Thursday, March 14, 2019

The deep philosophy lessons in Avengers Endgame and Infinity War movies.

The Russo brothers must have had a good time building up to the great philosophical question that is Thanos’ mission in the Avengers: Infinity War. The big philosophical question is that of sacrificing lives to save the species.


We have all heard of the saying “cut off the arm to save the head”, Thanos’ mission is similar but on a Universal scale. Beyond the philosophical conundrum of killing some to save the whole, goes a lot of philosophical and psychological literature about wars and destruction and being part of human psyche and even necessary for continuity of life on this planet.
In the early 1930s, seeing the horrors of the First World War, Albert Einstein wrote to the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud to ask his thoughts on how further war might be prevented. Freud wrote that Thanatos “is at work in every living creature and striving to bring it to ruin and reduce life to its original condition of inanimate matter”.

The way I see this in The Avengers Infinity War and Endgame movies is the real way Thanatos presents itself to those that carry it out. Not as destruction, but as salvation like the way Thanos sees it. This destructive drive convinces its perpetrators that it is the right way of preventing something even more catastrophic. Adolf Hitler wanted to fix the world from his own perspective.

Same way Thanos uses the space stone, Thanatos can be everywhere. Thanatos is the unconscious psychological urges towards self-destruction, manifested in the kinds of inexplicable behaviour.

Bottom-line, even though the avengers movies are fiction, their creators have come up with real ideas from deep psychological and philosophical basis and may be, just may-be, this is why Infinity War resonates with our reality as humans and the audience.

In fictional story telling, there is a lot more meaning to the audience when it comes from the basis of the nature of reality. People’s Imagination is stretched but they still find a way of understanding, even though not agreeing with the villain’s point of view. The audience is forced to consider either side of the fight and know why each side is fighting with full resolve.


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Watch the Avengers Endgame Trailer here:

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