Thanos generally seems to have been received as the best villain in the MCU to date. To some extent, that’s an indication of the strength of Marvel’s previous “villain problems.” But it’s also an indication of just how good a job the Russo brothers have done when it comes to adapting the Mad Titan. They’ve created what truly feels like the ultimate big-screen adaptation of Thanos, one who even his co-creator Jim Starlin is delighted by. Let’s take a look at the different approaches.

  • This Page: Thanos’ Backstory And Motivation Has Changed

Thanos’ Backstory Has Completely Changed

In the comics, Thanos is the son of the Eternal A’lars, sometimes known as Mentor. The Eternals are an evolutionary offshoot of humanity, but some are born with the Deviant gene, transforming them into powerful, inhuman hulks. Thanos is one such Deviant, and his mother Sui-San sought to kill him as soon as he was born. She claimed she saw death in his eyes.

Thanos became one of the most intelligent beings on Titan, flourishing beyond all his peers. By the age of 12, Thanos had explored every inch of the frozen moon. By 13, he had successfully made his way to the burning core of Saturn. By 15, he had mapped the stars of a thousand galaxies. But even as he grew increasingly accomplished, he was unaware that he was being manipulated by a cosmic force.

Lady Death, the anthropomorphic representation of the cosmic force of death, began her seduction of Thanos. The Mad Titan soon began experimenting on his classmates, killing 18 people, including finally his own mother. He then left his homeworld, seeking peace in the galaxy, causing turmoil and chaos wherever he went. Thanos tried to find love in countless others, siring children across the universe, but eventually realized that only Death could satisfy him. When Thanos finally returned home, it was to ravage his own world.

The Thanos of the MCU is still the son of A’lars, still an Eternal born with the Deviant gene. But his entire backstory - and, by extension, the history of his homeworld - is completely different. In the MCU, Thanos was a philosopher who believed his people were in terrible danger. He believed that Titan’s explosive growth in population risked exceeding the moon’s natural resources. Titan, Thanos realized, was facing an extinction-level event. His proposed solution was a terrible one; that half the planet’s population should be wiped out. Naturally, Thanos’s proposal was rejected by Titan’s rulers. Horrifically, Thanos’s prediction came true; disaster struck Titan, and Thanos was the only survivor.

Thanos’ Infinity Motives Have Changed

This changed backstory has radically transformed Thanos’s motives as a result. In the comics, he is driven by an obsessive love of Lady Death. Thanos travels the galaxy indiscriminately, slaughtering everyone he encounters. The Mad Titan has committed countless acts of genocide, wiping entire races out of existence. This ultimately led him to take possession of the unlimited power of the Infinity Gauntlet. Thanos believed he could use the Gauntlet to woo Death, that she would be attracted to his power. Even then, Lady Death resisted his charms. So Thanos chose to do the unthinkable. With a snap of his fingers, he extinguished half the life in the universe, all as a twisted offering of love to Lady Death.

Contrast this with Avengers: Infinity War. In the MCU, Thanos believes the entire universe faces the same threat as his homeworld. He believes explosive population growth across the universe will lead to the end of all life. In Thanos’s view, he is the only one with the will to avert this. He’s spent decades - perhaps longer, given he’s an Eternal - traveling the cosmos, gathering armies, and ravaging every world he encounters. When the armies of Thanos visit a planet, half the lives on the world are extinguished. Learning of the power of the Infinity Stones, Thanos seeks to combine their power into the Infinity Gauntlet. His insane goal is to wipe out half the life in the universe - in order, he believes, to save the rest of the cosmos’s life. The logic is insane, and rooted in his experience on his homeworld.

Thanos’ Character Has Been Transformed Too

This revised backstory has allowed the Russo brothers to present Thanos in a completely different way. The Thanos of the comics loves only one thing; Lady Death. He has sacrificed anything and everything in order to earn Lady Death’s affection. The Thanos of the comics strikes indiscriminately, slaughtering entire races, committing untold acts of genocide. He has destroyed his own homeworld, he murdered his own mother, and he has traveled the cosmos seeking out his children - and killing them. This Thanos is utterly irredeemably evil.

But the Thanos of the MCU is very, very different. He’s every bit as insane as the Thanos of the comics, but genuinely believes he is serving the best interests of the universe. As a result, this version of Thanos is a surprisingly complex character. Whatever Gamora may believe, he’s actually capable of love; in fact, she is the one person he truly loves. Clearly wounded by his adopted daughter’s betrayal, he uses the Reality Stone to find out whether she truly cares for him or not. He then takes her with him to Vormir in order to acquire the Soul Stone, where he learns that he must sacrifice someone he loves in order to take possession of it.

Thanos must sacrifice everything in order to achieve his goal. Avengers: Infinity War screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus promised that there would be a price to be paid every time the Mad Titan acquired an Infinity Stone. It is, in truth, Thanos himself who pays the price; over the course of the film, he loses his armies, his allies, his children, and even sacrifices his most beloved daughter. On Earth, he comes terrifyingly close to death, as Thor’s enchanted hammer Stormbreaker slams into his chest. But somehow he perseveres and achieves his goal. In a haunting vision sequence, Thanos stands in the Soul World facing Gamora’s soul, and admits that this has cost him “Everything.”

Thanos Is Actually Strangely Empathetic

All this, fundamentally, means that the Thanos of Avengers: Infinity War is actually strangely sympathetic. In print, what makes him stand out alongside Marvel’s multitude of grounded and empathetic heroes and villains is that he’s presented as an insane and inscrutable god. His obsessive love of Lady Death is almost impossible to truly understand, a twisted and pathetic love that’s amplified to a cosmic level. And there is nothing Thanos will not do; he has no morals, no limits, no restraints. If he believes an action will earn Lady Death’s approval, he does it, no matter how horrific. Genocide is a good day’s work to the Mad Titan. It’s true that the best comic book writers have actually crafted moments when it’s possible to feel for Thanos, but even then those moments are tainted by a sense of revulsion, an awareness of his unlimited potential for evil.

The movies rewrite almost everything. This Thanos is a philosopher, a thinker who has endured tragedy, and become twisted by it. He fancies himself, not a killer, but as a savior. And Infinity War, to Thanos, is the story of how he saves the universe. That’s amplified by the plot structure of the movie, which gives Thanos an inverted “Hero’s Journey,” right down to the classic “Ordeal” in which he must make a terrible sacrifice in order to achieve his goal. Where the comics treat Thanos as evil beyond comprehension, the MCU gives us a Thanos who can actually be understood, albeit in a twisted way.

Fundamentally, the Russo brothers have chosen to reinvent Thanos. They’ve done this because they want - nay, need - to present the Mad Titan as a villain who believes himself to be the hero of his own story. Avengers: Infinity War isn’t any standard MCU entry, it’s the start of the epic culmination, and the stakes need to be real. We already care for the heroes, the focus must be on what threatens them.

While Thanos may look the same on the outside, every aspect of his identity - his backstory, his motives, even his character - has been dramatically adapted for the MCU. The Thanos of the comics serves Death; the Thanos of the MCU genuinely believes he serves life. It just so happens they both want to erase half the life in the universe to do that.

MORE: Avengers: Infinity War Skips A Lot of Important Stuff

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