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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I have also wondered about that. I don't know that it's relevant, but it depends on what story they want to tell in Endgame. Will it be strictly about beating Thanos and undoing the Snap, or will there be more world-building elements to set up Phase 4?
A lot of it may depend on what happens in Captain Marvel. I have a feeling that the Kree-Skrull conflict isn't going to be localized to that film, but that it's going to be a setup for what's next in the MCU. After all, something has to explain why Carol is absent for 30 years. We will have to wait for March to find out.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 4th 2019 at 11:43:51 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"According to Wo G: No, it didn't matter if a place was already culled. And yes, that means that the Asgardians got halved AGAIN!
Considering what Hela did already and the casualties during the battle with Thanos, could there be more than a handful of Asgardians left? I mean, he blew up their freaking ship. We never saw Valkyrie, so maybe she took a few people and escaped...
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 4th 2019 at 11:45:58 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"He let half of the people inside it escape via Word of God.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianI love the contrast between the fight on Earth and the fight on Titan. He doesn't use the Time Gem on Earth, save for reversing Vision's death. He's not doing anything he couldn't have done on Titan. He's just. Doing it harder. I guess?
It's been my headcanon since the film came out that both Strange and Thanos are sandbagging the fight. Thanos is trying to pressure Strange into revealing the Time Gem so that he can Infinity Gauntlet it away from him. Strange has seen the future and knows that the exact second the Time Gem comes into play, Thanos will portal him into a black hole or rip his soul out of his body or some shit.
Thanos needs to keep the pressure on Strange, but not be so overwhelming that Strange decides that the Time Gem would be safer if he just let himself be killed and never revealed it. He's trying to stay in that delicate middle ground where beating him seems possible, but not without the Gem.
Strange, meanwhile, is trying to find an opportunity to surrender the Gem to Thanos at a time that's suitably desperate enough that it doesn't look like an obvious trap. He needs Thanos to walk away from this fight
- With the Time Gem in his possession.
- With enough confidence in a hard-won victory that he truly believes he forced Strange to surrender it, and doesn't think twice about what transpired.
- Before he actually kills anyone.
Neither Thanos nor Strange is really trying to win. Both are putting on a show of force for the other's benefit. Hence things like the surprisingly survivable moon toss. That moment where they're just casting spells back and forth at each other is basically Murder Ballet.
It's strictly headcanon and there's no real evidence in the film of it. But it holds up pretty well when contrasted with the Earth battle, in which Thanos has nobody to impress so he just wastes the Avengers with minimal effort, and the Knowhere "fight" in which he immediately Reality Gem'd the Guardians.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 4th 2019 at 9:50:08 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Why can't both of these be the case? I absolutely agree with this analysis ![]()
of the battle on Titan. Both Thanos and Strange are carefully planning their moves in an I Know You Know I Know sense. Thanos can't drive Strange to such desperation that he destroys the Time Gem (or simply dies without surrendering it), and Strange has to surrender the stone believably enough that Thanos doesn't smell a rat.
The fact that Thanos never again deploys the Reality Gem in the way he did on Knowhere is telling.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 4th 2019 at 11:53:08 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Are you sure? Because fans have already proposed a dozen ways that Strange could have beaten Thanos, the Portal Cut trick being the most obvious. Just slice off the hand holding the Infinity Gauntlet and bam, done.
There are others: he could have used the Time Stone to lock Thanos into an infinite loop like he did with Dormammu, and so forth and so on.
The only conclusions we can draw are either that Strange's powers just don't work on Thanos the way we've seen them work on other people, or that he saw that simply beating Thanos here would not have won them a final and conclusive victory.
Consider how Strange took Loki out of the picture in Thor: Ragnarok and ask yourself why he didn't do the same thing to Hela. After all, she's an even bigger "interdimensional threat" than Loki, isn't she? The Doylist answer is, "We needed there to be a movie," but that doesn't get you anywhere.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 4th 2019 at 12:29:13 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The way I see it, Thanos is immortal and has waited this long to erase half of all life, he can wait and plan for another hundred years or so for the Avengers to die of old age before he tries again. Beating Thanos is impossible, the only way to stop Thanos for good is to let him win, make him realize he was wrong, and reverse the consequences of the Snap.
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The point is that we don't see it attempted. Ergo, either there's a reason why it won't work that we aren't told about, or Strange is deliberately choosing not to try. If the latter, then his plan must include not beating Thanos here and now. The only other explanation is Doylist and I'm not satisfied with that.
Tony manages to draw blood from him with four Infinity Stones on the gauntlet. If a human can do it with human technology, he's not invulnerable. Thor nearly kills him after he has all six stones.
I agree with you that the resolution may come down to convincing Thanos that he was wrong. That would be totally awesome IMO because no MCU villain has ever been beaten that way before.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 4th 2019 at 12:34:56 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Thanos' plan is logistically idiotic, and halving planets who were already halved, or halving people who don't have a planet (Asgard), is evidence of that.
Is it weird to anyone else that aside from Heimdall, Loki, Gamora, and Vision, Thanos didn't actively kill any heroes, even when it would've made more sense to? Vision and Gamora were to get stones. Loki had just tried to kill him. Heimdall saved someone from the culling, and sent out a warning to others to be prepared. But in the final battle, he could've easily killed almost everyone in that last charge. On Knowhere, he could've killed Mantis and Drax. He could've killed Thor in the opening, especially after Thor stated he'd kill him for killing Heimdall, but instead he just went into full on Bond Villain Stupidity. We know he knows Asgardians (well, Jotuns...) can breathe in space.
Stark didn't even inflict that much damage. Thanos outright stated that Nebula almost killed him on her own (offscreen). Gamora believed it was possible, and also never dissuaded Drax from that possibility.
It is weird to think that Thanos has a stronger will than Ego, though, given the struggle Mantis had putting him down, and not even doing it all the way.
Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Jan 4th 2019 at 11:36:36 AM
Like, if the problem would then be “now some other bloke has the Infinity Gauntlet”, it wouldn’t be that hard for Strange to solve that. He could lie to the others “uh, don’t use the Gauntlet after we pull it off; it’ll explode your brain.”note Or simply overpower them. Worst case scenario, Quill with the Gauntlet or Tony with it would still be magnitudes easier to stop than Thanos with it.
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Not even probably, definitely. Direct contact with most stones has been deadly for almost everyone, thoughout the MCU. Quill, half-Celestial, could barely hold one. The Mind, Space, and Power stones, all needed to be harnessed through a device (Time and Reality as well, if you count the Eye of Agammotto and Reality's liquid form).
Wong did, so I'd be surprised if Either didn't know it was possible.
Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Jan 4th 2019 at 11:40:55 AM
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It all makes sense if you consider Thanos' psychology.
- He wants to be right just as much as he wants to win. He's spent his whole life being reviled for his ideology and the only way he can truly feel vindicated is if his enemies witness his ultimate triumph. Killing them deprives him of that satisfaction.
- He is merciful, in a twisted kind of way. He wants as many people as possible saved for the cullings; killing them ahead of time is a waste and messes with his "half of them die" math.
- He craves a challenge, and keeps looking for enemies worthy of his time. He tests everyone he meets to see if they can stand up to him physically and/or psychologically. If they can, he tries to recruit them rather than wasting all of that potential. If they are no threat to him, then why should he bother killing them since they'll eventually get culled anyway?
He kills Heimdall to prove a point: "I beat you, so fucking stay down". He kills Loki because Loki has betrayed him multiple times. He kills Gamora as the sacrifice required to acquire the Soul Stone. He is quite willing to kill Tony, but uses the threat of doing so to get Strange to surrender. He kills Vision because he has to in order to get the Mind Stone. Everyone else he leaves alive because of the reasons above.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 4th 2019 at 12:48:04 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Open portal, let character get partway through, close portal. It's as simple as things come. If the sorcerers hadn't been using it as a tactic before Strange came along, he'd certainly have thought of it himself.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

This is part of what makes him such a fantastic villain.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 4th 2019 at 11:32:01 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"