Hi, Alex. I’m afraid I’m one of those annoying people who does care about spoilers. I started writing up a response to your article and it wound up being so lengthy that I decided to just turn my comment into an article all its own.
Here’s the link if you’re interested in reading it.
I’d also like to address some of your points about Thanos, which I didn’t have room for in my article:
“While Thanos states his philosophy repeatedly, we don’t get an opposing viewpoint arguing against why his galactic culling is a bad thing (the other side isn’t presented to us until we see the fallout of his actions in the sequel Endgame).”
I should hope that it’s not necessary to point out why galactic genocide is a bad thing. That should be something that all the viewers just know. I would hope.
But even if you want to argue that point, you have to take into account that Infinity War does not exist in isolation. It is the 21st movie in a franchise. And every single one of those movies helps to establish the perspective of the side Thanos is fighting against.
There’s also the fact that, even with the story structured around Thanos, he’s still obviously the bad guy even if he’s the protagonist.
“You heard correctly, the film’s poor storytelling caused people to identify with a genocidal space tyrant.”
Um. No. Those people are joking. Those are memes.
Similar to the Star Wars jokes about how the “Empire did nothing wrong,” or calling someone “Rebel scum” whenever they criticize the Empire. Those people aren’t really sympathetic to the Empire. Those are just jokes.