Are you saying that Thanos's plan is evil or something else?
Evil. Misguided evil but evil nonetheless.
A touch of pathos doesn’t absolve him of his actions.
I try to avoid universal statements but all genocidists are evil. I feel pretty comfortable with that statement.
Thanos is a being with the powers of a God. You are comfortable with the statement that all genocidists are evil, so those who follow the Judaeo-Christian God are followers of an Evil God (I put the Flood as one example of genocide)? Universal statements are troublesome, but so is accepting genocide as not an evil act, always.
Regarding his plan of killing half of all species, to save all species, is evil; and doing nothing and having whole species die is not evil?
Leaves quite a lot of room for middle ground, if eliminating all living being’s accountability for their choices is your thing.
It seems to me that there would be a less violent way when you have complete power of destruction, creation, life, death, time, knowledge and reality at your disposal.
I agree there is a lot (!!!!) of middle ground and Thanos has set himself on a path and clearly sees deviating from that path as unacceptable. I wonder if at some point in the past, to ensure that he would not 'weaken' his resolve and not complete his 'goal' of 'saving' the universe, he has forced himself not to be moved from the path to not allow arguments to sway him. This blinkered approach did not allow him to use the power he gained to understand there may be a better way. Of course it could be that he saw all the possible paths and genocide was the best path, I do not have the capacity to even scope the size of the research required to determine the best path.
Going to that old philosophy thought experiment of the Trolley problem. There is a variant where to save 5 people from dying you have to push 1 other person in front of the trolley (killing that person). That would be evil?
The film’s morality code seemed very obvious to me: we don’t trade a life for a life.
Yes they do claim that, yet they could have ended the life of a robot hybrid and saved everyone of the lives Thanos ends up taking. They had an immensely powerful being out to get the stone in Vision's head, a being they should have a very strong idea they would not be able to stop. So are they complicit in what happens? Also their moral code does not go very far, given they kill huge numbers of sentient beings during this film and the previous films. Slaughter on a mass scale is acceptable if it is 'them' not 'us', based on their actions.
Outside of that, this isn’t a situation that Thanos suddenly found himself thrust into and had to make on the fly. This is a philosophy that he developed, he spent a lifetime pursuing.
Consciously, willfully participating in genocide from planet to planet.
I don’t find the comparison very strong.
Further if Thanos is evil, when he gets the ultimate power of life and death would he not make the dying as horrible as possible, rather than quick and clean?
Gassing people seemed quick, humane and expedient.
A quick bullet to the head likewise.
Killing people in a neat and tidy and non horrifying manner doesn’t make it any less evil.
I would change that to "Killing people in a neat and tidy and non horrifying manner doesn't stop it from being evil". The reason is that society general grades evil, so 'less evil' is not accurate, because if Thanos killed them after inflicting great pain that would be more evil.
Just quieter.
And let’s not forget he spent years going around the universe doing it the violent, bloody old fashioned way.
My vote goes with evil.
How is this even a conversation ?
Because it is interesting
And because I cannot help myself I ask anyone the following question:
You have the ability to wipe out 50% of Earth's human population it is the only use of this power that is possible, you cannot direct it to kill particular people, you can not pass the power to another person, nor have it taken from you. You can destroy your ability to have the power (and not die yourself). This use is likely to save many species from extinction, of course it may only save one or two species from extinction. Which do you choose?:
A. Destroy the power immediately
B. Deliberate on what you will do
C. Use it immediately
It is a horrible choice as either you kill 3.65Billion people, or by not doing it you are directly responsible for not saving many species from extinction.
My answer/choice is
B