well, like 12% of a rant.
Except Dr Strange has the time stone and we know from his movie he knows how to use it* to reverse time and to put himself and others into timeloops. You have to ask why Dr Strange couldn’t defeat Thanos the same way he stopped Dormammu. Trap him in an infinite time loop, possibly with Strange sacrificing himself to keep Thanos in the timeloop.
- We can’t expect that Loki would know how to use the tesseract fully, or that vision would know how to use his, or the collector or Nova corp, so that explains why they didn’t use the stones against Thanos.
Reality stone powered up to ungodly levels by the Power stone probably trump the Time stone. The best time to stop Thanos was before he got any stones.
Plus the Space Stone to escape. Remember that he basically dissolved the supposedly inescapable Mirror Dimension.
Maybe Strange was less than confident that, one-on-one in some time pocket, Thanos wouldn’t just defeat Strange and take the stone. Thanos juiced up with multiple Infinity Stones and their powers is a different thing than Dormammu. I find it hard to think that any one stone could singularly negate the powers of another four stones combined.
There’s a lot more discussion of that on the movies stack exchange. The one I like the best is the idea that Thanos only has to eventually steal the stone, and he gets infinite tries. Strange sees this and thus is why he knows it won’t work.
you set the loop at 1 second- I don’t care how many trys he gets - it will never happen.
Of course - that doen’t get Dr. Strange’s main goal - and that is himelf keeping and being able to use the stone - it takes Thanos, Strange and the stone out of play - forever.
Also - when Strange first went to cast the time spell - the other magic dark dude was able to stop/prevent it somehow - I don’t think Thanos has that ability -but was interesting.
How long does it take to power blast Steve’s face off? Especially if you’re ready for it?
Can you even passively “set a loop”? With Dormammu, the trigger to restart was Steve’s death. Thanos doesn’t need to kill Strange though, just leverage the power from the other four stones to get the Time stone from him.
part of the point of the protection spell that Dr. Strange (for a minute there I thought you were referring to Rogers) had on the stone was that it was protected even in death. So, somehow you had to convince him to give up the stone willingly. (this was set up in the encounter with the dark magician at the beginning)
So - blasting him was not going to solve the problem.
As far as setting up the loop - I have no idea what is required - his abilities with it now seem he could do it pretty quikcly (as mentioned, the first attempt to use it failed due to the dark guy) - but he had ‘plenty of time’ to run thru 14,000,605 scenarios - he had ‘time’ to set this up as well .
You’re right that the previous loop reset on his death - I’m sure he could set it on other things as well, like at the complete extension of his middle finger.
Didn’t Ebony Maw imply that Thanos would would able to break past that spell anyway, but he wanted to be able to hand him the Time Stone when they got to titan?
Yeah, as I recall the issue wasn’t “Oh no, we’ll never get the stone off you” but that delivering the stone still on Strange would be doing half the job Thanos asked him to do.
thinking on it - you’re likely right on that.
I guess another reason why Dr Strange didn’t try to trap Thanos in a time loop is that although he knows the powers of the time stone, he has probably very little idea what the other stones can do. Too risky that Thanos can find a way to break the loop with the other stones, especially since he effectively has “infinite” tries.
Just stranding him somewhere is probably thwarted by the Space Stone, which in the comics granted teleportation as its most basic power (although I can’t recall if this use was established in the movie.) It’s possible Thanos could have also used the Space Stone to disrupt an attempt to force him partway through a portal to cut his hand off. The Time Stone would be a potential threat, but the film stated that Dr. Strange was avoiding using it to keep the Stone hidden from him. Thanos commented at some point, “you haven’t used your greatest weapon.”
Sure, the heroes strategy involved a lot of punching and kicking him, but it also involved using their powers for some cool-looking combos. I thought the fight on Titan was visually a lot more interesting than the typical Marvel-movie third act of “Let’s fight a million interchangeable monsters/aliens/whatever.” (Of course we got some of that too, in Wakanda, but at least the presence of Thanos’ minions made it a bit more interesting than if it was just a swarm of completely interchangeable goons. Plus, Thor’s entrance with Stormbreaker was cool as hell.)
It’s also worth keeping in mind that effectively Thanos has the Space stone and the Power stone before anyone is aware of his threat. Hulk, Thor and Loki (plus the rest of the Asgardians) couldn’t defeat him at that stage even when he only had the Power stone.
Meanwhile Thanos sends his Black Brotherhood goons straight for the other two stone on earth he know about Time and Mind. Coincidentally Dr Strange and Scarlet Witch + Vision combo are also probably the only characters who had a chance of taking down Thanos if they caught him early with only two stones. Thanos then leaves to go to Knowhere for the reality stone.
Which means the earliest time they could have mounted a combined assault on Thanos with a proper team, is on Titan when he already has three stones. At that stage anything involving teleporting him isn’t going to work because of the space stone, the power stone can shoot blasts powerful enough to even take Thor down and the Reality stone can do, well we don’t know exactly except that it can create illusions and split peoples bodies into slices while they remain alive (but unable to move)
I’d argue the Avengers aren’t morons, destroying one of the stones was the only chance they had, once Thanos had three stones they had no chance of stopping him in any other way. Also even if they had destroyed the mind stone in a way that Thanos couldn’t reverse, well he still has five stones making him more than powerful enough to obliterate the remaining avengers + all life on earth as spite for the humans stopping him.
One thing I didn’t really understand, was, how do you destroy these things? They are leftover from the beginning of creation.
Wanda destroyed the mind stone briefly, but was it actually destroyed, or was it just dispersed, to re-coalesce at some later date at some point in space? (Obviously, with the rewinding of time, she never actually destroyed it, but if she had.)
They also talk about destroying the Time stone, and the only reason that they don’t is because Strange has vowed to protect it, not because he can’t.
It seems, with as powerful as these things are, they are not things that you just destroy, lightly or contemplatively.
Given that they’ve been around for a while indicates that they are pretty durable.
IWSTM, that destroying them would have one of a few effects. Either they just cannot be destroyed, and Wanda didn’t actually destroy the mind stone, just let off a big energy blast that maybe shot it into orbit, or they can be destroyed, but they will reform over time, or they can be destroyed, but that damages the universe. A universe without the time stone doesn’t have time anymore, for instance.
Thats handwaved away by saying Wanda can destroy the mind stone because her powers come from it (but none of the others characters can destroy a stone). I agree with you the mind stone probably would have reformed somehow but maybe that takes millions of years?
Anyway, even if they do destroy the mind stone, pissed off Thanos on earth with five remaining stones is still going to end very badly.
Yeah, Thanos didn’t need the stones to go across the galaxy wiping out half of civilizations. He was just powerful and had gathered an army.
That may have been a future that Strange saw if they did manage to defeat Thanos and take the stones. Thanos may have gone ahead and just started killing everyone conventionally again.
Yeah, when Vision said that she could destroy it because her power is “similar to it” (or something like that), I thought “well, that’s awfully convenient :dubious:.” But I was forgetting that in the MCU Wanda’s powers actually came from Baron Strucker’s experiments using Loki’s scepter, meaning they actually came from the Mind Stone. So that made it feel at least a bit more justified.
Whoa, dark, sure you’re not DC?