Thanos has reason for his actions

The argument

Although perhaps warped, Thanos did have a reason for his actions. The tragic backstory of Thanos easily gives us insight into the reasoning behind this villains motives. In the film Infinity War, he reveals that his planet Titan was destroyed due to overpopulation when he was young. He loved his planet, and thus he vowed to save other planets from falling under the same fate as his. Thanos has his reasons for the seemingly evil things that he does. His past had a massive effect on who he became, who we see in the films and the comics.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Thanos experienced childhood trauma, yes. He does what he does for a reason, yes. But just because we can empathize with him doesn't mean that he isn't a villain. His actions are unwanted, murderous, and evil. They are unforgivable.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The backstory is thinner than the premise implies and does not do the work asked of it. Titan's fate is what Thanos himself reports, and it explains where his conviction came from rather than showing that the conviction was sound — an origin accounts for a belief without licensing what is done in its name. [Rejecting P2] The step from having a reason to not being a villain is the argument's real gap. Almost every villain in fiction acts on a reason, and the position needs that reason to amount to a justification: the plan proceeds by killing half of all living things without their consent, on a premise about scarcity the story itself undercuts, since a being able to remake reality could have enlarged what was available instead. As the counter puts it, understanding a motive is not the same as excusing the act.