Marvel Cinematic Universe

If so then Shuri and her creations, and potentially Rocket, Eitri, Vanko, and others, should still be above him.

Point taken,though I'm not sure I'd place Rocket above Stark in terms of intelligence,Shuri sure

The Nano-Armor/Bleeding Edge suit is also a 4 on the Super Weight scale.

It packs a fire power comparable to the Hulkbuster but is actually more resilient and compact.

I think Shuri and Stark would be about equal. Sure, the former has more impressive invention, but the latter is capable of keeping up despite working with less advanced stuff.

It's hard not to think that Okoye's Generic Love Interest Obsessed With Revenge was referring specifically to Tony when he said the rest of the world was catching up to Wakanda in terms of war tech.

Edited by HailMuffins on Jan 19th 2019 at 7:52:09 AM

Re: Nano armor - the first thing we see Stark do is rely on something/someone more capable to revert a large scale disaster. Black Dwarf walked its attack off, Ebony Maw had no problems rendering it ineffective, and Thanos mocked Stark on its power to his face. It's subject to the same problems it seems people have in evaluating Stark generally - flashy, but not actually as effective as people want to believe.

Shuri has been canonically established as smarter and more capable in the films, their companion comics, and, IIRC, by Feige and the directors.

Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Jan 19th 2019 at 5:08:34 AM

Remember, the topic came originally up because we were talking about the lack of Avengers with actual superpowers...and on this scale Tony and Shuri are a zero, maybe a one if you count crazy smart as superpower. No matter how great the suits are they can design, they are still "normal" humans.

I missed that part. I basically just skim the most recent page and skip preceding pages since my last posts. I'm trying to limit responses so as to work on being more concise and limiting fruitless arguments on the internet.

Okay, didn't know about Feige, therefore I stand corrected.

And while Cull Obsidian (he's not called Black Dwarf here) did walk off the blaster, he did with everything else the heroes threw at him.

If anything, it says more about him than the armor.

As for Maw, he took down Strange and Wong in a straight Wizard Duel, I don't think he quite counts.

Edited by HailMuffins on Jan 19th 2019 at 8:11:13 AM

I did a quick search for a source on Word of Feige, and didn't find it yet, so before I log off for the night, I'll concede that it might be apocryphal.

At the very least, another MCU producer did state as such, and Feige has not said anything to the contrary that I know of.

But, according to what we've seen in the universe itself, Shuri is indeed smarter, even without using Vibranium (which the Starks did know of).

Honestly, I don't care, because being "smart" is relative. realistically speaking nobody can know EVERYTHING anymore. so if Shuri knows more about Visions body than Banner and Stark together, it makes perfectly sense since she has worked with vibranium her whole life. But if Tony starts doctoring people or Shuri start to lecture Jane Forster on the whatever Rosenstein bridge, then I get a problem.

At the end of the day the answer to "who is the smartest" is the same answer as "who will win in a fight": whoever the writer wants to win/outsmart everyone else.

If a scientist have a specific field they are best at, they shouldn’t be lecture-red on it by another scientist not in the field.

Edited by slimcoder on Jan 19th 2019 at 5:06:06 AM

Speaking from personal experience, the Omnidisciplinary Scientist trope is one we should really stop abusing.

That'll never work for the same reason TV still thinks the Christian Hell turns people into demons or reincarnation is supposed to be great: it'll only happen when writers bother to learn a basic amount of X works, and they'll never bother, because a) most writers are lazy, hence why they chose this career, and b) a better researched story is not necessarily a better one. Most Golden Age Sci-fi were very accurate to the science at the time, about as much as they are an utter drag to read.

Edited by HailMuffins on Jan 19th 2019 at 10:16:11 AM

Hey, as someone who wants to become a movie producer... shut up. Take that.

You don't have to actually know that much science to realize it's very broad and often hyperspecialized and therefore unconstructive to depict supergenius scientists as masters of all trades.

(Also, if writers are so lazy, why don't you try writing a dang screenplay. Or book. Or short story. It's harder than it looks.)

Edited by alliterator on Jan 19th 2019 at 8:23:06 AM

Let Stark be the suit and AI guy, Banner be the radiation guy, Shuri be the Vibranium girl, Rocket be the spaceship and bomb guy, Erskine be the dead steroids guy, Selvig be the dimensional portal guy, Jane be the fake dimensional portal girl who's actually just a bland love interest in disguise and never does anything scientific, Hank, Janet, and Foster be the quantum particle trio, and Maya and Killian be the turning-crippled-veterans-into-thermonuclear-bombs duo.

Simple.

Shuri isn't just vibranium. She's nanotechnology, physics, psychological conditioning, prosthetics, microsurgery...

Not to mention pranking the king: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5s1N40YukA

Honestly as soon as she brought her Beads up, I was tempted to pull out my phone in the theater to get that part myself.

All done using Vibranium though.

Vibranium is basically a science field in itself, like the Pym Particle. It's a do-anything metal and Shuri's job is to make it do anything.

Or, well, I guess we don't know how she fixed Bucky's psychological conditioning. But it was probably by injecting Vibranium into his brain or something.

Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Jan 19th 2019 at 1:13:59 PM

Tony and Shuri are omnidisciplinary the same way: they have one Thing (power armour and vibranium, respectively) and they're an expert in anything the writer can plausibly say leads to that/is derived from that.

That's looking at it backwards though. They have proven to have diverse skills outside of that "one thing", and are occasionally able to implement those skills into that one thing.

Tony, for example, is a creative weapons engineer, but also an A.I. developer, chemical synthesizer (given his dad's notes), plus work on propulsion, holograms, etc. Only some of those things actually work into power armor.
And then they throw in nanotechnology...

"Only some of those things actually work into power armor"

Eh, I reckon I can work them all in.

• "creative weapons engineer": The armour is a weapon.
• "an A.I. developer": The AI helps him run the suit.
• "chemical synthesizer (given his dad's notes)": That chemical is how he powers the suit.
• "work on propulsion": Suit needs propulsion to fly.
• "holograms": Unusual User Interface for the suit.
• "nanotechnology": Lets the suit do extra fancy tricks.

The thing is in terms of real-world intelligence it doesn't really work that way. AI development stands out to me as completely different to most of his skills (like mechanical stuff, and I guess energy stuff). This isn't that unusual for fictional super-geniuses, but he flits between several specialties according to what the plot needs.

Shuri kind of has the same (weapons, medicine, communications, magic sand) but I guess you could say she just knows vibranium really well and figures things out from there.

...somehow it didn't occur to me that Shuri fixed Bucky's mind. At least not alone. In my mind she had a team of specialists working with her.

It's just...the mind is an extremely complicated thing and that isn't exactly Shuri's area of expertise. I also can't see her having the patience. Hell, I can buy her mother helping out with the mind stuff more than her. I always thought that she was around because Shuri developed the new arm for Bucky....