No matter what fresh development comes our way, you can pretty much guarantee that the Marvel fanbase will find some way of fighting about it, so when Netflix announced over Christmas that Avengers: Infinity War was available to US users on their site, perhaps it only figures that a social media debate broke out about one little word in the synopsis.
When the Marvel megahit was first posted on the platform, the plot summary read as follows:
“Superheroes amass to stop intergalactic sociopath Thanos from acquiring a full set of Infinity Stones and wiping out half of all life in the universe.”
And while there isn’t a whole lot to object to here, some fans took issue with the Mad Titan being diagnosed as an “intergalactic sociopath.”
The issue likely stems in part from how vague and subjective a term ‘sociopath’ is, with the word having no clear-cut and universally recognized definition. What’s more, since most of us aren’t experts on psychology and none of us are capable of reading the mind of a fictional alien tyrant, there’s plenty of room for uncertainty on whether Thanos is a sociopath, a psychopath, or neither of the above.
In any case, it looks like Netflix would prefer to avoid this rabbit hole entirely, since the synopsis has now been changed to describe the Infinity War villain as an “Invader. Annihilator. So-called savior.” And while this doesn’t exactly close the floodgates for further discussions on the Mad Titan’s psyche, most fans will have probably discovered something else to debate about before the week is out.
Regardless, as we move into 2019, the majority of Marvel-related discourse has long shifted from Avengers: Infinity War to Avengers: Endgame. And you can expect the discussions to continue right up until the film hits theaters on April 26th, at which point, the fans will probably be left with a whole new set of questions to consider.
