Right, so overin this thread, we’re kicking around the new movie. Woot!
But we’ve also begun discussing ways that the Avengers could have dealt with Thanos and defeated him. Sadly, their solution to the problem appears to be the old fallback of punching him. Repeatedly. By many people.
Or, to maintain my thesis: the Avengers are a bunch of lunkhead morons.
We’ve hit on a few things:
Using Dr. Strange’s portal to chop off Thanos hand and play keepaway with the Infinity Gauntlet while he bleeds out.
Using the portal to make Thanos fall for an indefinite period. It worked on Loki in Ragnarok (“I was falling for TWO hours!”).
Get behind him and just lift him into orbit. Stark could certainly do that. Toss him into interstellar space and it’ll be forever - possibly literally - before he finds something to catch onto to get back moving.
At worst, these things will buy the Avengers time to come up with a better plan. But NOOOOOOO.
Well, you assume they would have worked. By the time Strange and Stark confront Thanos, he already has several of the stones. Maybe he could have just changed reality to leave Strange’s trap or perhaps his stone-enhanced power would have allowed him to pull his arm free before it was chopped. Guy had a building dropped on him with no ill effect, after all.
If you’re going on the premise that they did what had to be done to reach Strange’s one winning confrontation (even if no one but Strange knows it), I’d guess that Strange already saw the stuff you laid out fail among the 14-million-whatever attempts.
My guess is that, like iiandyiiii suggests, the way Strange saw to ultimately win was to let Thanos has the initial victory. I would also guess that Strange needed to let the others legitimately fight and lose, or else Thanos would have somehow figured Strange’s long term plan.
But, again, by the time Stark & Strange confront Thanos, he’s already up four out of six Infinity Stones where no one else had ever had more than one. Tricks like “Let’s fly him into space!” weren’t going to work like they did for previous foes.
All that’s true, but he’s clearly capable of being confused and made off-balance. Quill’s confusing set of attacks led to a decent assassination attempt. Keep him out-of-focus and seeing where it leads is better than just trying to punch him.
Honestly, I have the same issue with the final fight between the armies. The Avengers and the Wakandan army are being assaulted by a horde of bad guys seeking hand-to-hand combat. Have a wing of F-22s stand off at 20,000 feet and dust the mooks with surface-to-air ordinance. The best way to deal with an enemy is from a long way off.
Any other ways to deal with Thanos? If my D&D groups have taught me anything, creative problem solvers are a royal pain in the ass to the omnipotent.
None of these people exist to begin with and, according to the laws of physics, they couldn’t possibly have most of the powers they have even if they were real people. Flow with the fantasy and enjoy the theatrics.
Keeping him out of focus was already Plan A. Punching him was just a means to an end: keep Thanos off-guard with attacks until he was in position for Mantis to do her thing and then remove the glove while he’s incapacitated. Punching him was part of the solution but not the actual solution – it was just a means to an end for Mantis to get to him without getting toasted. Had Quill not gotten all punchy, it looked as though it would have worked.
If his exterior can take a severe beating, who is to say his interior can’t? Thanos might just wind up shooting a stream of liquefied Ant-Man out of his ass.
happened when one of his henchmen stuck his arm into a closing portal. We’ve seen no evidence they can open a portal around someone then close it. They’d have to open it near him and attempt to knock him into it - easier said than done. 2) and 3) are easily countered by the Space Stone, which he already had.
At what point? are we talking about during the fight on Titan? because at that point he already has the power stone (which can wipe out all life in a planet by simply touching it to the ground), the space stone (which completely invalidates any portal shenanigans) the reality stone (can literally alter reality) and the soul stone (power over life and death). The truth is they couldn’t beat Thanos, because he could have easily wiped them out several times over the moment he felt like it. That’s why letting him win was the only alternative that led to victory.
The plan wasn’t to just punch him, though. The plan was to keep at him long enough to keep him from catching a break, keep him from closing his fist, then have Mantis portal in to subdue him, and get the glove. Which, as these things go, isn’t too bad of a plan.
If somebody fought stupidly, it was Thanos. He could’ve just space-stoned them into the sun, for instance. But he really doesn’t use the stones for much more than release some energy blasts, and create an illusion or two.
Agreed on this point. The Wakandans have combat fighters. There was NO reason to for these guys to fight them hand to hand, other than have another obligatory fisticuffs scene.
Fanwank theory: We see after The Dusting that his Nintendo Power Glove looks pretty jacked up (as does his arm). Possibly any use of the stones weakened the integrity of the glove and, while Thanos was willing to use the stones at 5% or 1% or whatever minor power, he wasn’t willing to do Big Flashy Things with it and risk the glove not staying together for his actual moment of triumph.
Plus he sorta killed the dudes who made the glove in the first place which, you know, could have been better planned out.
Well, there isn’t such a thing as the “imagination” stone, so what he could do is limited to his imagination. Which, to me, doesn’t seem too developed. God, the things I would do if I had the time one alone…
