This video was sponsored by WorldAnvil. This video contains spoilers for:
Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Black Panther,
The Dark Knight, and Thor: Love and Thunder. Also, just a head’s up, this
one’s gonna get kinda real, gonna talk about some sensitive topics, timecodes
are in the description with more details. Now allow me to lull you into a false sense of
security with something a little more fun. SPIDER-MAN: You can rewrite DNA
on the fly, and you’re using it to turn people into dinosaurs? But with
tech like that, you could cure cancer! SAURON: But I don’t want to cure cancer.
I want to turn people into dinosaurs. How can you make your villains unreasonable? Why
would you want to? And why are some of the best villains less reasonable than you might think?
Today’s advice is intended to be useful whether you’re running D&D games or writing stories
or screenplays, but over the past few years, I have seen this question pop up a few times
in the TTRPG community. It comes up in live stream chats and in video comments, both on my
channel and on other D&D YouTubers’ channels. The question is usually phrased
something like this: “I have a problem: my players keep talking my villains out of
their evil plans. They always make really great arguments, and I cannot figure out how
these villains could justify their positions, so they basically always wind up
agreeing with the heroes. And that means we’re not getting any of these awesome
satisfying boss fights we are all hoping for, because my players are better at debating than I
am. How can I make my villains less reasonable?” And despite how often I see this question
come around, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone satisfyingly answer it. But I think I
understand where this issue actually comes from, and I think I can give you some excellent
examples to help you solve it in your games. And so that’s what we’re talking about today. How
can we make our villains unable to be convinced to give up their cause? Basically, how can
we make our villains more like this guy? THANOS: If life is left unchecked, life
will cease to exist. It needs correction. GAMORA: You don’t know that! THANOS: I’m the only one who knows that. This video topic was voted on by my Patrons. I’m
getting ready to run another poll in the next couple of weeks to determine the topics for some
upcoming bonus videos I’m adding to my schedule, so if you want the chance to vote when those
polls come around, check out the Patreon and support me at $15 a month. But also, I have
other great bonuses available at lower levels, and a lot of those same perks are available
for YouTube Members as well. So if you’d like to be involved in helping choose
future videos for this channel, and if you would like to get some other
rewards, consider checking out my Patreon. Interestingly, this video appeared on a poll a
while ago, so I’ve known we were gonna get to this topic at the end of this month - and then,
just a few weeks ago, completely by happenstance, Ginny Di put out a video on kind of a related
subject. One of her viewers had a similar question: “My players *always* try to talk
down their enemies, so how can I present at least some villains that my players won’t
try to negotiate with?” So I retroactively think of that video as sort of an accidental
part 1 to this video. That video was focused on presenting more villains who are full-on
evil, or who are literally unable to change, like constructs. It’s a great video, go check it
out. In *this* video that we’re making right now, we’re going to put the emphasis
in a slightly different place. What if you present a villain’s plan, and
no matter how evil you’ve made them, your players *do* still try to point out that their
plan doesn’t make any sense? How do you stick to your guns rather than have your villain fold
under the pressure of a well-reasoned argument? Because ultimately I think that’s the root of
the question. When we come up with a villain and their evil plot, we’re just one person. You might
not be able to anticipate every hole your players will be able to poke in your villain’s plan. For
example, as we will do many times in this video, let’s look at Thanos as our example. He
wants to eliminate half of all life in the universe to reduce overpopulation.
As we’ll discuss later in this video, there are plenty of reasons why this plan
is dumb as hell. And if your players are persuasive enough, they might be able to come
up with an argument that could dismantle his plan from every possible angle. And when that
moment comes where the players confront the villain about their flawed logic, you have
a choice. You *can* have the villain accept that their plan is flawed or doomed, and
allow them to see the error of their ways. THANOS: I’m a big enough man to admit
when I’m wrong. T’Challa here showed me there was more than one way to
reallocate the universe’s resources. T’CHALLA: Sometimes the best weapon in
your arsenal is just a good argument. THANOS: Aye-aye, commander. We’ll talk more about that scene in a bit,
because it kind of doesn’t make sense with the Thanos of the films, but that’s also okay
sometimes, and we will discuss this later. But depending on the tone of your story, it
*could* be satisfying for your players to dismantle your villains’ arguments and reform
them. I haven’t played the Fallout games yet, but my understanding is that a lot of the
villains in those games basically can be convinced that their plan is flawed,
and depending on the argument you make, you could persuade them to fully abandon
their plan, and maybe even their entire cause. However, that might not be a satisfying resolution
to that story, it depends on what story you’re telling. Black Panther wouldn’t be improved
by Killmonger realizing that, you know what, he did kind of go overboard after all.
The Dark Knight doesn’t make any sense if the Joker’s plan to blow up the two
boats fails, and so he shrugs and says, “Well, yeah, dang, I guess I was wrong about
human nature.” With Thanos, you can’t get away with this as the ending for Infinity War
if he’s already been to Vormir with Gamora. So if you believe the best, most cathartic,
most thematic, most satisfying ending for you and your group is for the villain to
never be able to admit that they’re wrong, then you need to figure out how your villain can
shrug off any arguments the heroes might make, even if you didn’t think of them
in advance - even and especially when *you* think your heroes are
making an excellent argument. Now, before we talk about the big guy, we’re
gonna look at some non-Thanos examples, and see how each of them can shed some light on
some different methods of making your villains unable to be talked down and convinced to change
their ways. However; because I’m me and I can’t help myself, most of these examples *will*
still be from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And the first technique we’re gonna talk about
today is honestly the easiest - just have your villain dismiss the rational option. If your
players say, “Hey, why don’t you just stop doing evil stuff and do good stuff instead,” have
the villain give an answer. But here’s the secret: it doesn’t matter what the answer is. It
doesn’t matter if the answer makes sense. If you can answer quickly, you can make it
seem like your villain has thought about this, and like they’ve already accepted whatever
logic would justify this evil behavior in the face of your players’ counter-argument,
no matter how flimsy that logic might be. To see this in action, I can actually give
you a non-MCU, real-world D&D example from a pretty recent game of mine. Slight spoilers
for Curse of Strahd, for the town of Vallaki, but one of my groups encountered Victor, a
teenage mage trying to create a teleportation circle in his parents’ attic. He had a habit
of mind-controlling one of the house’s servants to stand in the teleportation circle as a test
subject. But rather than getting teleported away, because the teleportation circle is flawed, the
servants keep getting disintegrated. And so Victor keeps trying, each time recruiting a new servant
against their will. And when he told one of the player characters about this - excitedly sharing
how close he was to a magical breakthrough - the player asked, “Hey, if you’re gonna test
this on living things and they might burn to death… why don’t you use animals instead of human
beings?” Now, I hadn’t anticipated that question, but it is a reasonable one - like, the ethics of
animal testing is a whole can of worms that’s not totally irrelevant to the discussion, but at the
very least, I’d imagine most of us could agree it’s even *less* ethical to mind-control a peasant
who works for your dad and use them as the subject of an experiment that you know might be deadly and
they don’t. So I had a few different ways I could respond. One, I could have Victor admit he hadn’t
thought of that - or just have him blankly stare at the teleportation circle as if contemplating
the half dozen lives it had claimed. Or perhaps he could insist there’s a scientific reason
it needs to be tested on humans. After all, he’s planning on using it to escape his
home, it only needs to work for humans. TEB: It was built to accommodate
your, hm, anatomy, not ours. Or maybe he could insist it’s actually morally
virtuous to target these servants. He could insist that they’re not simple, innocent
peasants - they’re devoted servants to some evil organization. Or… he could give the
least rational explanation I could think of, to make it clear that this plan
*couldn’t* be rationally explained. So when asked why he didn’t test
the teleportation circle on animals, he answered, as if it was the most obvious thing
in the world: “I don’t want to hurt animals.” And all of my players simultaneously said,
“Wow, what the fuck is wrong with this kid?” And this completely changed the
nature of the task ahead of them. Now, if they wanted to get this kid
to realize the error of his ways, they couldn’t just explain that there are better
logistical options - they would fully have to build a foundation of explaining to this kid
that human life has value in the first place. Now, Victor’s attempts to create a teleportation
circle *can* never succeed due to story reasons, but he doesn’t know that - and even if he did,
based on the story I just told you, does he seem like the type of person who is going to admit it
anytime soon? And so he’s going to keep trying, and people are going to keep dying, unless
somebody does something about that. And this brings me to our next category of unreasonable
villains: the ones who are true believers, who are uncompromising in what they want, regardless of
whether or not it is rational or even plausible. Matt Colville made a terrific video about
the lessons we can learn from Black Panther to strengthen the political storylines
in our D&D games. And in that video, he talked about the villain of the film,
Killmonger. Now, Killmonger is one of the best villains in the MCU, and probably one of
the better villains from the past few years, and maybe the past few decades of film.
And as Colville discusses in his video, Killmonger is absolutely uncompromising in his
goals. The character brings up some excellent points about the historic - and let’s be honest,
the modern day - oppression of Black people across the world. But his goal is not reparations or
racial harmony or equity - it’s revenge. His objective isn’t to equalize society so everybody
has the same opportunities and nobody suffers unjustly for the color of their skin. He just
wants to flip the balance of power and put Black people in charge over the same system. I’ve seen
people complain on social media that Killmonger was a great character who was absolutely correct
until he “took things too far” in the very end of the film. And setting aside the fact that these
commenters seem to forget that he murdered his girlfriend without a second thoughts to achieve
his objectives, so maybe he wasn’t such a great guy in the first half of the film after all - but
broadly speaking, these commenters are so close to understanding the role Killmonger plays
in the film. He’s in the movie to be wrong, to take things too far, to show the consequences
of Wakanda’s isolationism. The film is structured so T’Challa can learn that his own civilization
is deeply flawed in a way that he must repair. But that doesn’t mean that Killmonger is right,
either. He represents the other extreme on the same axis. If traditional Wakandan foreign policy
is isolationism and non-interference, Killmonger’s Wakanda is the worst-case scenario of someone
changing that policy - it’s Wakandan colonialism. KILLMONGER: The sun will never
set on the Wakandan Empire. Now, the intent of the film is to show T’Challa
bringing Wakandan culture and influence into the world in a more responsible way, but that message
is hamstrung by the fact that the film is set in the MCU, which has to remain as much like our
world as possible, so Wakanda’s influence will always be minimal. But the message the film
is *trying* to communicate is that Wakanda is going to drop some secrecy and share some of
their progress with the world. And ultimately, that’s a world Killmonger doesn’t fit into.
Killmonger is so devoted to this ideal that he cannot imagine living in a world where he
failed. He doesn’t allow himself to be taken prisoner because he cannot live in chains.
Those chains represent everything that he believes he has been fighting against. So he
allows himself to die rather than accept that his plan might have been flawed, and
that there was another, better path. And along those lines, we can actually contrast
Killmonger with Gorr from “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Because Gorr is a really terrific
villain, he is absolutely mesmerizing to watch. The audience at my screening of the film
wasn’t exactly loving the movie, but when Gorr captures our heroes and monologues at them in that
black-and-white sequence, everybody in the theater was holding their breath the entire time. However,
while I enjoyed that movie a lot more than most people seemed to, it absolutely does not commit to
critiquing our heroes’ participation in a flawed system the way Black Panther does. Oh sure, it
shows us that there are plenty of gods who are very deeply flawed, but it keeps the Asgardians’
hands relatively clean, making no effort to imply that they are flawed in the same ways as Zeus
and his buddies. So in the film’s final moments, when Gorr’s ultimate goal is within reach, the
heroes suggest a more rational plan. “Instead of getting revenge, why don’t you just bring back
your dead daughter? Instead of trying to tear down a broken system, why don’t you just undo the
harm that was done to you personally?” And I don’t think that ending is terrible - any movie that
is willing to be sincere long enough to have the characters literally say that love is the answer
automatically does get some points in my book, especially in a franchise that is so
frequently allergic to sincerity. But if we imagine Killmonger were in Gorr’s shoes,
and he had the chance to bring back his father instead of implementing his plan to overthrow the
world… do you believe there’s any chance he would choose his father? Because I don’t. Killmonger is
so uncompromising, so incapable of seeing reason, that I don’t even believe he would use a magic
space wish to heal his original wound. Although, you know, that might not necessarily be
true, it depends on the story you’re telling. THANOS: I’m a big enough
man to admit when I’m wrong. We’ll get there. Okay, but what about a villain
who wants to destroy the world? How can somebody defend that plan? Well, let’s talk a little
bit about Ultron. Now I know, in a video about unreasonable villains, most versions of
Ultron - or honestly any AI who wants to destroy the world - wouldn’t make sense to discuss,
because those characters are usually absolutely rational to the most extreme degree possible.
That’s usually the premise of their villainy. COMPUTER: Nuclear missile launch in progress. ULTRON: Humanity has failed as a species.
You have accomplished much with your limited capacity. But ultimately, you were too greedy
and too frail to ever last in the environment you have created. Man, woman, child, plant,
animal, fungus, or bacterium. All life will cease to exist. I receive no pleasure
in this. It is simply the only solution. But of course, the version of Ultron best known to
the most audiences is the one who was deliberately written to be a lot more human, specifically
to get away from that emotionless robot trope. ULTRON: People create… smaller people?
Children! I lost the word there. Your mileage may vary on how successful you found
that to be. I always liked this version of Ultron, it was definitely weird, not all of his lines
totally land, and the movie around him is definitely… uneven, but it’s still a pretty
interesting character. And more relevant to our purposes today - he is a true believer
in his mission. So what is his plan exactly? ULTRON: I think a lot about meteors.
The purity of them. Boom. The end. Start again. The world made
clean for the new man to rebuild. ULTRON: You, Avengers, you are my meteor. My swift
and terrible sword, and the Earth will crack with the weight of your failure. When the dust settles,
the only thing living in this world will be metal. He’s gonna drop a city onto the
planet and obliterate all life, and replace humanity with an a new race of
androids - well, synthazoids to be accurate. But the first time he discusses this plan, we get
one of his most interesting lines in the film: ULTRON: When the Earth starts to settle, God throws a stone at it. And
believe me, he’s winding up. Okay, obviously the reference to God is a curious
choice - Ultron uses a *lot* of Biblical imagery in his dialogue. He seems to be deeply religious,
and I don’t really know what to make of that, it’s never really explained or justified and
I don’t really know that it adds all that much to the character, so we might have to tackle it
another day. But the reference to God “winding up” is really important to understanding Ultron’s
evil plan. See, I always assumed it was his way of describing his own plan. After all, he’s going to
hurl a meteor at the Earth himself, so if there’s a line about we should expect a stone to hit the
planet soon, you’d think it’d be associated with his plan, right? But it’s not. That’s kind of
a note for you, Joss, you don’t want to use the same metaphor to describe two different things,
it’s confusing - ah, doesn’t matter, your career is over because you were not a good person, so
it’s kind of moot now. But here’s the thing about this scene: when Ultron references the impending
meteor, he’s not talking about his own plan. He’s talking about what he was built to protect the
Earth from. The same thing Tony is afraid of. Ultron is talking about Thanos. Now,
he obviously doesn’t know who that is, but he was built based on Tony’s
fear of another alien invasion. TONY: I see a suit of armor around the world. BRUCE: Sounds like a cold world, Tony. TONY: I’ve seen colder. We’re the Avengers. We
can bust arms dealers all the live-long day, but that up there, that’s the endgame. So because Tony fears an alien invasion, so does
Ultron. And his solution is to replace humanity with people who will be strong enough to survive
that invasion. So to run through his deal again, Ultron has a bunch of reasons why he would
be impossible to persuade to see the error of his ways. He got on the internet and
decided to destroy humanity, and okay, that’s fair. He has a religious belief that
he’s doing the right thing, I think. And he was literally created to address a fear - a fear
so intense it was giving Tony panic attacks in his last movie - and Ultron will stop at nothing
to make sure that fear never comes to pass. He is a deeply unreasonable character, so no efforts to
talk him down can ever lead to his surrender. Now, most of the time, the Avengers don’t actually
try that hard to talk down Ultron, they battle him in spectacular superhero showdowns
because that’s what people came to see. But in the one scene where somebody doesn’t
just call Ultron crazy or evil, but actually challenges his plan on a fundamental level, it
happens to be my favorite scene in the film. VISION: Humans are odd. They think
order and chaos are somehow opposites, and try to control what won’t be. But there is
grace in their failings. I think you missed that. ULTRON: They’re doomed. VISION: Yes. But a thing isn’t beautiful because
it lasts. It’s a privilege to be among them. And how does Ultron respond when someone actually
offers him a chance to defend his position? ULTRON: You’re unbearably naive. Ultron just refuses to offer any more
justifications. He just puts down the Vision’s intelligence - or maybe his wisdom -
and gives up. He doesn’t change his position - he just gives up on arguing with any more details.
Because why bother? If you believe your opponent is unable to open their eyes to the truth you
see, it doesn’t make any sense to try to keep convincing them. Keep that in mind, because we’re
going to see that type of response again. Well, you’ll probably see it in the comments of
every YouTube video and Twitter thread ever, but within the content of this video, you’ll
see another villain use that tactic again. But not all plans to destroy the world are even
as internally consistent as Ultron’s. In the movie “X-Men: First Class,” the villain, Sebastian
Shaw, wants to start a nuclear war because he believes that the radiation and the fallout will
trigger more mutations and lead to more mutants. I actually really like this as a reference to early
X-Men comics, where it was implied that nuclear radiation from various tests had essentially
triggered this leap forward in human evolution - that’s why the X-Men were often referred to as
“the children of the atom.” But that being said, you could reasonably argue that a nuclear war
would kill just about everybody who could one day become a mutant or have a mutant baby. I
mean, Shaw can absorb energy so he would be fine, and his girlfriend can turn it into diamonds so
she might be cool, but a lot of other people would not survive a nuclear holocaust long enough to
gain superpowers, let alone long enough to rise up against humans and take over the planet. But
obviously, Shaw thinks it will work, and he’s manipulating the US and Russian governments into a
missile crisis near Cuba, So even though his plan would only hurt his own cause, he’s probably still
gonna pull it off if the X-Men don’t step in. Now you might think that’s a problem,
if your villain’s plan has some sort of huge hole in the logic. But all
you’ve done is further reinforce the fact that this villain cannot be
reasoned with, cannot be talked down, and must be confronted in a pitched battle
before they can pull off their master scheme. The YouTube channel Council of Geeks has
a great video about this topic as well, discussing the fact that it doesn’t
actually matter whether or not a villain’s plan *would* work. What matters is
that the villain believes it would work, and that the heroes and the audience understand
what could happen if the villain succeeds. ZOLA: The sanity of the plan is of no consequence. PHILLIPS: And why is that? ZOLA: Because he can do it! Now, let’s take a sidebar here. Because in
a lot of examples we’re discussing today, the villains are dismissed by the other characters
as being crazy. And I don’t think that’s a very helpful way to describe them. Not only because it
further stigmatizes mental illness in a culture that already constantly presumes that those
who suffer from any form of neurodivergence are a potential menace to society, when in fact
they’re far more likely to be the victims of violent crime rather than the perpetrators
- although that would be reason enough, by the way, we could definitely condemn it for
that. But also, if you just label your villain as “insane,” then you’re effectively writing
off any effort to understand them. So let’s be as clear as we can be here: a villain being
unreasonable does not mean they are insane. MOBSTER: You’re crazy. JOKER: I’m not. No, I’m not. Now, hold on. Am I seriously about to claim
that the Joker isn’t insane? Really? This guy? Well, I’m certainly not about to argue that
the mass-murdering terrorist is a well-adjusted member of society. But I think there are two
scenes people frequently misunderstand when discussing this version of the character.
The first comes when the Joker is trying to convince Harvey Dent to give up on society
and flip from lawful good to chaotic evil, and during the course of his argument, he
claims he isn’t a planner or a schemer. JOKER: Do I really look like a guy with a
plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if
I caught it! You know, I just *do* things. Now, this is the most common piece of evidence
given by people who claim the Joker is insane, or even just not well-organized, not a master
planner - and of course, a lot of people will respond by pointing out that the Joker is lying
here. That’s not just speculation based on the fact that he has all of these elaborate
death traps timed out to the second - but it’s also confirmed to be a lie at the end
of the film. It’s confirmed *by* the Joker. JOKER: You didn’t think I’d risk
losing the battle for Gotham’s soul in a fistfight with you! No. You
need an ace in the hole. Mine’s Harvey. In the hospital scene, he was telling
Harvey whatever he needed to say to get Harvey to believe that nothing
mattered, so the Joker could prove his ultimate point about philosophy
- which is that human beings are the worst and society is a cruel joke. He could
use Harvey as his proof. I think the line– JOKER: Do I really look like a guy with a plan? MIKE: – is really memorable - because
it’s funny - so it sticks in the mind of a casual viewer. But I’d imagine most
interpretations of the film that are based on more careful analysis will reveal this to
be a lie to further one of the Joker’s plans. However, there is another line that
seems to imply that the Joker is just insane. And it wasn’t until really
recently - like, within the last month or two - that I personally realized
there’s another way to interpret that line. ALFRED: Some men aren’t looking for anything
logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with.
Some men just wanna watch the world burn. Now, at first glance, that line
could most obviously be read to mean, “the Joker is crazy.” Though I don’t think
Alfred is a licensed psychologist, and even if he was he clearly hasn’t had any sessions with
the Joker, so that’s hardly a precise diagnosis, but since it’s said by Michael Caine, it
*feels* true. The Joker is crazy. Except that’s not the only way to interpret that line.
The most common reading of the line implies the Joker is just a madman, lighting things
on fire because he thinks it’s funny and for no other reason. But the Joker actually
has a lot of issues with society as a whole. JOKER: The mob has plans, the cops have
plans, Gordon’s got plans. You know, they’re schemers. If tomorrow I tell the
press that, like, a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up,
nobody panics. Because it’s all part of the plan. The reason he *wants* to “watch the world
burn” is because he doesn’t think any of those structures of society are doing anybody
any good. He actually thinks they’re getting in the way of mankind’s true nature; an
artifice that only he can see through. JOKERS: See, their morals, their “code”… it’s a
bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them
to be. I’ll show ya. When the chips are down, these “civilized” people? They’ll eat each other. The Joker thinks he’s living in a world full of
hypocrites. And the only way to expose them is to put them all in a position where their high
and mighty “ethics” are actually put to the test. And given that mindset, we can understand
that he “wants to watch the world burn” and that he is completely unable to be persuaded away
from his current course of action… but that doesn’t mean that he’s insane. I mean, he still
might be, and certainly there’s a whole broader conversation to be had about the Joker’s sanity in
his other appearances and iterations, but whether or not he’s mentally sound doesn’t actually
impact how effective he is as a villain - and it definitely doesn’t change the fact that he
is completely unwilling to listen to reason. Of course, it’s much harder to claim that the
villains in Batman *comics* aren’t supposed to be read as mentally ill, since their stories
are deeply tied up in the ideas of pathology and trauma. And even if that weren’t the case,
the association is unavoidable due to the fact that the most iconic penitentiary in the
franchise is actually a mental hospital. But that’s something we always have to keep
in mind - the information we convey to our audience or our players is almost as important
as the way we actually convey it. It’s hard to remember that Joker is actually supposed to
have some sort of super-sanity when (A) we don’t really understand what that means, and (B)
he keeps getting locked up in an asylum anyway. How you present this information makes a big
difference. But this video’s sponsor, WorldAnvil, can help you when you’re trying to convey
information to your players or your collaborators! WorldAnvil is an online resource that you
can use to track the details of your world, by creating articles for NPCs,
landmarks, magic items, monsters, nations, anything you need. And if you’re
creating a world for a game you’re running, WorldAnvil features a bunch of game systems, so
you can run your game right through the website, with stat blocks and player resources
available through the browser. And if you’re writing a novel or short story,
WorldAnvil has a manuscript feature, so you can write through the website while also
having your world’s details at easy access. And WorldAnvil is offering a discount to
the viewers of this channel. If you visit WorldAnvil.com/SupergeekMike and use
the coupon code SUPERGEEK at checkout, you can save 51% off of any annual
membership! That’s more than half off, that is a fantastic deal! Once again, visit
WorldAnvil.com/SupergeekMike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK. Thank you so much
to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video. And now - at last - it’s time to talk
about Thanos. I think Thanos might be the best example of an unreasonable
villain I can think of - because he tries really hard to make people believe
that he’s actually very reasonable. THANOS: Little one, it’s a simple
calculus. This universe is finite, its resources finite. If life is left unchecked,
life will cease to exist. It needs correcting. GAMORA: You don’t know that! THANOS: I’m the only one who knows that. At least,
I’m the only one with the will to act on it. That is my favorite Thanos line from any of
the films he appears in. Because it makes it so clear that he has tried to convince people
about his plan countless times, and he’s getting really tired of the fact that nobody understands
that he’s right. You know, almost like lots of people have told him to his face that his plan
is wrong and bad, and yet he’s not willing to hear any of their arguments anymore. Because
he’s no longer interested in being reasonable. And before we talk about his plan, I
want to talk a little bit about who Thanos is. Because it’s important to
me that we establish that Thanos… is a liar. He talks a lot about how he *has*
to kill, in order to achieve his goals, and we’ll dive more into that in a minute when we
talk about his plan. But whenever he says that, there’s an inherent implication that he
*only* kills in order to further this goal. If he kills you, it’s only because he
felt he had to - not because he wanted to. EBONY MAW: The universal scales tip
toward balance because of your sacrifice. THANOS: In all my years of conquest,
the violence… it was never personal. But here’s the thing, and this might seem obvious
to some of you, but it still needs to be said: This isn’t true. Thanos does not *only* kill
people in order to promote balance. He also kills people who get in his way, or - yeah -
sometimes people that he just doesn’t like. Now, this may not seem true, because he
frequently spares the Avengers. He has every opportunity to kill Wanda, and he doesn’t.
He could kill Tony, and he doesn’t. Sure, he gives Dr. Strange his word that he’ll spare
Tony’s life in exchange for the Time Stone, but if Thanos such a liar, why does he keep his
word? Well, because Thanos doesn’t seem to be that kind of liar. He doesn’t seem to break his
vows - in fact, as we see throughout the film, if he says he’s gonna do something, there’s
not much that’s gonna stand in his way. NEBULA: My father is many things.
A liar is not one of them. So why am I calling Thanos a liar? Well, because he murders all of the dwarves
at Nidavellir. Once they build his gauntlet, he slaughters everyone but
Eitri, whose hands he destroys. EITRI: 300 dwarves lived on this
ring. I thought if I did what he asked, they’d be safe. I made what he
wanted… and he killed everyone anyway. Why did Thanos do that? Well, the real reason is
because the writers needed it to be possible for Thor to build a new axe, so Eitri has to be
there since he knows how to make the new axe, but it’s more dramatic if Thor and Rocket have
to do it themselves, so with all the other dwarves dead and Eitri lacking the use of his
hands, Eitri can only coach our heroes through the process. The absence of other dwarves also
helps justify the whole place being in disrepair, so that makes the scene more dramatic when one
of the mechanisms breaks and Thor has to hold it open himself. And that’s actually a valuable
lesson as well - maybe the reason your villain does something that might seem unreasonable is
because it better serves the story. Sometimes it really is that simple. But within the narrative,
let’s look at the fact that Thanos killed all the dwarves except for Eitri, and maimed the lone
survivor. What does that tell us about Thanos? Well, Eitri seemed to believe his people
would be safe if he did what Thanos wanted. And wherever would he have gotten that idea?
Well, either Thanos promised that to him and then backtracked… or Thanos’ carefully-cultivated
reputation preceded him, perhaps literally through another one of Ebony Maw’s sermons.
Or perhaps Eitri, a rational person, assumed that once Thanos got what he wanted from
the dwarves, there would be no reason for him to murder everyone involved anyway. After all,
that would just be needlessly cruel, right? Now, you might say that there *is* a tactical
justification for killing all the dwarves and destroying Eitri’s hands. After all, Thanos needs
a gauntlet, but doesn’t want anybody else building another one and going after the stones before him,
and he doesn’t want word getting out about what he’s trying to do, or how close he is to achieving
his goal. But he could have killed Eitri as well, or captured him and locked him up in
case he needed him again in the future, needed his knowledge once again. But instead,
he chose to leave Eitri alone with his guilt and his grief. He made it sound like this
was some great act of mercy, but in reality, it’s just cruelty dressed up to sound
merciful. It’s Thanos exercising his power over Eitri. “You live because I let
you live. But you will never again perform the work that brought your life meaning - I’ll
rob that ability from you.” Leaving Eitri alive and alone in the empty halls of Nidavellir
isn’t a kindness - it’s a form of torture. And Thanos would know all about torture, because
he and his followers do a lot of torture in the film. It happens in the very first scene,
when he burns Thor with the Power Stone, and of course we also see his gruesome treatment
of Nebula later on. And both of these moments are specifically designed to convince one of
the victim’s loved ones to give up their secrets. And we’re not even discussing
the way he abused his kidnapped children, although that sentence alone should also tell
you that Thanos isn’t quite the tragic hero he would have you believe. Oh, and also, he kills
his own daughter, which I shouldn't need to tell you is pretty evil. Although the film implies
that he really did love her in his own way, which is… kind of a bummer. When I first
watched the film, I thought maybe he was going to kill Gamora, and then the Soul Stone
would basically say, “Okay, you failed the test, you clearly cannot be trusted with power.” And
then maybe Thanos would actually have to fight his way through the protectors to reach the stone
- something he always *could* have done, yet he simply believed what he was being told about
what was and wasn’t possible. Sorry of like how he expects everyone to just accept what he tells
them, it’s like a metaphor or something. But no, instead the universe confirms that Thanos really
loves his daughter, just in his own abusive way. Maggie Mae Fish made a great video breaking
down what a deeply unpleasant message this movie sends when Thanos’ love is cosmically
approved by some sort of divine power, as well as the uncomfortable way the
film says that it *really* hurt Thanos’ feelings to murder his own daughter,
you know, he didn’t *want* to do that, but he just *had* to because he loves her *so*
much! Look, I love Infinity War and Endgame a lot, they’re excellent films, but the Vormir scenes
are really tough to watch and even tougher to justify. Sometimes the art we love still has
some stuff in it that we actually just hate. But returning to the discussion of Thanos’
true nature - the film actually tells us right away that Thanos isn’t quite so burdened
with the responsibility of murder as he might claim. Because after Loki tries to kill
Thanos, Thanos murders Loki. And he doesn’t need to do this. As he’s proven, Loki poses no
threat to him. He doesn’t believe Loki’s lies, which cuts through most of Loki’s power in any
situation, and as we see, Loki can’t even get close enough to hurt him. He’s also just about to
blow this spaceship to pieces and theoretically kill everyone on board, so there’s literally no
reason to kill anybody on the ship before that happens. Yet he still picks up Loki by the neck
and starts to strangle him. And look at this shot. When Thanos is strangling Loki, he turns his
head as if he’s daring Loki to say something else. He’s toying with him. Or maybe he’s turning
his ear toward Loki so he can better hear Loki’s gasps for breath. But even here, something
changes after Loki delivers his final line. Loki gives his last words, and Thanos seems to
regard him with some actual anger, then gives him a condescending smile and snaps his neck. And
what changed? What were Loki’s last words again? LOKI: You will never be… a god. Thanos didn’t like hearing that. Because
actually? That’s what he wants. He doesn’t just want to “fix” the problem he
sees facing the universe. He wants praise. THANOS: I finally rest, and watch
the sun rise on a grateful universe. Why does the universe have to be grateful,
Thanos? If you’re the only one who sees the problem you perceive as the most pressing issue
in the whole of creation, serious enough that you’re willing to kill to solve it, then
wouldn’t a good deed be its own reward? SOMERSET: If you were chosen… that is, by
a higher power. If your hand was forced… seems strange to me that you would get
such enjoyment out of it. You enjoyed torturing those people. Just doesn’t
seem in keeping with martyrdom, does it? Now, Thanos has no problem being a martyr - he
*will* die for his cause. But he absolutely is not selfless just because he says he is. And we
can see this in “Avengers: Endgame.” When Thanos discovers that the Avengers have found a way
to undo his hard work, he revises his plan. THANOS: I will shred this universe down to its
last atom, and then create a new one that knows not what it has lost but only
what it has been given. A grateful universe. So, when Thanos finds out that his
life’s work is going to be reversed, and he has the chance to reexamine his
plan and come up with a second draft, the only parts of that original plan he
keeps are “murder trillions of people,” and “have a grateful universe.” Because
everything else was just a means to an end, a justification. And now we see his God complex
laid bare, as he proposes restarting the universe with him as the revered creator. That’s who Thanos
actually is. That’s what Thanos actually wants. He wants to be perceived as someone magnanimous,
a martyr who is only doing what is necessary to better the universe, at least according to
his own idea of what needs to be done. But if *we* describe him that way, then we’re buying
into his propaganda. His *literal* propaganda. EBONY MAW: You may think this is
suffering. No. It is salvation. But that’s a lie, meant to mask the
bitter truth: Thanos is cruel. Now, all this might seem obvious to
you, but you’d be surprised how weird discourse gets around Thanos, so I
think we had to establish that baseline. Okay, so now that we’ve refreshed ourselves on
who Thanos is, let’s take a look at his plan, to murder half of everybody in order to
conserve resources. Because ever since Infinity War came out 6 years ago, people
have been poking holes in the logic of this plan - but they’ve also been trying to
understand why Thanos didn’t see those holes. After all, Thanos is supposed to
be so rational, so enlightened, how can he be pursuing a plan that has such
obvious flaws? Isn’t that a plot hole? Well, as we’ll see - no. It actually makes perfect
sense for who Thanos is - an unreasonable, irrational villain. So first, let’s go through
some of the ways Thanos’ plan makes no sense. The films heavily imply that Thanos is
destroying “half of all life,” and that includes animals. This is confirmed in “Avengers:
Endgame,” when Scott can identify that the Hulk’s snap worked because he sees two birds playing,
where I guess those birds hadn’t been before. So, if Thanos’ snap *did* eliminate half
of all the animals - well, we use a lot of those animals for food. So that’s
a huge portion of our resources gone. TONY STARK: Not a great plan. Losing half of the insects means
less plants getting pollinated, and that would ruin crops and obliterate
our supply of produce, to say nothing of everything else we get from agriculture, like
supplies that go into our infrastructure - or, you know, the oxygen plants produce, which could
no longer offset the CO2 we produce. Once again, it’s going to make it a lot harder to make those
resources last if there are also fewer resources. TONY STARK: Not a great plan. Small animals repopulate much faster
than larger ones, which would probably go extinct. Without those larger animals, the
ecosystem gets thrown out of whack. And in fact, most ecosystems would probably collapse entirely. TONY STARK: Not a great plan. And of course, even if none of that happened,
even if eliminating half of the population had no impact on the resources, and everybody really
did get enough to live on… halving the population isn’t a permanent solution. For example, if you
kill half of the population of Earth, you take us back about 50 years, which isn’t that long
ago. And so that means it would take at *most* 50 years for the population to reach the same
level Thanos thought was so troubling. And that’s assuming the birth rate stays the same, which it
absolutely would not. Sure, you just lost half the members of any given dating pool, but science and
medicine have also advanced in the past 50 years, which means more healthy babies are able to be
born. Plus, you’ve also just given everybody a bunch more resources, right? The primary reason
millennials are having kids so much later in life, assuming they’re having kids at all, is
primarily because it’s too expensive to have kids. But if everybody just gets double
the resources now, well then all of a sudden you’ve got a lot of people who are able to have
kids when they couldn’t justify it before. So if those resources are fairly distributed,
then you probably would have a baby boom. TONY STARK: Not a great plan. Now, according to the writers and directors of
the film, this isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for Thanos’ plan - because his goal is
for these populations to help themselves, to learn the lesson he taught them and take this
opportunity to strengthen their society and make sure overpopulation will no longer threaten to
deplete their resources in the future. Except he’s already gone to other worlds and eliminated
half of their populations. He was just doing it manually, with good old-fashioned analogue mass
murder. And he claims it’s helped those worlds. THANOS: Your planet was on the brink of collapse, I’m the one who stopped that. Do you
know what’s happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full
bellies and clear skies, it’s a paradise. Okay, so even *if* we accept that his
method has worked for those worlds, and in the past 20 years their civilization no
longer suffers from starvation… now they’re going to get culled again, right? When he snaps
his fingers, another half of the population will die, even on those worlds. Is that
fair? Or is that simply cruel? Also, on those old worlds, he only seemed to kill
the sentient population, correct? He didn’t go after the plants and the animals, like
we assume he does with the Snap. So… they’re now going to suffer in ways that they didn’t
because of his analogue mass murder approach. Also, none of this is actually the
issue we’re having with overpopulation and resource management here on Earth. The
scientists warning us about overpopulation are usually lot more worried about how
overpopulation produces more pollution and sends us down the slope toward destroying
our own climate. But those resources that people don’t have enough of? On Earth, those
resources are artificially scarce. DR. STRANGE: Genocide? THANOS: But random, dispassionate,
fair to rich and poor alike. Well, that sounds like it could work if everybody
uses the same number of resources. But I don’t know how they did things on Titan, but that us not
how it works on Earth. In our world, we know who has the most resources - as in, we literally know
their names and where they live. And for legal reasons, I’ll stress this is a hypothetical
involving space magic - but if a few dozen of them suddenly disappeared, and *if* their wealth
was redistributed among the poorest members of our population, that would actually solve a whole
lot of our problems. You wouldn’t need to murder billions of people - honestly, just murdering
a few dozen specific people would do the job, again, purely hypothetically and only through the
use of a magic space wish. Only a ghoul would say, “Well, a mother of five in poverty can’t afford to
feed all her kids, so what if she had fewer kids” and assume that is the most logical conclusion.
That’s actually why it’s important that the people in charge be involved in taking the resources away
from billionaires, through, like, taxes. Because if instead, you just randomly eliminate half of
all rich people *and* half of all poor people, it’s gonna wreak havoc on the economy. I
wouldn’t at all be surprised if remaining rich people don’t snatch up all of the wealth of
the dead billionaires and continue to hoard it, or buy up all the empty houses and raise rent for
everybody. Or, hey, remember when big box stores and huge online vendors started artificially
inflating their prices over the past few years because they could blame it on inflation? And
they're only just now lowering their prices because they realize they priced people out
of their products? Imagine what corporations would do if they knew we all got double the
resources? There’s a decent chance the snap would simply consolidate the wealth for the rich
and make the situation more dire for the poor. CHORUS: (Singing) He steals from the
poor and gives to the rich! Stupid bitch! (Laughter)
DENNIS MOORE: What did you sing? CHORUS: We sang, “He steals from
the poor and gives to the rich.” DENNIS MOORE: Wait a tic. Blimey, this redistribution of wealth
is trickier than I thought. And of course, this brings us to the
most common question asked about Thanos: Why doesn’t he use the glove
to make more resources? Because he doesn’t want to. Now, that has always been my answer, but
once again, in research for this video, I found that article that quotes the
film’s writers and directors, and they confirm that Thanos simply is not interested
in doubling the resources of the universe. Yes, he has his own justifications, like the idea that
he wants the people of the universe to learn from this moment and get it right for the future. But
they also point out, Thanos is not a good guy. THANOS: Titan was like most planets. Too many mouths, not enough to go around. And
when we faced extinction, I offered a solution. DR. STRANGE: Genocide. THANOS: They called me a madman.
And what I predicted came to pass. He saw a tragic situation unfolding on Titan,
and after his people didn’t take his advice, the tragedy he tried to prevent still
destroyed his planet - but that doesn’t mean that his plan was ever actually
going to work. But of course, Thanos has linked those events as a cause and effect
in his mind. “Because no one listened to me, the planet died. If they had listened to me,
the planet would *not* have died.” And all he has to reinforce this belief is the confirmation
bias of the worlds he has conquered and culled. THANOS: The children born have known nothing but
full bellies and clear skies, it’s a paradise. As Gamora points out - none of this means that his
plan was the only way to achieve his stated goal. THANOS: It needs correcting. GAMORA: You don’t know that! But I didn’t need to find this
article to understand why Thanos doesn’t try to create more resources. I
can just look at the world we live in. There are people in our modern world who have
immense wealth - people who are worth more than $100 billion, plenty are pretty close to
having $200 billion. More money than they could ever spend in their lifetimes, as they keep
earning more money *every day* than you or I will see in a month. Now, that could actually make
life better for millions of people. It would cost something like $20 billion to lift everyone
in America out of poverty for a year. Now, you might ask, “What’s the point in doing
something that will only help people for a year?” But setting aside the fact that you
should help people if you can because it’s the decent thing to do, the nice thing about helping
someone get back your feet means the next year, they’re on their feet, and that helps
them stay out of poverty. So actually, that money *would* actually help a lot of people
long-term, it’s not just a short-term gain. The United Nations said a $6 billion donation from
any of these billionaires would feed 42 million people who are currently starving. It would
basically end world hunger for a year. Again, that’s only a year, but considering the fact
that some of those people will *starve to death* without that money, maybe I don’t care if it only
lasts for a year. If you’re worth $100 billion, you could donate $6 billion a year for 16 years
and help a bunch of people live instead of die. Or, you know, put *more* money toward trying to find
a long-term solution, that wouldn’t be so bad either. But when the UN made that claim, Elon
Musk’ retweeted a CNN article that misleadingly claimed $6 billion would “solve” world hunger, and
Elon added the note, “explain how it would solve world hunger in a tweet or I won’t do it.” The
UN didn’t limit their answers to a 240 character limit, but they actually *did* issue a report three
days later explaining how $6 billion would feed millions of people for a year. And so in response,
Elon Musk… donated the money to his own foundation, which has a habit of making relatively small
donations and hoarding a lot of the wealth. Because it sure seems like he was just trying to
hold onto his own money and dodge taxes. Again, just a theory, not a legal claim. Elon
Musk has the power to double the resources for millions of people who are literally
starving to death. Jeff Bezos could lift millions of people out of poverty. They may
not have a magic glove full of space rocks, but they have as much power in their hands as any
one individual in our real world could. They’ve spent their lives gathering incredible resources
- much like Thanos. And they could just snap their fingers and improve the lives of an unbelievable
number of people, much like Thanos. But instead, they use these resources to do stupid, selfish
things, like build super-yachts and make Twitter even more friendly for white supremacists.
Because that’s what they would rather do. Why doesn’t Thanos make more
resources? Because he doesn’t want to. Okay, so we’ve established why Thanos’ plan
makes no sense, and hopefully I’ve made it clear why that’s perfectly in-keeping with his
character flaws. But why doesn’t anybody in the film point out how bad his plan is? Gamora and Dr.
Strange let him know that they think his plan is, you know, bad, but why doesn’t anybody give
him statistics that undermine his point? Why doesn’t anybody remind him that he can just
use the stones to make more resources? These questions were flying in 2018, and almost anybody
who had a channel or a platform and talked about Marvel asked some version of this question. I’m
specifically not calling out anybody, a lot of creators and reviewers I really respect posed
some version of this question - it’s a perfectly reasonable reaction to a movie that treats the
villain as the protagonist. But this discourse got to the point where I remember somebody basically
saying that, if Thanos wasn’t going to use the stones to create more resources, the film should
justify this by showing us that those resources wouldn’t last, that he has no other option but to
use the stones to destroy rather than create. Now, obviously this isn’t compatible with Endgame,
because if in Infinity War, Thanos claims the resources don’t last and that’s why he doesn’t
do that, then they can’t use the stones to bring people back to life in [Endgame], or they *also*
wouldn’t last. So it doesn’t really map with the version of the story they were telling. But even
without that context, even setting that aside, I remember seeing that proposal in 2018 and
thinking, “Oof, I think we are asking the wrong questions.” If you know which creator
I’m talking about, keep it to yourself, leave them alone, don't bother them about this,
because again, this is not about any one person individually. But their proposal was basically
the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, and all of a sudden, I realized the
problem with *any* argument that asked, “Why don’t the Avengers just explain
why Thanos’ plan isn’t going to work?” Because his plan is *wrong.* And the movie
shouldn’t *need* to use logic to denounce genocide. Genocide is actually just bad to do,
categorically. Again, no shade on anybody who proposed a patch to the “plot hole” for
why Thanos doesn’t make more resources, but what they were essentially asking for
- without realizing it - was for a better explanation for why Thanos thought genocide
was the most logical solution. But Thanos is not a reasonable guy, even though he
says he is. The fact that he believes genocide is an acceptable way to solve
*any* problem is actually an automatic indictment of him as a character. He cannot
be reasonable if he is okay with genocide. Now, the creators behind the film have said that
Thanos would not consider his act to be genocide, because his victims would be chosen at
random - so it’s *just* mass murder. Which actually doesn’t make it a whole lot better. OKOYE: That sounds an awful lot like genocide. THANOS: No, no, no, because it’s random.
OKOYE: Uh-huh. But you know what? It’s close enough
to genocide, I’m still gonna call it a genocide. Because Thanos *did* also
genocide the dwarves at Nidavellir, he killed all but one of them. That wasn’t random.
So if you’re going to argue that the Snap isn’t technically a genocide, then I have to wonder…
what’s your point? Like, why mention that? It doesn’t exactly protect Thanos’ reputation,
because he still does at least one genocide. So there’s no reason to split hairs over the
Snap… unless you either don’t like the use of such a loaded term when describing a fantasy
story… or you think there’s something defensible about the Snap. Either way, I just don’t
think that’s an argument worth entertaining. Because here’s the thing - I shouldn’t need to say
this, but doing a genocide is bad. And justifying a genocide is also bad. This *should* be
obvious. But over the past nine months, it’s become clear that some people don’t seem to
understand that. Some folks have been defending genocide that whole time. And it should be noted,
all of their justifications *are* terrible - Some More News did a terrific video breaking down why
all of these arguments are so deeply flawed. But, like… you shouldn’t *need* to be told that, right?
Because if we’re at the point where you’re in a debate with someone who thinks genocide and
collective punishment and murdering civilians, let alone murdering children, is okay
and maybe even good… I don’t know what to tell you. Because I kind of don’t think
that should be up for debate, you know? MAHER: You don’t realize that
college campuses erupted with the kids demonstrating *for* Hamas?
They are in with the terrorists. BURR: They were for the Palestinians. MAHER: Well, it’s sort of
the same cause. Why are you? BURR: I’m on the side of the kids. MAHER: Yeah, that’s easy to say. No one
wants to see kids dead. This is a war– BURR: That was very brave of you to say that, MAHER: This is a war– no, I’m the
one who is actually brave on this. BURR: Oh, pat yourself on the back! MAHER: It’s easy to say “I’m for
the kids,” who’s *not* for the kids? It comes down to real, hard-nose decisions. BURR: Oh, stop talking like you’re a general. You know, Bill, you say “nobody wants to see kids
dead,” but at least 15,000 children in Gaza have been killed in the past 9 months, and by the way
those numbers are almost certainly underreported. And so that didn’t happen by accident. And you
know what, I *also* it's bad when *adults* get genocided, actually. Oh, but Bill Marr says
civilian casualties are just part of war, so what are you gonna do? Says the guy
who has apparently never heard of “war crimes” and certainly won’t admit that “collective
punishment” is a violation of international law. But this is a video about creating unreasonable
villains, so if you’re looking for inspiration for how people can believe that atrocities and war
crimes are good, then unfortunately Bill Maher isn’t the only person who feels that way. You can
look online and watch the Zionists desperately try to claim that anyone who denounces Israel’s
war crimes is actually just antisemitic. And I guess we can include our own government in that
category as well, because we sure seem to keep giving Israel a whole lot of latitude to just keep
doing war crimes, and capsizing any criticism of Israel is just antisemitism. Oh, Joe, I’m sorry,
you’re hopeful both sides will reach a ceasefire, even though one of the two sides already
did agree to one? Maybe talk to the group that *didn’t* agree to the ceasefire and
stop giving them bombs, you piece of shit. BO BURNHAM: (Singing) How is the
best case scenario Joe Biden? But here’s the good news, he says,
gracefully segueing back to talking about fictional supervillains
- when you’re writing fiction, or running a D&D game, you’re in control
of how unreasonable your villains are. And whenever you feel it serves the story, you
can have the villains learn their lesson. THANOS: I’m a big enough
man to admit when I’m wrong. Now, like I said earlier, there’s a reason why
this scene doesn’t come at the end of Infinity War or Endgame - because it would not be a satisfying
conclusion to that story. By that point, Thanos has performed too many on-screen atrocities,
he’s killed too many characters we love. There is no hope of changing his mind because he’s past
the point where anybody - either in the world of the film, working behind the scenes, or watching
from the audience - wants to try to redeem him. This is why, in “Thor: Love and Thunder,” we
don’t actually see Gorr’s murder spree of gods on-screen - because it is enormously difficult
to accept someone’s redemption after watching them perform a whole bunch of atrocities. So
instead, because we only see him murder one god who we are led to believe deserves it, and then
we only hear him explain his point of view almost completely unchallenged, he doesn’t seem nearly
as unreasonable to us as someone like Thanos does. GORR: You went to the gods for help and
they did nothing. We’re alike in that sense. VALKYRIE: He’s nothing like you. GORR: That’s right! I’m not a hypocrite. Did
you pray to the gods when the women you loved lay dying on the battlefield? Did you beg them
for help as your family was massacred? I had a daughter once. I put my faith in a higher
power hoping it would save her. And she… died. And so when we get to the end of this movie, a
redemption arc is actually still on the table. Because Gorr hasn’t really killed anybody
we knew, and certainly no one we’d miss. He didn’t kill Loki, or Gamora, or Vision,
or half the universe including Spider-Man. Gorr still has enough humanity that the
heroes can find common ground with him. THOR: It’s not death or revenge that you seek! GORR: What do I seek? THOR: You seek love. GORR: How dare you turn your back on me. THOR: You’ve won, Gorr. Why would I spend my last moments with you when I could
be with her? I choose love. And ultimately, you have to make the judgment
call for whether redemption is on the table or not. If it is, then when your players make
arguments to try to get the villain to see reason, you can have the villain accept that they’ve
done harm, and try to find a path forward. However, if you think your story will have a
more satisfying ending if your heroes fight the bad guy, then it’s probably in your best
interest for your villain to remain unreasonable, unable to be convinced that their plan is
flawed or immoral. And if that’s the case, then I certainly hope the examples in this
video will help you present a compelling villain who your players cannot negotiate with, and so
they’ll just have to find some way to defeat them. But obviously this is a complex, nuanced
topic that maybe brushes up against some controversial real-world subjects, so there’s
a lot of room here for further discussion. So let me know in the comments - how do you
feel about everything we’ve discussed so far today? Is there anything you’d like
to see me expand on in a future video? I cannot imagine this video didn’t
cover everything I could think of, look at the runtime, but I only know whether or
not I’m explaining myself well once you watch it and let me know what you think about it, so
sincerely, I would love to hear your feedback. In the meantime, subscribe and ring the bell, so
you can stay up to date with all of my new videos. Normally I’d plug my Patreon here, but I would
really like to encourage you instead to make a donation to the Palestine Children’s Relief
Fund. Hopefully this video features an easy donation option below, but if I can’t figure out
how that works, then there still will be a link in the description. Sign up for my Discord server
to hang out with other awesome people, and join my mailing list to get my newsletters when I remember
to send those out. Those links are all in the doobily-doo below. Check out my video about the
various Dungeon Master’s Guide covers across the history of our game and the lessons we can learn
from them. I'm really proud of that video, and a lot of y’all slept on it, so go check it out right
now. Until next time, play, fair, and have fun!
