Oh my god, that movie was so much fun; it's one of my favorites within the MCU, including Guardians 2. Could watch that scene over and over again. So I totally get your critique regarding IW, the heroes were just... kinda lame. All with "we are not going to exchange lives", but then the whole Wakandan army can fight and die so they can try and rescue Vision. Where was the logic in any of their actions?
From that standpoint, Thanos is definitely more intriguing. But as I said, people who actually LIKE like him outside of that? Makes me shiver;;
Ah, but SleepingPoppy puts it into words just like I felt it while watching:
The way he was framed was definitely meant to sway the audience to some degree. And that is something I so can not get behind. Thanos is, as a character, a super interesting villain. Or he could've been, had the Russos not tried to make him "relatable". I much prefer showing how broken and out of touch a villain truly is, like they did with Kylo Ren, for example. I can sympathise with his struggle, with his emotions, without the movie trying to sell me the idea that he has a point.
Oh yes, those are tactics most often applied to the victim themselves, no doubt about that! But outside of that, abusers use the tactic of seeming more reasonable, more "trustworthy" than their victims so friends and acquaintances would rather believe their lies than the emotional outbursts of the victim when it's just gotten too much to hold it in anymore. Abusers gaslight their victims with this approach: "see how sad you make me now, YOU are the aggressor", while calmly and "rationally" explaining to friends how the victim has wronged them.
I've been through my share of abuse by a toxic group dynamic, and I believed for MONTHS that I was the actual problem, the "witch", the aggressor, although my aggression only ever stemmed from outbursts when their "calmness" was taken as a sign of honesty while I was ostracized and isolated for merely asking that I don't do our shared work all alone after my best friend had JUST died... Yeah, so: calmness, keeping up appearances, trying to seem "reasonable" and "I just want to do the right thing"? All HUGE red flags to me. I don't trust people who pride themselves in how above everything they are. It's almost always a lie.
So of course, I saw that 100% in Thanos. And it sickens me to this day, especially his last scene in IW. Yes, let's show the mass murderer and abuser chilling on his porch after a long day of hard work! I was like... wtf?
And that humanity is something I just don't want to see anymore in abusive assholes like Thanos.
We've had enough of those "misunderstood" men in media. Further giving us a narrative that makes them human in a sense that we start to relate to them is deeply hurtful and harmful. They ARE human, of course. But their behavior needs to be called out with all determination by the narrative (and the characters within it, of course). Failing to do so doesn't make for good storytelling in my eyes, but is just a kinda cheap tool to make an audience understand what this villain does.
There are other ways to do that.
Would've been the perfect role for little Peter if you ask me. xD