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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Official Trailer

jason10mm

Gold Member
Don't know the villain here but apparently he can whoop on Thanos so WOW this is going to be a must watch for me.
I dunno, if EVERY villain from here on out could ragdoll Thanos like bitch, why didn't they go deal with him instead i
Of getting snapped or take the infinity stones for themself?

Seeing power creep turn all the OG characters into chumps isn't the way, IMHO.
 
^^^

Feck, I dunno guys. I have no fecking idea who this villian is. I read that he can whoop Thanos in YouTube comments. Also heard this is supposed to be like Infinity War but the trailer did nothing for me. I'm sort of curious to see it. That's it. There's no Infinity War type hype for me.

IMO After EndGame its all gone downhill for me but I still watch the movies. I just don't get as hyped as for these movies.
 
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Ulysses 31

Member
Seeing power creep turn all the OG characters into chumps isn't the way, IMHO.
Not just them but all the new powerful villains and heroes that are introduced will need some explanation what they were up to after the snap happened because some of them were clearly still around(Gods of Olympus, Eternals ).
 

Doom85

Member
Kang probably didn’t have a version of himself in the main universe. Remember, the TVA was keeping the multiverse in check until Sylvie fucked everything up at the end of Loki Season 1. So an explanation has been already provided.

As for Zeus and his people, come on, he was so overly cautious in avoiding any potential harm he wasn’t even willing to tangle with Gorr, you think he’d think for a second he’d challenge Thanos?!

Also, rewatch Infinity War, Thanos gets all the Stones in a pretty short amount of time, most of the universe as a whole wouldn’t have heard about it until after the Snap. And also those who could help might not necessarily know where Thanos was headed. It’s why Captain Marvel is nowhere to be seen in IW, and only luckily ran into Tony and Gamora afterwards.

I’m not sure which new villains in Phase 4 require an explanation so far. Someone like The Mandarin wouldn‘t have been informed about the Avengers fighting Thanos until after the fact. We know where Wanda was obviously. Gorr was just an ordinary mortal during the events of IW/Endgame. Namor wouldn’t have been interested in what was going on in the surface world until it was too late. None of these characters’ existences feel contradictory.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Kang probably didn’t have a version of himself in the main universe. Remember, the TVA was keeping the multiverse in check until Sylvie fucked everything up at the end of Loki Season 1. So an explanation has been already provided.

As for Zeus and his people, come on, he was so overly cautious in avoiding any potential harm he wasn’t even willing to tangle with Gorr, you think he’d think for a second he’d challenge Thanos?!

Also, rewatch Infinity War, Thanos gets all the Stones in a pretty short amount of time, most of the universe as a whole wouldn’t have heard about it until after the Snap. And also those who could help might not necessarily know where Thanos was headed. It’s why Captain Marvel is nowhere to be seen in IW, and only luckily ran into Tony and Gamora afterwards.

I’m not sure which new villains in Phase 4 require an explanation so far. Someone like The Mandarin wouldn‘t have been informed about the Avengers fighting Thanos until after the fact. We know where Wanda was obviously. Gorr was just an ordinary mortal during the events of IW/Endgame. Namor wouldn’t have been interested in what was going on in the surface world until it was too late. None of these characters’ existences feel contradictory.
Eh, thats a perfectly acceptible comic book answer, but it really robs these new characters of agency and depth to say they were just humming along, TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS to all the planet invasions and MASSIVE BATTLES the Avengers and friends were engaged in leading up to IW. Thanos didn't seem too careful with his master plan, I'm sure his end game (heh heh) was a well known topic amongst any species reading the galactic news.

If the writers keep Thanos as a galactic big bad, worthy of fear and respect to even the new villains, then it does service to the sacrifice of the OG avengers and better (IMHO) explains why no one else popped up to intervene, they simply COULDN'T FACE HIM. We don't need an escalating power level that STARTS with "I could beat Prime Thanos with one hand tied behind my back", if anything, casual War Cruiser Flagship smashing power levels like Capt Marvel should be dialed back as they are narrative breaking anyway.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
Kang probably didn’t have a version of himself in the main universe. Remember, the TVA was keeping the multiverse in check until Sylvie fucked everything up at the end of Loki Season 1. So an explanation has been already provided.

As for Zeus and his people, come on, he was so overly cautious in avoiding any potential harm he wasn’t even willing to tangle with Gorr, you think he’d think for a second he’d challenge Thanos?!

Also, rewatch Infinity War, Thanos gets all the Stones in a pretty short amount of time, most of the universe as a whole wouldn’t have heard about it until after the Snap. And also those who could help might not necessarily know where Thanos was headed. It’s why Captain Marvel is nowhere to be seen in IW, and only luckily ran into Tony and Gamora afterwards.

I’m not sure which new villains in Phase 4 require an explanation so far. Someone like The Mandarin wouldn‘t have been informed about the Avengers fighting Thanos until after the fact. We know where Wanda was obviously. Gorr was just an ordinary mortal during the events of IW/Endgame. Namor wouldn’t have been interested in what was going on in the surface world until it was too late. None of these characters’ existences feel contradictory.
The TVA allowed the snap to happen because of the sacred timeline so they have some moral culpability.

I'm assuming half the Olympian gods were blipped too at some point so I would find it strange to assume none of them would try to investigate or try to do anything about it. The whole avoiding Gorr thing seemed idiotically written when he knows Gorr was hunting them and he didn't try to stage a united offence/defence against him but would rather let Gorr continue his hunt unopposed. Gorr with the sword is formidable but against a squad of Gods it remains to be seen if even Gorr can overcome that, a (single?) God did manage to slay the sword wielder before.

I did say after the snap though but if new Earth heroes are presented as being around for ages then it does raise the question of what they were doing during Thanos' invasion and what they were doing if they didn't get blipped.

I doubt none of Namor's people didn't get blipped as well and thus I would find it strange Namor wouldn't find that worthy of investigation.
 
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Doom85

Member
The TVA allowed the snap to happen because of the sacred timeline so they have some moral culpability.

I'm assuming half the Olympian gods were blipped too at some point so I would find it strange to assume none of them would try to investigate or try to do anything about it. The whole avoiding Gorr thing seemed idiotically written when he knows Gorr was hunting them and he didn't try to stage a united offence/defence against him but would rather let Gorr continue his hunt unopposed. Gorr with the sword is formidable but against a squad of Gods it remains to be seen if even Gorr can overcome that, a (single?) God did manage to slay the sword wielder before.

I did say after the snap though but if new Earth heroes are presented as being around for ages then it does raise the question of what they were doing during Thanos' invasion and what they were doing if they didn't get blipped.

I doubt none Namor's people didn't get blipped as well and thus I would find it strange Namor wouldn't find that worthy of investigation.

But what would any of them have done once they were informed Thanos had been killed but not before he had destroyed the Stones? It’s possible the likes of Namor did investigate it, but once they learned everything they had no means to do anything about it. It took Scott’s knowledge of the Quantum Realm, Hank’s Pym Particles, and Tony’s genius mind (with some help from Bruce) to crack time travel. Mandarin and Namor have a lot of people at their command, but I doubt any of them have that level of intellect as well as experiences that could have made a similar breakthrough.

Which new heroes have been around that long? Shang-Chi, Kate Bishop, Moon Knight, and Ms. Marvel all became heroes post-Endgame. They did provide an explanation in Eternals for why they didn’t interfere (even if one thinks it makes them still look bad regardless, but still they do explain it).

As for Zeus, he did feel safe with all the gods gathered together, but he clearly didn’t consider it worth the casualties (especially if it might include him) to unite an offense against Gorr. Zeus also points out the Necrosword slowly kills its user so he believes Gorr won’t find how to get to Eternity before he dies. And unless I’m forgetting something, Zeus was technically right, since Gorr wouldn’t have been able to access the Bifrost on his own so he probably would have just died. But of course in that time before he died he’d kill other innocent people including possibly the captured kids so it’s understandable Thor would not wait around.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
But what would any of them have done once they were informed Thanos had been killed but not before he had destroyed the Stones? It’s possible the likes of Namor did investigate it, but once they learned everything they had no means to do anything about it. It took Scott’s knowledge of the Quantum Realm, Hank’s Pym Particles, and Tony’s genius mind (with some help from Bruce) to crack time travel. Mandarin and Namor have a lot of people at their command, but I doubt any of them have that level of intellect as well as experiences that could have made a similar breakthrough.

Which new heroes have been around that long? Shang-Chi, Kate Bishop, Moon Knight, and Ms. Marvel all became heroes post-Endgame. They did provide an explanation in Eternals for why they didn’t interfere (even if one thinks it makes them still look bad regardless, but still they do explain it).
Not much after Thanos' death but that was 5 years after the snap. Surely plenty would jump at the chance of retaliation/vengeance before that and there would've been some concerted effort to locate and stop him rather than moping around. With the slingring tech that can track and teleport people across the universe(and even the multiverse) it's not some impossible task and surely there's a lot of info out there on someone like Thanos.

I was talking about newly introduced heroes that were around for a long time obviously, heroes created in post-Endgame era don't need no explanation what they were doing when Thanos was gathering the stones.

I don't think Namor would be in a position to do anything about it on his own either consider half his people were gone but when he shows up in BPWF it's as if the snap had never affected his civilization which does IMO cheapen the blip phenomenon. But to my earlier point, if The Avengers were assembling a strike force with earth's mightiest against Thanos, Namor might've had something to contribute.
As for Zeus, he did feel safe with all the gods gathered together, but he clearly didn’t consider it worth the casualties (especially if it might include him) to unite an offense against Gorr. Zeus also points out the Necrosword slowly kills its user so he believes Gorr won’t find how to get to Eternity before he dies. And unless I’m forgetting something, Zeus was technically right, since Gorr wouldn’t have been able to access the Bifrost on his own so he probably would have just died. But of course in that time before he died he’d kill other innocent people including possibly the captured kids so it’s understandable Thor would not wait around.
Well, it doesn't specifically has to Zeus that has to plan something against Gorr, I assume the gods Gorr killed may have had relatives/friends who could've tried to organise something rather than letting Gorr go on with impunity.
 
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Doom85

Member
Not much after Thanos' death but that was 5 years after the snap. Surely plenty would jump at the chance of retaliation/vengeance before that and there would've been some concerted effort to locate and stop him rather than moping around. With the slingring tech that can track and teleport people across the universe(and even the multiverse) it's not some impossible task and surely there's a lot of info out there on someone like Thanos.

I was talking about newly introduced heroes that were around for a long time obviously, heroes created in post-Endgame era don't need no explanation what they were doing when Thanos was gathering the stones.

I don't think Namor would be in a position to do anything about it on his own either consider half his people were gone but when he shows up in BPWF it's as if the snap had never affected his civilization which does IMO cheapen the blip phenomenon. But to my earlier point, if The Avengers were assembling a strike force with earth's mightiest against Thanos, Namor might've had something to contribute.

Well, it doesn't specifically has to Zeus that has to plan something against Gorr, I assume the gods Gorr killed may have had relatives/friends who could've tried to organise something rather than letting Gorr go on with impunity.

-Thanos died like a week or two after the Snap. He uses the Stones again to destroy them, the Avengers find him, and then Thor beheads him. Then the five year time skip happens. No one was going to find Thanos on that random planet, and when the energy output occurred, the Avengers got there first.

As for “2014 Thanos”, he pretty much arrives instantly without warning at the Avengers base. And Strange and Wong couldn’t bring in people they don’t know about or don’t trust. So people like Mandarin and Namor would not be recruited.

Even if in the hour or so after 2014 Thanos’ arrival to his defeat by Tony the news had gotten out about an attack on Avengers base, A) I doubt any civilian got close enough to confirm it was Thanos, and besides they wouldn’t assume that since only the Avengers knew about the time travel and thus everyone would not think it could be Thanos since he was beheaded five years ago, and B) any organization, legit or criminal, would also be having their hands full with half the world’s population suddenly returning. Some alien force arriving who they aren’t sure the identities of would not be something they’d be running off to deal with within an hour.

As for IW, it’s a MASSIVE universe. In the mere days it took Thanos to gather the Stones, probably only a tiny percentage learned about what was happening. Hell, the Guardians only found out because against all astronomic odds they ran into Thor. And the only planets Thanos attacked were Earth (and only near the end, the arrival in New York was pretty short all things considered) and the planet The Collector lived on.

-Zeus referred to the gods Gorr killed as “lesser”, so while that might have just him being an asshole to the victims, it might legit mean most of the gods Gorr had killed so far were weaker than most of Zeus’ company so the remaining gods not in Zeus’ kingdom might have been too weak to stand against Gorr (not counting the Norse gods). Besides, the movie does show that while there are some exceptions primarily Thor and his fellow Norse gods, a lot of the gods have become self-centered and are looking out only for themselves.
 
I dunno, if EVERY villain from here on out could ragdoll Thanos like bitch, why didn't they go deal with him instead i
Of getting snapped or take the infinity stones for themself?

Seeing power creep turn all the OG characters into chumps isn't the way, IMHO.
As far as I have seen and read, the Infinity Gauntlet(in the MCU) has set rules and limitations.

One of them is that it has zero effect on the Quantum Realm, which is what Kang is fully interacting with in this movie.

The second limitation(as shown by What-If) was that the gauntlet could not have any effect on the multiverse, only on the universe it was used. It's why Infinity Ultron had to go into each individual universe to kill everyone instead of simple eradicating all of life in the known multiverse. The TVA counts as a part of this.

The third limitation(unconfirmed) is that the snap didn't have an effect on higher level god-beings and celestials. There's not enough hard evidence to confirm this, but I feel like it would have been confirmed in Eternals. Since the Eternals and Celestials both treated the snap like it was insignificant to the bigger picture, I'd presume the stones aren't strong enough to affect them at all.

And lastly, Thanos without the glove, while being an extremely capable fighter with an A-rank power level, had an extreme weakness to non-physical attacks(like magic) and was close to not only being crumpled up into paper by Scarlet Witch, but was also close to being pummeled into the ground by Captain Marvel.

Without his army and without the glove, Thanos would die to any of these characters:

Vision Ultron(instant kill as shown by What-if and Ultron's quick calculation process)
What-If Dr. Strange (instant kill)
Scarlet Witch (instant kill)
Captain Marvel
Dr. Strange
Photon
Mordo
Vision
Odin
Ego
America Chavez(post-training)
Ant-Man or Wasp(if anyone wants to write the R-rated version of events)
and possibly Spiderman (if enraged/bloodlusted)

Depending on how the MCU treats Kang, I'd wager he'd last way longer than Thanos vs many of these opponents. In other forms of media, Kang was consistently a pain in the ass that just simply would not go away.

I feel like power creep will happen more when they finally introduce characters like Galactus or Death. However, we still have a long way to go as they have yet to reintroduce Magneto and Dr. Doom into the MCU proper.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
-Thanos died like a week or two after the Snap. He uses the Stones again to destroy them, the Avengers find him, and then Thor beheads him. Then the five year time skip happens. No one was going to find Thanos on that random planet, and when the energy output occurred, the Avengers got there first.

As for “2014 Thanos”, he pretty much arrives instantly without warning at the Avengers base. And Strange and Wong couldn’t bring in people they don’t know about or don’t trust. So people like Mandarin and Namor would not be recruited.

Even if in the hour or so after 2014 Thanos’ arrival to his defeat by Tony the news had gotten out about an attack on Avengers base, A) I doubt any civilian got close enough to confirm it was Thanos, and besides they wouldn’t assume that since only the Avengers knew about the time travel and thus everyone would not think it could be Thanos since he was beheaded five years ago, and B) any organization, legit or criminal, would also be having their hands full with half the world’s population suddenly returning. Some alien force arriving who they aren’t sure the identities of would not be something they’d be running off to deal with within an hour.
Right, I confused the length of snap undoing with the time Thanos died.

We've seen the power of the slingrings in action, person tracking, creating portals to different worlds, big enough for space ships to go through and numerous enough to transport an army. In one of the movies we even see moving portals. The whole time travel might not have been necessary if the strike team could succeed its mission and 2014 Thanos wouldn't be in the picture either.
As for IW, it’s a MASSIVE universe. In the mere days it took Thanos to gather the Stones, probably only a tiny percentage learned about what was happening. Hell, the Guardians only found out because against all astronomic odds they ran into Thor. And the only planets Thanos attacked were Earth (and only near the end, the arrival in New York was pretty short all things considered) and the planet The Collector lived on.
The Avengers were warned once Hulk got sent back to them and it's from that moment and beyond the snap that they could've made preps to counter attack and enlist all the help they could. Again, the OP slingrings make distance meaningless. You could play with that the stones cloaked Thanos' exact location but I doubt that also goes for his lieutenants and huge ship.

As for future powerful heroes(Vision, Scarlet Witch, Odin level) that were around before the snap getting introduced in phase 5 and beyond, if they were aware of Thanos then I hope we don't get the same Eternal's explanation again.
-Zeus referred to the gods Gorr killed as “lesser”, so while that might have just him being an asshole to the victims, it might legit mean most of the gods Gorr had killed so far were weaker than most of Zeus’ company so the remaining gods not in Zeus’ kingdom might have been too weak to stand against Gorr (not counting the Norse gods). Besides, the movie does show that while there are some exceptions primarily Thor and his fellow Norse gods, a lot of the gods have become self-centered and are looking out only for themselves.
So it would make sense for the weaker gods to band together (and maybe plead Zeus or his circle for help) rather than staying separate when someone like Gorr's coming for them. Simply writing it off as Gods are selfish, arrogant and over confident strikes me as a bit simplistic story telling.
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member
As far as I have seen and read, the Infinity Gauntlet(in the MCU) has set rules and limitations.
.....

I feel like power creep will happen more when they finally introduce characters like Galactus or Death. However, we still have a long way to go as they have yet to reintroduce Magneto and Dr. Doom into the MCU proper.
See, that's all well and good comic book writing but to think that there are some stones that let you teleport around, travel through time willy-nilly, and instantly dust HALF OF ALL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE yet somehow cut out at a nebulous "god level", stops at the quantum realm or an adjacent universe, etc is the kind of silly logic that, IMHO, keeps comic book stuff forever out of the realm of literature. Granted, there are hundreds of writers working in a VERY loosely shared universe so naturally you can't expect the guy writing Namor to account for the random appearance of a Celestial in a Capt America book is the internal inconsistency that really prevents a true Lord of the Rings style legacy IMHO, at least from a narrative perspective. The CHARACTER might persist, Batman and Supes near 100 year reign is testament to that, but any actual story is just transient beyond one writers vision in that specific run.

If there are like 15 Thanos killing beings ON EARTH ALONE, then how the hell did he accrue all this power in the first place? No other planets got magic? At no point did some Asgardian stroll by and pop him just for shits n giggles? Seems like the plan to kill half of all life (below gods perhaps) would royally f up the Celestials breeding/planet incubation program, Ego's offspring program (since Starlord got snapped, no?) etc etc so the thought that his plan was somehow inconsequential to the powers that be is kinda silly.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter, as comic books continually overwrite themselves and there isn't really any point bemoaning it. There is always a bigger bad out there that was content to wait in the wings until the lesser evil was dealt with since heroes are virtually entirely reactionary, almost to a fault, and can only deal with one problem at a time :p
 
See, that's all well and good comic book writing but to think that there are some stones that let you teleport around, travel through time willy-nilly, and instantly dust HALF OF ALL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE yet somehow cut out at a nebulous "god level", stops at the quantum realm or an adjacent universe, etc is the kind of silly logic that, IMHO, keeps comic book stuff forever out of the realm of literature.
Thanos wasn’t a scientist nor was he interested in exploring all of the possibilities of the stones. He simply wanted to be an equalizer/reset button. On top of that, he didn’t know of the existence of the quantum realm nor the multiverse. He didn’t know of the existence of planet eaters, celestials, eternals, etc. So why would he fight what he didn’t know about nor had any concept of? The only reason Ultron even figured that out in What-If was because the Watcher wouldn’t shut his mouth.

Again, we saw how things were massively different when What-If Ultron used the stones because he thought of more efficient and effective ways to use them. When Thanos used 1 stone he completely overpowered Thor and Hulk. Then once he had two he was toying with the guardians of the galaxy. He didn’t become fully unstoppable until he had Dr. Strange’s time stone. Even then, Thanos used it in very basic ways to just accomplish his goal.

This reminds me of when people complained about a certain Green Lantern using only military weapons and basic earthly items as constructs, when he himself was a soldier from earth before he was a lantern.


Granted, there are hundreds of writers working in a VERY loosely shared universe so naturally you can't expect the guy writing Namor to account for the random appearance of a Celestial in a Capt America book is the internal inconsistency that really prevents a true Lord of the Rings style legacy IMHO, at least from a narrative perspective. The CHARACTER might persist, Batman and Supes near 100 year reign is testament to that, but any actual story is just transient beyond one writers vision in that specific run.
This is somewhat unfortunately true, which can lead to narrative issues. To be fair to the Celestial and Captain America point, I don’t think narratively any Celestial would have any interest in him. Even if they’ve heard of the battle against Thanos, I’m sure from a celestial standpoint, Thor would be the name that would be spoken of the most, and maybe guardians second(since his daughters were part of that crew). You can kind of tell when Kevin Feige is laying specific groundwork and then tell when he’s simply letting other creatives take the reigns.
If there are like 15 Thanos killing beings ON EARTH ALONE, then how the hell did he accrue all this power in the first place?
You have to keep in mind the timeline of the movies. They didn’t know about him back then, and why would they? Loki never mentioned him when invading earth and only Iron Man felt paranoid enough to prepare for any upcoming threat(but even he didn’t know WHAT he was preparing for). Thanos didn’t show up until he had the glove and at least one stone, and even then it was a surprise attack to Thor, Hulk, Heimdall, and Loki. By the time he arrived to fight Stark he was up 3 stones to 2(Dr. Strange and Vision) and he already made his soldiers do a sneak attack on Vision, so Vision was severely injured and out of play. There’s no actual way to prepare for that in such a short amount of time, especially when Thanos and crew had everything planned out. There was one slight moment where Stark’s team could have won(which shows that Thanos was vulnerable), but all it took was one tiny mistake and they all lost.

No other planets got magic?
Why would they attack Thanos if they didn’t know about him? Why would anyone randomly attack anyone without purpose?

At no point did some Asgardian stroll by and pop him just for shits n giggles?
Same questions I asked above.


Seems like the plan to kill half of all life (below gods perhaps) would royally f up the Celestials breeding/planet incubation program, Ego's offspring program (since Starlord got snapped, no?) etc etc so the thought that his plan was somehow inconsequential to the powers that be is kinda silly.
Two things:

1)The fact that the Eternals and Celestials seemed to not care(in their own movie) would suggest that yes, that is the case. It is beneath them. A planet to them is like someone’s fish tank on earth. They’ll just get another fish tank.

2) Thanos DID wait until after the Ego issue was resolved. Also keep in mind, the battle of Infinity War lasted a few days at best. Again, how would people prepare for such a fast plan-to-execution time?

Anyway, it doesn't really matter, as comic books continually overwrite themselves and there isn't really any point bemoaning it. There is always a bigger bad out there that was content to wait in the wings until the lesser evil was dealt with since heroes are virtually entirely reactionary, almost to a fault, and can only deal with one problem at a time :p
To write all of this off as bad writing is odd to me. Yes, there are some parts that have issues, but the main infinity war plot and some of what followed had a pretty thorough line of explanation. They would even put lines and Easter eggs in the movies to make sure that something from ages ago had explanation, when they didn’t even need to. Again I agree that power creep will eventually hit, but I just don’t see it here yet with Kang(we’ve honestly barely gotten to know how MCU Kang works regardless). Thanos was a good tactician, which is what made him seem so powerful. In that same regard he had tons of ‘lucky protagonist’ moments that saved him from being killed, as shown in both movies he was featured in. How people don’t see this, I don’t know 🤷‍♂️

Also regarding Kang, the previous version explained himself that he was not a villain and had no reason to attack anyone. He warned both Loki’s that his next iteration may be 100x worse than him, and one of them didn’t listen. This moment, unlike Thanos, wasn’t a situation where there was a looming villain waiting to make a move. He simply did not want to get involved because he knew another version of him would make things worse. He was guarding a door and that door ended up being opened anyway.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
Thanos wasn’t a scientist nor was he interested in exploring all of the possibilities of the stones. He simply wanted to be an equalizer/reset button. On top of that, he didn’t know of the existence of the quantum realm nor the multiverse. He didn’t know of the existence of planet eaters, celestials, eternals, etc. So why would he fight what he didn’t know about nor had any concept of? The only reason Ultron even figured that out in What-If was because the Watcher wouldn’t shut his mouth.

Again, we saw how things were massively different when What-If Ultron used the stones because he thought of more efficient and effective ways to use them. When Thanos used 1 stone he completely overpowered Thor and Hulk. Then once he had two he was toying with the guardians of the galaxy. He didn’t become fully unstoppable until he had Dr. Strange’s time stone. Even then, Thanos used it in very basic ways to just accomplish his goal.

This reminds me of when people complained about a certain Green Lantern using only military weapons and basic earthly items as constructs, when he himself was a soldier from earth before he was a lantern.
To be fair, Thanos with all the stones was not invincible seeing that Thor still managed to land a crippling blow and the remaining Avengers were still willing to visit Thanos when they found out his location post snap presuming he still had the stones.
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member
Why would they attack Thanos if they didn’t know about him? Why would anyone randomly attack anyone without purpose?
Read some history. It's FULL of civilizations pretty much attacking EVERYTHING around them because that's basically organic life for you, constant struggle, growth, and collapse. The idea that Thanos knew about the stones, groked their ultimate capabilities, divined their rough locations and operation, fabricated a gauntlet to use them without any access to them first, BUT somehow remained ignorant of planet busting Celestials, etc just seems far fetched to me. It would be like a series that talks about the Roman Empire, how vast and powerful it was, but totally excludes the Carthaginians, Egyptians, Gauls, Persians, etc, then starts up with one of those other empires as if they somehow coexisted with the Romans and had no interaction. These groups were intimately linked from the very beginning as should all the entities in a comic book universe.

You are pretty good at linking all this comic book stuff into a superficially coherent single narrative, but as a whole I feel, for me, that it's the CHARACTERS I care about in comics, not really any of the worldbuilding, long form narrative, or any of that stuff. I could real actual history and just groove on the events, or stuff like LOTR, Malazan, or GoT/ASOIAF and enjoy the lore AROUND the characters as much, if not more, than the characters themselves. No so for comics. Everything is subject to change, power levels fluctuate at the speed of plot, there is, very rarely, any sense of history or depth to anything. Deal with bad guy #1, then next week there is a whole new bad guy #2 springing whole cloth out of nowhere, deal with him and then it's back to bad guy #1 again, rinse/repeat. This works well for extremely episodic character driven stuff with big splash pages, but attempting to hammer it into a fixed narrative exposes all the gaps each writer brings.
 
Read some history. It's FULL of civilizations pretty much attacking EVERYTHING around them because that's basically organic life for you, constant struggle, growth, and collapse.
I have, and as I've said, violence usually needs purpose. Violence without purpose is extremely rare in history. There's almost always a purpose. Conquering land, taking goods, religion, government changes, racial issues, etc. are all considered purposes. Even mass killers who's murders sometimes would be painted in media as 'senseless deaths' would have a manifesto written or something else to indicate what their purpose was. So I ask again, why would a magical civilization randomly attack Thanos pre-gauntlet? What would he have had during that time period that they would want? Post-gauntlet? I can kind of see what you mean, but the snap came from Earth, which would draw whatever magical beings out there, to Earth, and not to whatever alien farm planet that Thanos was on with dead stones. Also yes, I know he used the stones to destroy them, but whatever he did clearly didn't create a big enough impact over the gigantic amount of power that the Snap used, because more and more new things keep coming to Earth instead.


The idea that Thanos knew about the stones, groked their ultimate capabilities, divined their rough locations and operation, fabricated a gauntlet to use them without any access to them first, BUT somehow remained ignorant of planet busting Celestials, etc just seems far fetched to me.
Why? He has advanced alien tech but at the end of the day, it's just tech. Ever since his planet died he went around looking for tangible ways to not have the same mistake repeated and that led him to physical stones. Even if he, by the slight chance, did somehow know, why would he suddenly be looking for celestial beings? What would they do for him? Why would he fight them? You have to ask yourself these questions. His entire story is one of physical and somewhat magical nature, not celestial. In that same vein, if he had known everything you've mentioned, he would have been smart enough to know that celestials take too much power to destroy and the gauntlet wouldn't be able to handle an ordeal of such a magnitude without turning him into a complete raisin or killing him outright. Also, if he would have known about them, his entire perspective would have changed about his mission and goal. Knowing there are bigger fish out there who can easily kill or save a planet would give him a vendetta against them, like Gorr.

It would be like a series that talks about the Roman Empire, how vast and powerful it was, but totally excludes the Carthaginians, Egyptians, Gauls, Persians, etc, then starts up with one of those other empires as if they somehow coexisted with the Romans and had no interaction. These groups were intimately linked from the very beginning as should all the entities in a comic book universe.
This isn't comparable because those empires were all reachable and could be interacted with amongst other empires. We're talking about outer space. The thing where everyone in Marvel except for Peter Quill(who was off planet) thought was just dead empty planets and meteorites until Thor crash landed on earth, changing everything. Why wouldn't other planets be similar? How would you know something exists in the vast reaches of space? We still don't know today in real life.

You are pretty good at linking all this comic book stuff into a superficially coherent single narrative, but as a whole I feel, for me, that it's the CHARACTERS I care about in comics, not really any of the worldbuilding, long form narrative, or any of that stuff.
I appreciate the compliment. You're also good at bringing up the right counterpoints and questions. I'm mainly using the MCU movies as my evidence and not the comics, to defend the MCU. Again, the infinity saga did a good job itself of being as cohesive and as connective as possible, sometimes even going the extra mile with references and easter eggs when it didn't have to be. To me that's dedication to the craft. Phase 4(aside from the best of it) is currently a big misstep because barely anything connected and it felt all over the place due to Covid reshoots and placement issues(like Strange 2 being released after NWH instead of before like it should have been). However, I consider phases 1-3(even the bad parts of them) an actual achievement in storytelling, because the team in charge led by Kevin Feige had to keep up with every single minor detail to make sure that they had enough answers for those like yourself with all of these questions. I still consider What-If more of a phase 3 project because it answered any small leftover questions that might have been raised during phases 1-3.

I could real actual history and just groove on the events, or stuff like LOTR, Malazan, or GoT/ASOIAF and enjoy the lore AROUND the characters as much, if not more, than the characters themselves. No so for comics.
Then have fun doing that. Again I'm not against this way of thinking and nor am I saying these comics are infallible, I'm simply answering the questions you have the best I can about the MCU Infinity Saga arc. You will eventually find something where I can't honestly answer because it simply doesn't exist in the MCU.

Everything is subject to change, power levels fluctuate at the speed of plot, there is, very rarely, any sense of history or depth to anything. Deal with bad guy #1, then next week there is a whole new bad guy #2 springing whole cloth out of nowhere, deal with him and then it's back to bad guy #1 again, rinse/repeat. This works well for extremely episodic character driven stuff with big splash pages, but attempting to hammer it into a fixed narrative exposes all the gaps each writer brings.
So far, this has not happened. When we get there however, I'll be right with you. That's what I was trying to point out. Myself and Ulysses 31 Ulysses 31 have listed ways that Thanos was not some ultimate god, but simply a really smart, calculating, and arrogant guy with a powerful glove. Don't let the memes control the narrative. He literally had protagonist's luck until literally the final moment of his death, and even then you could argue if it wasn't for that glove being malleable Stark tech, the avengers would all be dead.
 

Trogdor1123

Member
See, that's all well and good comic book writing but to think that there are some stones that let you teleport around, travel through time willy-nilly, and instantly dust HALF OF ALL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE yet somehow cut out at a nebulous "god level", stops at the quantum realm or an adjacent universe, etc is the kind of silly logic that, IMHO, keeps comic book stuff forever out of the realm of literature. Granted, there are hundreds of writers working in a VERY loosely shared universe so naturally you can't expect the guy writing Namor to account for the random appearance of a Celestial in a Capt America book is the internal inconsistency that really prevents a true Lord of the Rings style legacy IMHO, at least from a narrative perspective. The CHARACTER might persist, Batman and Supes near 100 year reign is testament to that, but any actual story is just transient beyond one writers vision in that specific run.

If there are like 15 Thanos killing beings ON EARTH ALONE, then how the hell did he accrue all this power in the first place? No other planets got magic? At no point did some Asgardian stroll by and pop him just for shits n giggles? Seems like the plan to kill half of all life (below gods perhaps) would royally f up the Celestials breeding/planet incubation program, Ego's offspring program (since Starlord got snapped, no?) etc etc so the thought that his plan was somehow inconsequential to the powers that be is kinda silly.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter, as comic books continually overwrite themselves and there isn't really any point bemoaning it. There is always a bigger bad out there that was content to wait in the wings until the lesser evil was dealt with since heroes are virtually entirely reactionary, almost to a fault, and can only deal with one problem at a time :p
On the topic of power creep, marvel comics is so lost in it they are about to dethrone the one above all as the top of the pyramid and place him at the bottom of an all new one. It’s stupid.
 
Would be funny if Guardians 3 ended up being the best mcu since endgame and the dude responsible fucked off to dc.
Anyway, since my area finally opened an imax with all the bells and whistles, there is a need for an effects driven movie for me to see.
 

Billbofet

Member
I think I will skip this one in theaters. I have had a tradition the last several years of taking my daughter or son to most Marvel movies - skipped Eternals. Wakanda Forever bored my son so drastically that he does not want to see this at all. My daughter bounced on MCU after Endgame, so that leaves just me and I think this looks pretty bad. As always hoping it's great, but recent track record says otherwise.
 

HoodWinked

Member
Mendelson that is a name I haven't seen in awhile but I do remember it would always be some absolutely retarded Forbes article about movies and he was always the author.
 
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