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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
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The difference between empathy and sympathy is that empathy is feeling another's feelings as if they're your own, whether through a personal connection or a similar experience, while sympathy is just acknowledging their pain and understanding something of why they might feel it — it does not require you to pity or forgive them. I understand the difference you're trying to draw, but the distinction you're making isn't correct.
Edited by alliterator on Feb 6th 2019 at 12:01:27 PM
Sympathy is more than just understanding someone's pain. Perhaps "pity" wasn't the right word for me to use, but sympathy does require some element of compassion towards a suffering person/character. Speaking as broadly as possible, a sympathetic character is one that we aren't supposed to feel happy about seeing them suffer.
I don't think that applies to Thanos. Thanos suffers when Gamora dies, but in that moment we are supposed to loathe him for doing it. Thanos expressed some hint of sadness at the news that Maw died, but we're supposed to be glad that Maw is gone. Thanos tearfully says that he sacrificed everything for his plan, but at that point we're supposed to be horrified that his plan went through at all.
He's not a sympathetic character.
You can feel more than one way about something, at different points during a work — at the same time, sometimes. That's allowed. Emotions are complex, and they strike people different ways. A character who is sympathetic in one moment does not necessarily need to be maximally sympathetic forever and at all times. These things are not binary.
Which does mean that yes, you can empathize with someone's pain while not sympathizing with their views, or them personally. That's also fine.
Edited by Unsung on Feb 6th 2019 at 1:24:11 PM
I don't think that applies to Thanos. Thanos suffers when Gamora dies, but in that moment we are supposed to loathe him for doing it.
These are two different things, which is where the logical leaps in your argument comes from.
For one, a character who is sympathetic is not a character who is always sympathetic in every situation period. Just because we're meant to sympathize with them, doesn't mean we're supposed to believe that everything they do is worthy of sympathy: those simply are not the same thing.
But more to the point, even if "a character who we don't ever want to see suffer" was what being sympathetic meant (it's not), it still wouldn't also mean "a character whose actions we are never supposed to disagree with."
Those little moments of vulnerability or tenderness that give away to the man inside all he monster.
Which is usually immediately lost once you are reminded that a monster is still a monster.
Look at the scenes with Gamora & Nebula. He genuinly praises & loves Gamora but in the same breath he will call Nebula a failure & a waste of spare parts as if the sheer differences in treatment doesn’t even register to him.
Edited by slimcoder on Feb 6th 2019 at 12:22:07 PM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."![]()
Well, that's not the part you're supposed to empathize with. People are more complex than their worst actions — they have to be. That being said, if Thanos's worst actions outweigh any sympathy or empathy you might have felt for him, I think that's understandable too. I think that would be, you know, within expected parameters, as a writer.
Edited by Unsung on Feb 6th 2019 at 1:23:31 PM
I've said numerous times that we're not supposed to agree with Thanos, and that Thanos being unsympathetic is incidental to that. What more do you want from me?
I think my favorite Thanos moment in the whole film is the contrast between him making that loving speech to Gamora about how he wants her on his side and would never lie to her or manipulate her, and then once she continues to defy him he turns around and tortures Nebula to make her do what she wants without ever seeing the irony. He's "the ends justify the means" taken to the point of sheer ignorance, and it exposes him for not just a hypocrite, but a hypocrite who is chronically unable to understand how much he contradicts themselves.
That's what good relateability does for characters like Thanos. He's a contradiction, a hypocrite and a fool with a lot of power and conviction that turns him from a madman to a monster. Writers need to make us understand, even halfway adhere, to where characters like that are coming from in order for us then to understand why and how they're so far from where they think they are (otherwise you end up with Malekith). The parts about him that draw you in are exactly what make the parts that repel you more impactful.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 6th 2019 at 12:57:26 PM
I think that's the strange thing about his supposed love for his children. I can buy that Thanos believes that he loves them due to Brolin's acting and that one scene of him with little Gamora. But I never believed he actually demonstrated anything resembling what we know as love for them, partly because I don't think the film did as good a job of showing him actually caring for them as it should've and it definitely doesn't help that I've always felt the GOTG films underserved Gamora and Nebula in this area. Even his abuse of them is largely an Informed Attribute that we infer from the way Gamora and Nebula talk about him.
My interpretation is that Thanos' idea of "love" for Gamora is less like the way that a parent would love a child and more like the way someone might love a car they built.
He doesn't see love as something that needs to be mutual, or at least he doesn't recognize that Gamora's loathing of him is detrimental to their relationship. Gamora is his trophy; he recognized her potential as a little child and trained her to be the deadliest assassin in the universe. He's proud of his work on her, and so he loves her as his personal accomplishment. Meanwhile, because Nebula is inferior, he sees her as his own failure, and therefore resents her.
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Well, I certainly wouldn't want to see it in detail. We see the result all over Nebula's body and we see her suspended in the air, suffering. I think that is enough to make the point. And we explored in detail the scars he left on their mind in Vol 2.
Edited by Swanpride on Feb 6th 2019 at 1:20:02 AM
I did sympathize with him and I think its a little weird to say that he was not meant to be sympathized with. The scenes are pretty clear in that regard. Being irredeemable and evoking some sort of sympathy is not mutually exclusive.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianHonestly, I don't understand the criticism of nobody telling the flaws of Thanos plan to him. What? Do you believe Tony has a Power Point presentation ready in his armour titled "why mass genocide is bad and it wouldn't solve the resources problem", and sitting Thanos down and showing said presentation was the only future where the Avengers won?
I mean, I'm sure most of us here before this movie could tell him that mass genocide wouldn't work, but didn't had the the knowledge (be it research, investigations, numbers...) to make a compelling case other that is morally wrong. Remember this guy had all his life making the argument that mass genocide us the only way. It would be weird if Tony or any other hero came up and say " finally! I had researched all my life for why genocide wouldn't solve the limited resources problem and have an argument ready just in case a mad alien came trying to do just that! Leave it to me guys!!" I mean, how weird would be that?
...well, now that I think about it, I can see Tony totally be all: " I was researching on how to solve the limited resources on Earth and came with random mass genocide, but I did the math and didn't work. So I got this, let me talk to the purple guy"

The directors say that we can empathize with Thanos. Empathize means we can relate to him, or at least understand where he's coming from. Sympathize means we should pity him. They're not the same thing.