Avengers: Infinity War - Why Thanos Had To Kill To Save The Universe
It's not really a plot hole, guys...
There's been a lot of talk about Thanos recently. Some of it has rightly suggested that he could well be a better villain than Darth Vader. Some has proclaimed him the greatest character in Infinity War and the best ever villain in the MCU. Still more has fawned at his complexity and how sympathetic he is at times. All of it is entirely correct.
Less accurate though, is the suggestion that Thanos didn't have to go to the lengths he went to to save the universe from himself. There's a theory out there that says he could simply have harnessed the untold powers of the Infinity Gauntlet to solve the depleted resources of the universe without having to kill anyone. Some have even suggested that this is a yawning plot hole that takes away somewhat from the film's quality.
Putting aside the fact that Thanos is STILL an unstable figure who clearly enjoys killing even when it's out of necessity, he genuinely did not have any other way of enacting his plan. As soon as he believed the universe was doomed, his answer was as clear as the chin on his face.
So why not entertain the idea of simply going all Jesus Christ and conjuring up loaves and fishes for everyone? Well, because it's not that simple, is it?
As Agents Of SHIELD - still linked to the MCU remember, therefore still subject to the same logic - put it in the mid-season finale of season 4 "The Laws Of Inferno Dynamics," you cannot simply conjure matter out of nothing. There is not only a finite amount of food or resources for sustaining life, there is also a finite amount of matter, so even if Thanos wanted to, he couldn't snap everything.
Just as Eli Morrow's conjured matter is actually stolen from the Hell dimension, Thanos would have to plunder and destabilise somewhere else and it simply wouldn't be a long-term solution the same as wiping out the drain on those resources is. He might be mad, but he's definitely sensible too. And that isn't the same as his objectives being a plot-hole.