The broken faith of Thanos
Ever since Avengers Infinity War came out, I find myself contemplating Thanos. Thanos is the ultimate villain at the conclusion of the 20 movie epic story of the Avengers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I find Thanos compelling because while he is ultimately evil and does many evil deeds throughout his story arc, he is not just evil for evil sake. The ultimate goal of his homicidal deeds is population control. He believes that if life continues to grow it will eventually outstrip the resources of the universe. He believes it is his purpose to correct the outgrowth of life. He does this by attempting to kill off half of all life in the universe.
While Marvel is usually grounded in secular liberalism, Avengers Infinity War is pretty direct in how it wrestles with faith. The most missed characteristic of Thanos is that he is a man who has lost faith. He says as much in his first words to Thor at the beginning of Infinity War. ““I know what it's like to lose. To feel so desperately that you're right, yet to fail nonetheless… Destiny arrives all the same. And now, it's here. Or should I say...I AM.”
With this introduction, Thanos is doing two things. First, he is giving us a peak into his psyche. He views himself as someone who was right and yet failed in his mission. We later learn that when his home planet was on the brink of destruction from resource depletion, he proposed killing off half the inhabitants of the planet in order to preserve civilization. For his genocidal thoughts he got banished from his planet. From exile, he watched the destruction of his planet which made him the only survivor of his entire species.
The second thing he is doing is quite literally defining himself as god. He believes he is the physical incarnation of destiny and used a moniker designated for God by saying I AM. Other evidence points toward this by the fact that he has acolytes who follow his edicts with religious fervor. In a way, Thanos is the leader of his own cult. Before being killed by Thanos, Thor’s brother Loki clarifies this by telling Thanos “You will never be a god.”
So the question is what transformation did Thanos go through to get from a semi principled philosopher and/or scientist to a completely insane person playing god by going through the universe attempting to kill half the population?
Looking at Thanos’ story arc we can see he suffered from survivor’s guilt or post traumatic stress disorder. Thanos felt guilty that he survived the destruction of his planet and angry at God for allowing this fate to befall him. In the movie he relates his story to Dr. Strange and the Sorcerer retorts “Congratulations you’re a prophet.” Thanos responds “I’m a survivor.” This illustrates the relationship between how others view him, and how he views himself. His adherents may view him as a prophet presaging the destruction of the universe, but he views himself as the survivor of a horrible tragedy that didn’t have to happen if the people on his planet had the will to carry out his grotesque plan.
As a result of this we can see that Thanos’ deep anger and guilt led him to conclude that either there is really no God, God lacks the will to make the hard choices, or that God is indifferent to the fate of the universe. The tragedy that befell him caused him to disbelieve in a God that can continually provide for all, instead Thanos believes he alone has the strength of character to decide the fate of the universe. This is also played out when his daughter Gamora challenged him. Thanos insisted “This universe is finite, its resources finite…I’m the only one that knows that. At least I’m the only one with the will to act on it.” Going back to his encounter with Dr. Strange he replies “The hardest choices require the strongest wills.”
In this way Infinity War encourages us to grapple with one of the foundational questions of faith. If God is good, why do bad things happen? This question can be answered one of two ways. Either with hope and love which lead back to God, or with anger and bitterness which lead to destruction. In Thanos’ case he could have chosen to see that all was not lost. He was still alive and he could have used his obvious ingenuity to search for survivors who may have been off planet. He could have rebuilt Titan. This path would have put him at the service of his people instead of himself. Thanos chose the other path which led him to only focus on what he had lost. In doing so, he mistook his grief and trauma for purpose. Led by his hate he actually became the very thing he thought he was fighting against. He became a false god too consumed with his own despair to register the value of life.