Thanos (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Digital Domain worked on creating Thanos for Infinity War and Endgame, producing over 400 visual effects shots.[19] The company created a new facial capture application called Masquerade, based on the concept of machine learning through computer algorithms, specifically for the film, beginning work on the system 3–4 months before filming began to develop and test it. They presented their results to Brolin, the Russos, and executives from Marvel ahead of filming to demonstrate the subtleties Brolin would be able to bring to the character, which helped inform Brolin how to portray the character.[19] Before the start of filming, Brolin's facial expressions were captured with ILM's Medusa system, which along with his motion capture data from set, were fed to Masquerade to "create a higher-resolution version of what Brolin did on set" so animators could apply that to the CGI character. Kelly Port, Digital Domain's VFX Supervisor, noted the design of Thanos took into account the versions that appeared in previous films, but were adjusted more toward's Brolin's features, which also helped with matching his performance to the digital character.[9]

Thanos was born around 1,000 years ago on the planet moon Titan to A'Lars, a powerful member of the Titans. At some point during his adulthood, Thanos came to realize that the growth of Titan's population would inevitably result in its downfall, proposing to kill half of the planet's population to save Titan. However, his people rejected his solution as pure madness and cast him out. Over time, Thanos witnessed the death of his people until he was the only Titan left.[20]

After seeing what happened to his planet, Thanos concluded that eventually the universe would suffer the same fate, making him believe that his goal was to destroy half of the population of universe setting him on the path to conquest. His conquest leads him to taking control of the Chitauri, Sakaaran, and Outrider armies. He would also rarely take in orphan children from planets including: Ebony Maw, Corvus Glaive, Cull Obsidian, Proxima Midnight, Gamora and Nebula who all went under extensive training under Thanos. Eventually, after venturing across the universe and destroying many planets by killing only half of the inhabitants, Thanos came across the six Infinity Stones. Thanos recruits The Other and Ronan the Accuser to his crusade; The Other hires the Asgardian Loki to retrieve the Space Stone that was being kept on Earth by S.H.I.E.L.D., however, Loki was foiled by the Avengers. When Ronan retrieved the Power Stone, he became inspired with its power and attempted to use it on himself while Gamora betrayed Thanos at the same time and further joins the Guardians of the Galaxy, who ultimately defeat Ronan and hide the Power Stone on Xandar. Angered at his recruits' failures, Thanos decides to search for the stones himself.[21]

Thanos first decimates Xandar to take the Power Stone and intercepts the Statesman carrying the refugees of the recently-destroyed Asgard to take the Space Stone from Loki, who had taken the Tesseract before Asgard's destruction and unleashes the Hulk on Thanos, who easily overpowers him before Heimdall sends him to Earth before Thanos stabs in the heart in retaliation. Upon adding the Space Stone to his gauntlet, Thanos orders his children to retrieve the Time and Mind Stones respectively from Stephen Strange and Vision on Earth before killing Loki and leaving Thor for dead.

He then manages to retrieve the Reality Stone from the Collector on Knowhere, where he captures Gamora and brings her to his ship, using Nebula to make Gamora reveal that the Soul Stone on Vormir. There, she and Thanos meet Red Skull, who explains that taking the stone requires the sacrifice of a loved one, leading Thanos to tearfully kill Gamora in exchange for the stone.

He then goes to Titan expecting his children to have the Time and Mind Stones for him and is instead ambushed by Strange, Stark, Parker, Mantis, Drax and Quill. Nebula joins the fight and Thanos is pinned down, but just before Stark and Parker can remove the gauntlet from his hand, Nebula figures out that he murdered Gamora, leading Quill to attack him in a fit of rage and inadvertently mess up his allies' plan. The fight ends when Strange gives Thanos the Time Stone to save Stark's life.

Thanos then goes to Wakanda to retrieve the Mind Stone and is held back by Wanda as she tearfully kills Vision to destroy the stone, but her efforts are undone by Thanos using the Time Stone to revive Vision and subsequently ripping the Mind Stone from his head, killing him again. With all six stones, and in spite of Thor's efforts to avenge his losses, Thanos snaps his fingers and succeeds in wiping out half of all life in the universe, escaping to another planet and leaving the Avengers in shock at their failure to stop him.

Twenty-three days after the Snap, Thanos is ambushed by a group of Avengers including Carol Danvers seeking to bring back his victims, but he reveals that he destroyed the stones to avoid temptation and make sure his work would never be undone. Thor subsequently decapitates him, giving the heroes a hollow victory.

Five years later, the Avengers initiate a plan to retrieve the stones from different points in time and undo Thanos' snap. In 2014, he becomes aware of the plan thanks to Nebula unknowingly connecting with her past self and follows the Avengers back to 2023, declaring his intention to destroy the universe and repopulate it with life that only knows gratitude and not loss, but not before those who were decimated are brought back by Banner. A final battle ensues, during which the Avengers attempt to send the stones back to their own time periods, but Thanos overpowers them, including Danvers. Stark ultimately wins the battle for the heroes by swiping the stones away from Thanos and using them against him at the cost of his own life. Once Stark snaps his fingers, Thanos can only watch as his troops are turned to dust until only he remains. He accepts his defeat before being disintegrated himself, the universe finally rid of him once and for all.

Thanos and his snap spawned much audience enthusiasm. The website, DidThanosKill.Me was created for fans to see if they would have been spared by Thanos or not.[35] The ending also spawned the creation of the Reddit subreddit, /r/thanosdidnothingwrong. A user within the subreddit suggested that half of the approximately 20,000 subscribers at the time be banned from the subreddit, in order to mimic the events of the film. After the community agreed to the measure, the moderators approached Reddit's administrators to see if the mass ban would even be possible. Once the administrators agreed to the random ban of half the subscribers, it was set to occur on July 9, 2018.[36] Notice of the impending ban made the subreddit's subscribers increase to over 700,000, including both of the Russos who subscribed.[37] Ahead of the ban, Brolin posted a video saying "Here we go, Reddit users," and ending it with a snap.[38] Over 60,000 people watched a live Twitch stream of the ban occurring, which lasted several hours.[37] The ban of over 300,000 accounts, which included Anthony Russo, was the largest in Reddit's history.[37][39] Those banned then gathered in the new subreddit, /r/inthesoulstone.[36][37] One Reddit user who participated described the ban as embodying "the spirit of the Internet" with people "banding together, en masse, around something relatively meaningless but somehow decidedly awesome and hilarious".[39] Andrew Tigani of Screen Rant said this showed "how impactful the film has already become to pop culture. It is also a testament to how valuable fan interaction can be via social media".[38]

A popular tongue-in-cheek fan theory regarding Thanos' defeat in Avengers: Endgame before the film's release claimed that Thanos would be killed by Ant-Man entering his anus and then expanding himself, blowing off Thanos' body (jokingly referred to by the portmanteau "Thanus").[40] Several internet memes were created by this. After the film was released and proved it wrong, Christopher Markus revealed that due to the strong nature of the Titans, Ant-Man would have been unable to expand himself and get simply crushed against the walls of Thanos' rectum.[12]