twh-news:

Tom Hiddleston’s advice to Thanos

TH [starting at 3:20]: “Somebody said to me, and I genuinely can’t remember where I’ve read this, that every villain is a hero in his own mind. And I think that if you can allow the audience to see that perspective, that there is some kind of flawed but comprehensible logic in the villain’s motivation, that the audience can go, ‘Oh, you know what, he has a point’… and I actually felt like that with Killmonger, with Michael B. Jordan’s performance in Black Panther. You could go, ‘I kind of see his point of view,’ and I think it’s important for the audience, even though they can perhaps see that this is a… it’s going to get you nowhere, like revenge, often it gets you nothing, it’s a fool’s errand, it’s a cul-de-sac, it’s an evacuation of your own anger into the external world, but at least audiences can see that… they can go, ‘Well, I understand why that character is upset or angry.’ So I suppose it’s about access… trying to allow the audience to see that even if the motivations are not perfect, that somehow you can see the point of view. I wonder about Thanos. It’s interesting, it’s a really powerful character, and there’s something nihilistic about his motivation. He just wants to bring death. He wants to destroy half the universe. ‘Why?’ is the question I would ask. And I am sure they have answered it.”

They answered it all right… but it’s a fucking terrible answer. It’s the answer of a freshman boy in a philosophy seminar who read Ayn Rand and talks about it loudly at every opportunity.