The Villain I Never Wanted to Die
He was born from an incestuous relationship and ended up being a king.
The most hated King I could think of.
I used to hate him. He would shout, express blown-out insecurity, and exercise his power in childish ways.
Not in real history, but from one of the most-grossing films to date.
Looking back, I began to think he might have been one of the best actors. Imagine being given a role and executing it to a T. You must be gifted. Or you must have worked harder than the rest.
Or both.
King Joffrey Baratheon is someone we all loved to hate. I don’t know about you, but I loved that he was exed out of the series early enough for us to enjoy the more mysterious characters. The ones we could not easily learn. The ones who could not be easily defeated.
In history — and since history is mostly written by the victors — most kings were up to the kingly tasks we uphold. The icons stand out as the models of leadership putting a good number of the loser kings to shame.
King David is arguably the greatest King of Israel. He, however, sent Uriah to die so he could have a taste of what he saw on the balcony when Bathsheba was having a bath.
King Solomon wrote a most interesting chapter in the Bible, which is hardly ever read in places of worship. I wonder why, yet the interpretation is thought to be that of God loving the church. He also had many wives and concubines, with all his wisdom. Could it be that he could juggle all the duties because of it? Or should men get more wives and find out if they too will become wise?
Lord Eddard Stark of the North was a better leader by everyone’s standards than King Joffrey. You could say the same thing about Tywin Lannister, even though he ruled with an iron fist. It’s difficult to say if he was a villain or a hero.
Talking about fists, there is one whose fist will go down in history. He collected all the infinity stones and harnessed a gauntlet to hold all of them in place, giving him a fist that ripples through space and time. No Dragon of Westeros could stand in his way.
By all standards, he was a villain. In my view, he was a villain I adored.
Thanos made so much sense
When asked why he was on such a mission, he insisted on balance.
At the time, I was building my theory of evolution and understood the role of nature in creating a balance. The open county hunting seasons would create a needed balance to prevent the tipping over of resources by an uncontrolled reproduction of the wild herders such as deer and antelopes.
I first encountered the population-controlling obsession by leaders when I read Dan Brown’s books in high school. I hated those leaders. I then read Garrett Hardin’s opus, Living Within Limits, and understood nature’s balancing acts at a grand scale. I loved that book.
Then I heard of Thanos’ ideology. It made a tone of sense.
The most fundamental laws of physics hinge on conservation. The law of conservation of momentum. The law of conservation of energy. The law of charge conservation.
Charlie Munger liked to stress the importance of understanding worldly wisdom. One needs to align oneself with worldly wisdom to reap its benefits. Thanos took it a notch higher — he understood universal wisdom. And he aligned his mission with these universal precepts.
Nothing, he believed, stood in his way. For a long time, nothing did. And when it did, he would crush it.
Forever etched in my mind is the moment when Hulk thought he could beat him. Together with his guards, one who looked like Squidward and another who was an embodied Juggernaut, Hulk attacked our main man.
Throughout the Marvel world, we have known Hulk to be this indestructible hero who could only be defeated by love. And these three Titans were making him angry. You don’t want to face an angry Hulk.
But he stood in the way of Thanos.
A big mistake.
He learned that soon enough.
Thanos would send rib-cracking jabs through his gamma-ray-enhanced green body, fixing his face to the wall and the pavement with precise finality, knocking out Hulk’s anger and affixing fear into the mean green machine.
In a few minutes, he was no longer mean. Neither was he green. And after Thanos was done with him, he was not even a machine.
Later in various scenes in the movie, when the scientist tries to summon this monster to fight Thanos’ army, it refuses to show itself. Thanos had instilled the fear of the gods into Hulk. In the wisdom of Munger, that is the kind of force you have when you align yourself with universal wisdom.
You scare the pants off of anyone.
Talking about pants, I have never understood why Hulk always had a pair of pants that remained when he broke into his green self. The other pieces of cloth would shatter, but he always remained with his shorts. I will always marvel at the Marvel Universe.
He also defied the laws that bind family
On one hand, he tries to summon the forces of the universe to bring about balance.
On the other, he defies the same universal force. It is universal for us since as it stands, we only know of one planet that habours life — ours.
The Marvel Universe knows of several.
On our planet, family comes first. Well, most of the time. If you come at my brothers, sisters, or mother, I will break your bones, slit your tendons and ensure you’re on your way to the hospital I work in, insist that I know you and take your history, then slowly continue inflicting pain.
When I saw what Thanos was willing to do even if it meant sacrificing his family, I saw the burden he had to live with. It was crushing.
Villains too go through heartbreak. Often, it is heartbreaks that turn people into villains. This one was on a mission to bring balance but encountered heartbreak midway. He even shed a tear.
Such moments make you forget how long the movie was. Just so you know, it was three hours. Heartbreak turned Wanda into a villain, temporarily, when Vision was killed by Thanos.
Organisms tend to resist when subjected to imminent credible threats. Wanda tried to resist, and with the help of the Avengers, they eventually, won, though she was still torn apart.
At the start of the final series, you see Thanos the farmer, living a simple life. Burned with his past decisions. Taking consolation from the mission he believed he was destined to fulfill.
It takes a puffed-up version of oneself to believe you could execute universal change. It takes a Titan to act on such a belief. It came with downsides.
When we saw members of Wakanda Kingdom die because of a single snap of a finger, we no longer haboured hatred. It transformed into sadness. Hopelessness. Hearts sank.
Except one.
His was a heart of iron.
It only made sense that a villain of such greatness gets defeated by a hero of a matching stripe. These two would always rank highest on my list of heroes. I say heroes because as much as Thanos was a villain, he stood a moat ahead of the rest.
What I’m trying to say is…
I don’t think I will ever live to see a villain like Thanos.
Ever since the Avengers series ended, I have yet to see one that tops the ones where Thanos is featured. He raised the standards of the heroes.
Villains are the reasons we have heroes. Without villains, heroes are jobless. Absent fame and responsibility.
In Thanos, I did not see a hero. I saw an embodiment of conflict and an urge to choose a side. It reminds us of our choices. From villains, we too see ourselves. These too are features of a hero. And from a hero, we see the possibility of rising despite such cognitive dissonance.
Thanos was a villainous hero and a heroic villain.
I don’t need infinity stones to know that in my mind, he will never die.
snaps fingers*
