MCU TA - Final Four - Thanos (1) vs Doctor Stephen Strange (6)

[SMashMouthMike]

3 hours ago, adamq said:

Right but what happened in terms of plot doesn't matter at all in this scenario. It's a gladiator-style death match. My point was that if a stone-wielding Thanks could get killed instantly by Vision then I think Strange would find a way to take him out if he has +/- 1 stone

Maybe. Give an unstoned Thanos a ranged weapon though, let alone a celestial’s sword, I don’t think strange is fast enough. It’s faster than a flying captain marvel, lol! Strange wasn’t fast enough against Maw. He’s definitely not durable enough. 

Edited March 2, 2022 by SMashMouthMike

[Jakuvious]

2 hours ago, SMashMouthMike said:

But, this hypothetical has to be grounded to me in a framework on which this fight would even occur. Thanos wouldn’t fight strange without those particular 3 stones. It defies his strategy, his knowledge and experience, and the entire plots of several movies. 

we similarly never saw strange take on an ‘unstoned’ Thanos. Why? Because they never would engage each other is my guess.

and Thanos wouldn’t be the 1 seed. 
 

strange, with the time stone, also was bested by Maw. Thanos is supposedly an Eternal/deviant, yet wouldn’t have a chance? He threw that celestial sword awfully fast. Strange was beaten by a simple dagger.

 

I mean, in fairness here, the first fight in the bracket was Thanos against Red Guardian. Under what circumstances would that fight ever even occur? Trying to ground an imaginary Dragon Ball Z style tournament about a fictional movie universe is kind of a flawed effort.

 

Personally, I'm just assuming these guys are in their default states. They have their standard equipment. Iron Man would have his armor, but probably not the Hulkbuster. Thor would have Mjolnir, but probably not Stormbreaker. Strange either doesn't have a time stone, or has it but is very reluctant to use it in a meaningful way. Thanos is very powerful, but the gauntlet trivializes any of this, and he only very briefly had it when you consider the time he has been active overall as a player in the universe. A big part of Thanos's practical power is honestly more to do with his following, his armies, his resources, etc., but this is just a 1v1.

 

I also don't think using matchups in the movies is always valid. Who wins any given fight could always easily come down to plot. Plenty of weaker characters have bested stronger ones due to plot or environment. Like, how often does Cap really beat Iron Man, like he did in Civil War? How many conveniently disabled parts of Tony's suit were required for that to be physically possible? Strange, in the movies, will be as fast or slow, as gullible or skeptical, as prepared or unprepared, as the plot needs. That's how fiction works. Like, I remember everyone pointing out that Strange said in Ragnarok that he monitors for threats to reality, yet he had no idea who Thanos, the big bad hunting the reality stone, was. There's no real excuse for that, Strange should absolutely know of Thanos and his core minions. But the writing needed different things from Strange in different movies. It is what it is. But it makes trying to use something like Strange losing to Maw as concrete evidence, flawed.

[SMashMouthMike]

42 minutes ago, Jakuvious said:

3 hours ago, SMashMouthMike said:

Expand  

I mean, in fairness here, the first fight in the bracket was Thanos against Red Guardian. Under what circumstances would that fight ever even occur? Trying to ground an imaginary Dragon Ball Z style tournament about a fictional movie universe is kind of a flawed effort.

Lol, it is funny, but that was the rule when the seeding began right? Movie stuff since no one really knew the comic book stuff? And if red guardian actually won, then this entire tournament should be voided. 

Edited March 2, 2022 by SMashMouthMike

[SMashMouthMike]

6 hours ago, Jakuvious said:

Like, I remember everyone pointing out that Strange said in Ragnarok that he monitors for threats to reality, yet he had no idea who Thanos, the big bad hunting the reality stone, was. There's no real excuse for that, Strange should absolutely know of Thanos and his core minions. But the writing needed different things from Strange in different movies. It is what it is. But it makes trying to use something like Strange losing to Maw as concrete evidence, flawed.

Yeah. Maybe he knew Thanos was surrounded by armies and his children and he thought he’d have time to stop him once thanos acquired one stone.  I have no other explanation than his own arrogance of controlling time, maybe his fear of certain death at the hands of Thanos’ armies.  Maybe that engaging thanos and his army with the time stone would just end up as sacrificing the time stone to them. Maybe that he wasnt as omniscient as he stated and did not perceive of Thanos’ plan.  He didn’t seem to know about it on Titan. 
 

As for strange losing to Ebony Maw…they are both glass cannons. Whoever is faster than strange can kill him, so that’s not a big reach for me. Telekinesis is no joke, and hard to defend against. Spider-Man ties him up with webs in no way home. So he’s not omniscient, nor blessed with superhuman speed/quickness. 
 

why didn’t DS just kill nebula in infinity wars? She brought Thanos’ fleet to the future in endgame. I assume she had to sustain Tony in that ship until CM arrived. Pretty lame. 
 

At the end of the day, this is how a showrunner believes a struggle over the infinity stones would have played out. It’s not meritless, far from it, but there’s plot armor, sure. 

Edited March 2, 2022 by SMashMouthMike

[Malfatron]

8 hours ago, Ty21 said:

Okay then thanos just snaps away the entire list 

Half of them

[Malfatron]

32 minutes ago, Jakuvious said:

mean, in fairness here, the first fight in the bracket was Thanos against Red Guardian. Under what circumstances would that fight ever even occur?

Maybe the red guardian didnt give up the soul stone even though he through gamora off

[SMashMouthMike]

5 minutes ago, Malfatron said:

Maybe the red guardian didnt give up the soul stone even though he through gamora off

Lol. U mean the red skull?

[thrILL!]

4 hours ago, SMashMouthMike said:

Lol. U mean the red skull?

Red Guardian was more interested in Rolling Rock than the Soul Stone.

[Kiltman]

12 hours ago, SMashMouthMike said:

Yeah. Maybe he knew Thanos was surrounded by armies and his children and he thought he’d have time to stop him once thanos acquired one stone.  I have no other explanation than his own arrogance of controlling time, maybe his fear of certain death at the hands of Thanos’ armies.  Maybe that engaging thanos and his army with the time stone would just end up as sacrificing the time stone to them. Maybe that he wasnt as omniscient as he stated and did not perceive of Thanos’ plan.  He didn’t seem to know about it on Titan. 
 

As for strange losing to Ebony Maw…they are both glass cannons. Whoever is faster than strange can kill him, so that’s not a big reach for me. Telekinesis is no joke, and hard to defend against. Spider-Man ties him up with webs in no way home. So he’s not omniscient, nor blessed with superhuman speed/quickness. 
 

why didn’t DS just kill nebula in infinity wars? She brought Thanos’ fleet to the future in endgame. I assume she had to sustain Tony in that ship until CM arrived. Pretty lame. 
 

At the end of the day, this is how a showrunner believes a struggle over the infinity stones would have played out. It’s not meritless, far from it, but there’s plot armor, sure. 

The time stone couldn’t be used to it’s fullest potential without major dimensional consequences. We also saw that you can technically get out of being frozen in time if you have enough power. 

 

12 hours ago, Jakuvious said:

Personally, I'm just assuming these guys are in their default states. They have their standard equipment. Iron Man would have his armor, but probably not the Hulkbuster. Thor would have Mjolnir, but probably not Stormbreaker. Strange either doesn't have a time stone, or has it but is very reluctant to use it in a meaningful way. Thanos is very powerful, but the gauntlet trivializes any of this, and he only very briefly had it when you consider the time he has been active overall as a player in the universe. A big part of Thanos's practical power is honestly more to do with his following, his armies, his resources, etc., but this is just a 1v1.

 

I also don't think using matchups in the movies is always valid. Who wins any given fight could always easily come down to plot. Plenty of weaker characters have bested stronger ones due to plot or environment. Like, how often does Cap really beat Iron Man, like he did in Civil War? How many conveniently disabled parts of Tony's suit were required for that to be physically possible? Strange, in the movies, will be as fast or slow, as gullible or skeptical, as prepared or unprepared, as the plot needs. That's how fiction works. Like, I remember everyone pointing out that Strange said in Ragnarok that he monitors for threats to reality, yet he had no idea who Thanos, the big bad hunting the reality stone, was. There's no real excuse for that, Strange should absolutely know of Thanos and his core minions. But the writing needed different things from Strange in different movies. It is what it is. But it makes trying to use something like Strange losing to Maw as concrete evidence, flawed.

Same, like with Tony my thought was he can get the Hulkbuster but has to call it down like in the film. Anything like that is fine as a power up move within the fight. Stormbreaker vs Mjolnir is tough because he’s had it for awhile now within universe. And for posterity’s sake it’ll be his weapon going forward, so if we want to do this again in the future to see if any new people match up that’s what he’d be judged as having. 
 

For Strange he has an Eye of Agamotto still (there are actually a couple in the comics too) but we only got a glimpse of it’s power in NWH. It seems like it helps with multiversal portals and being in other dimensions. Hard to say what all it can do rn.

I agree we can’t fully take the fights on face value, there are some big moves people don’t do to save lives in the films/shows. I think they are helpful to breakdown certain aspects, especially when comparing people who haven’t fought already. But have to think bigger picture with them.

[SMashMouthMike]

9 hours ago, Kiltman said:

We also saw that you can technically get out of being frozen in time if you have enough power. 

When did we see that? DS Against Dormammu?

And, Is the reality stone able to trump the time stone? I could see one doing the same thing with the reality stone since time is part of reality. 

Edited March 2, 2022 by SMashMouthMike

[SMashMouthMike]

23 hours ago, Kiltman said:

I agree we can’t fully take the fights on face value, there are some big moves people don’t do to save lives in the films/shows. I think they are helpful to breakdown certain aspects, especially when comparing people who haven’t fought already. But have to think bigger picture with them

That’s true. The showrunners had to walk a fine line in making Thanos look almost invincible, with nerfing/limiting certain other characters with context (and plot armor) so that it would take more than one hero to defeat him. They did a good job imo, but to me IW is superior to Endgame. Maybe by a lot. They had to nerf 4 or 5 of them. SW had to defend vision and the rain fire, Thor had to miss and become fat, Hulk had to become weaker and do the snap, DS had to not use the time stone, and CM had to be MIA for ~5/6 of the movies. Show runners even state that Thanos kinda cheated 2 times in the endgame battle. Rain fire against SW, Power stone punch against CM. I’d argue putting DS on water detail and not using the time stone when they just used time travel to redo the snap twice anyways were also 2 more incidents of cheating. 

Edited March 3, 2022 by SMashMouthMike

[Kiltman]

8 hours ago, SMashMouthMike said:

When did we see that? DS Against Dormammu?

And, Is the reality stone able to trump the time stone? I could see one doing the same thing with the reality stone since time is part of reality. 

Kaecillius did it during the rewind while hopped up on dark energy/magic

[diamondbull424]

Both fighting head to head without the aid of any stones, I’d go Thanos. We’ve yet to truly see Strange have to go all out to fight a threat, so perhaps this is premature.

I mean, he did toss around Thor and Loki pretty good in Ragnorak. But Thanos seems like the type to have a strategy in place when/if fighting a magic user. Some sort of tech that would provide him some defensive capabilities.

A man doesn’t become feared across the universe, likely encountering other magical beings along the way, without some sort of strategy for dealing with such foes.

Meanwhile, Strange has yet to show me offensively geared magic that I feel would be able to take down Thanos.

Lastly, while Strange could attempt to win via BFR, Thanos is also a genius level tactician and such a strategy and execution would be one that I feel less inclined to believe could be fulfilled against the Mad Titan.

I’m going Thanos 7/10. Strange’s only wins come from BFR.