her gaze differently.

It wasn't about protecting her from the view of the carnage, it was to keep the slaughter of everyone she has ever known via execution from turning her against him permanently.

[trinathebookworm]

To his parenting, note that both his kids bailed when given the chance.

[Inzaghi]

The fact that thanos thought of killing half of the population of universe after getting infinity stones rather than using the power of the stones to double resources of the universe is something...
Edit: a lot of people are saying that doubling the resources wasn't a permanent solution which is true but so was killing half of the population cause eventually it would also increase and lead to imbalance. He wasn't solving the problem just hitting the rewind button and letting it play out but the fact that he chose this path and figured people would live a better life at the expense of lives of their loved ones just shows how utterly diabolical his mind was.

[stephenantonsson_II]

Something interesting to note about Thanos’ actions on Gamoras home planet:

In Guardians 1 during the mugshot scene, there is a description about Gamora stating she is the last of her species, which indicates that Thanos never gave the planet the means to get back on its feet and they promptly went extinct.

[olfactoryninja]

My pet theory as to why he was able to get the Soul Stone: the stone asks you to sacrifice what you love the most. He thinks he loves Gamora and that he's sacrificing her. But in reality, his mission was always doomed to fail because what he actually loved most was the mission itself. In that moment, he received the soul stone, and ensured it could never be used to fully accomplish his goal.

[ergomagesteph]

There is actually an episode in the What If...? series that shows Thanos abandoning his plan in favor of a healthier relationship with his daughters AND making a difference in the universe without genocide. So he could do both, but he chooses not to, and that says a lot as well.

[AFinch]

Dread it, run from it. Villain Therapy arrives all the same.

Now… it is here!

[silalus]

The thing that bothers me the most about discussions of Thanos's motivations is that we tend to ignore how population growth works.

The human population of Earth today takes only about 50 years to double, and has peaked even faster. (Just after WW2, it doubled from just 1950 to 1987.) The exact speed of growth of the average MCU civilization isn't something we can know, but Thanos's mass-murder would have ultimately been futile—and futile shockingly fast in the case of the one world we know a lot about, Earth. That really is inevitable, unlike Thanos's self-aggrandizing nonsense. Populations grow to consume available resources. There were probably all sorts of ways the Infinity Stones could promote a new equilibrium, but population reduction was never one of them, and never could be.

So his so-called "great mission" was always transparently pointless, except to make him feel powerful and righteous. And he had to always know that on some level, unless he was either utterly self-deluded or incapable of basic math and critical thinking.