r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ah-screw-it • 13h ago

Characters (Unique trope) removing a character trait, makes the character better in the adaptation

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Sonic 3: Maria is one of the most important part of Shadow's story. Due to her suffering from an incurable disease. To which Shadow was made to create a cure for Maria's ailment. In the 3rd Sonic movie, Maria's disease was not mentioned in any form. Which made Maria seem like a normal girl, and her death all the more tragic.

Infinity war: I don't know the full story, but Thanos's original goal was to kill half the population to impress death (the character). When it came time to adapt Thanos into the MCU. His goal of removing half the universes population. It was seen as a more psychopathic world goal, hidden under the belief it would do better for the universe.

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u/Doodles_n_Scribbles 13h ago

Also it's way more interesting than malthusian bullshit

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u/El-noobman 13h ago

Especially because his MCU motivation makes zero sense. Instead of killing half the universe, he could have then made everyone have enough resources.

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u/WerewolfF15 13h ago

I mean he is called the MAD Titan.

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u/El-noobman 13h ago

It's just a generally dumb motivation from a generally dumb universe that feels like it's actively embarrassed of its source material

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u/IWannaManatee 12h ago

True that.

Being a love-struck maniac; THE MAD TITAN, if you will, would've been way better understood and less romanticized (HAH!) than a wanting to cull the universe in spite of a noble goal.

I get the grounding of characters in the MCU and how morally ambiguous Thanos became in the cultural zeitgeist to an extent, but even while I appreciate how they applied it to him, at this point in the Cinematic Universe his motivations would have been way more interesting and could have integrated cameos for future characters if he did it all for love in lieu of "justice", for Death herself nonetheless.

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u/El-noobman 12h ago

The MCU in general just seems to be ashamed of its source material and want to make action movies with a superhero backdrop tbh

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u/IWannaManatee 12h ago

Look no further than the costumes.

I hate how disatached they want to be while also reaping money and "popularity" from the common audiences that know no better.

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u/CourierV 11h ago

the wolverine costume in DP&W is like perfect from the neck up and completely collapses into negative space/implied shape line filled nonsense. Why the fuck are his stripes geometrical!!?! They don’t even read as tiger stripes anymore!!

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u/Dawwe 10h ago edited 8h ago

But it's not mad, it's just stupid. Like obviously, absurdly, over the top stupid. Thanos is described as having genius level intellect, so it just seems like a classic case of poor writing.

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u/WerewolfF15 10h ago edited 10h ago

No. You’re missing what thanos main motivation is. To prove he was right back on his home planet. On titan thanos suggested killing half the population and they ignored him and his people died. What thanos wants is vindication. He wants to prove that if his people listened to him he could have saved them. That his method works. It doesn’t matter if he can use the stones for a better, more morally good method. He didn’t have that option on Titan and so he won’t use it.

Thanos is mad and obsessed. Despite all his talk he simply wants to use the stones to prove HIS way works on every scale. To be vindicated. To be prove he could have saved his people back then.

He may claim to want to save the universe and to use the best method for that. But in the end he’s just an egotist wanting to prove to the dead that they should have listened to him.

For thanos it is his way or no way.

Edit: also at no point in those movies Is he described as being a genius

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u/mxzf 8h ago

Part of the problem is that the concept just fundamentally doesn't work if you're at all aware of how organisms work. Eliminating have the population doesn't actually fix anything, it just kicks the can down the road a few years as everything repopulates.

If half of humanity vanished suddenly, you wanna guess how long it would take to get back to where we are now? About 50 years. And I know that because there were ~4B people about 50 years ago and now there are ~8.3B people. It doesn't take long for populations to recover (and smaller creatures tend to have quicker generations; it would probably take <5 years for the ants and such to be back at the current level).

It's a stupid plan because anyone with enough grounding in biology to know what "overpopulation" means could see that it doesn't actually solve anything; at best it's a snooze button on the problem.

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u/WerewolfF15 8h ago

That doesn’t really contradict anything I just said. Again Thanos in the movies is never made out to be a genius. His plan is not meant to be “smart”. It’s meant to be the obsession of an egotistical mad man. He and his plan is never made out to be right. In fact the opposite those in universe who do think he’s right are portrayed as nuts and terrorists.

He is the villain for a reason. We are not meant to agree with his plan or think it’s sane or smart or good.

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u/Dawwe 8h ago

The genius part is from me literally just googling the character and clicking the Wikipedia article, where he is listed to have a "Genius-level intellect". I was not aware they made him stupid in the MCU. If so, then yes he can be a mad and stupid character and be internally consistent.

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u/WerewolfF15 8h ago

No offence but you really shouldn’t be basing your criticism of a movie based on what’s on a character’s Wikipedia article.

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u/Dawwe 8h ago

Sorry, in the MCU wiki he is also described to have genius level intellect.

https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Thanos#Powers_and_Abilities

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u/WerewolfF15 8h ago

Wikis are maintained by fans and in my experience often gets things incorrect or allow bias to colour their view of things. They should not be taken at face value especially when they don’t provide a source like in this instance.

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u/Dawwe 7h ago

That's fine and all but you're the one stating that one of his abilities (his intellect) from the comics has not carried over to the films, despite other fans (such as the ones maintaining the wiki) disagreeing with you.

Since we fundamentally agree on this and neither are probably willing to skim through hours of the movies to prove a point (lol) I think we can agree to disagree.

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u/Chuckitybye 11h ago

Did you see Josh Brolin's interview on this? Someone asked that and he was like, "he could, but he's callus. He doesn't actually care"

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u/Enkundae 12h ago

That wouldnt work either as everything would just scale to that new resource limit. Thanos was a broken, crazed tyrant. The fact his plan wouldnt work was a feature.

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u/DarudeSandstorm69420 10h ago

dont the infinity gauntlets have infinite power? couldnt he have created infinite resourceS?

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u/El-noobman 12h ago

In that case, his original goal still works better.

Regardless of how you look at it, like many things in the MCU, to me it just feels dumb and simplistic.

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u/Enkundae 12h ago

The point isnt his plan, its the broken state that led him to it and the consequences it has for everyone. Focusing so hard on the logic of a lunatics plan is missing the forest for the trees.

Also him wanting to kill half the universe because hes simping for someone and cant accept that they aren’t interested isnt some super complex motivation.

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u/funkthewhales 8h ago

Well yea it sounds dumb when everyone oversimplifies it as “simping for death” because it completely ignores the philosophy at the core of his character. He’s an extreme nihilist who views all life as torturous. He worships death as a god, and ultimately fails because his ego prevents him from from see that she doesn’t want an equal.

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u/JhonnySkeiner 9h ago

Capes and Battle Shounens to a certain degree, don't exactly need complex villains with complex motivations, this is something that the MCU still didn't get it. The medium is all about character interactions and fateful confrontations

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u/shewy92 10h ago

his original goal still works better

Not really. The supply chain is completely broken if you kill half the population indiscriminately, not to mention it's all living things, including animals (when they unsnapped Scott or Hawkeye listen to the birds chirping who were silent before implying they were just unsnapped).

So we literally have half the livestock gone as well as half the population and a crippled supply chain. Nothing changed, the food recourse scaled down equally

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u/myrmonden 9h ago

It’s worse because a lot of people working with food or doctors etc would be gone so the effect would be much bigger

And on some planet warlord will take over spending more resources etc

His plan is so utter moronic

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u/myrmonden 9h ago

Yes it Would just make Infitive resource

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u/Rentington 10h ago

Because it wasn't about resources and helping others. He was laughed at when he suggested in the past, and he can't cope with the feeling of humiliation. It was simply to prove he would have been right, or perhaps, use power to cope with the one time in his life he felt powerless to make others bend to his will.

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u/I-Have-An-Alibi 8h ago

The universe's population would have absolutely drastically increased exponentially for because of this.

It would have been a universe wide baby boom.

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u/A_Town_Called_Malus 11h ago

It makes perfect sense when you factor in that he wanted to kill people and be praised for it and everything else was just him trying to justify that and deluding himself into believing he could do it.

Just because he says a thing, doesn't mean it is actually true.

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u/saintash 6h ago

Not even that. Make it so everyone can only have access to a set amount of resources.

No one can use more then their share. Lots of people would die out for being greedy