For those of you not familiar with what we are talking about today, the Infinity Gauntlet
could be described as the Holy Grail of the Marvel superhero world.
In mythologies of yore, there was often some object that a hero or a villain looked for
and fought over, which had powers beyond anything in the real world.
In medieval legend the Holy Grail is the cup Jesus Christ drank from at the Last Supper,
but some tales tell us this cup could restore peace and prosperity during dark times.
In Greek mythology we had that wonderful thing, The Golden Fleece, and some say the Philosopher’s
Stone can make ordinary metals precious and also grant wishes.
As for the Infinity Gauntlet, it kind of trumps them all.
So, what the story of the Infinity Gauntlet?
Basically, it looks a bit like a glove.
The gauntlet can hold six precious stones, and each of those stones has incredible power.
But if you can get your hands on all of those stones and attach them all to the gauntlet
you are in business.
These gems came from a universe that existed before any human got on the scene, a universe
ruled over by entities called the Celestials.
There were actually lots of stones made and these were spread out all over what’s called
the multiverse.
But as we said, if you use the gauntlet you put just six stones into that.
All hell might break loose, as that big bad love-struck giant Thanos showed us.
The six stones are the space Stone (blue), the Reality Stone (red), the Power Stone (purple),
the Time Stone (green), the Mind Stone (yellow), and the Soul Stone (orange).
As you can see by the name, just one stone isn’t a bad thing to have, who wouldn’t
want a Mind Stone, but when you have the set you are made.
It’s one thing having a lot of power, but that’s pretty useless in life if you don’t
have a remarkable brain.
Thanos wasn’t the only one to use the gems in unison.
The Elders of the Universe had a shot at using the gauntlet and what they did was restore
life to a planet.
Yes, they were more focused on creation than destruction.
Things didn’t go too smoothly, but that’s just to give you an example of what the gems
can do.
For a long time certain folks were fighting over the gems and the gauntlet, with Adam
Warlock defeating Thanos at one point and securing it.
The Living Tribunal weren’t keen on the idea of Adam having this thing as he was rather
unpredictable, and let’s just say what ensued is a lot of people trying to get their hands
on this power.
Before we talk about what you would do with this power, let’s just give you a quick
rundown of what each gem can do.
So, the power stone is all about…er…power.
It basically turns you into a superhuman.
You have the energy and strength of a God, so it’s a bit like Marvel PCP except the
power is real.
The time stone is a bit of a trickster as it allows you to slow down and speed up time.
Hell, just stop time if you feel like it, and if you get bored look back in time or
to the future.
The space stone comes in handy if you’re been caught speeding by the cops because it
allows you to teleport anywhere you want.
The soul gem is a bit naughty as it allows you to steal someone’s spirit or soul, so
it’s kind of like a 9-5 job in a corporation.
The reality stone helps you to change reality, so you can really mess with people’s heads,
and the mind stone is remarkable in that you can read people’s minds or even move things
with your mind.
Ok, you are probably now thinking that having the gauntlet is like being a jacked-up superhero.
It’s basically a bunch of characters made into one.
Maybe Marvel had to do this as they’d done everything else.
We could compare it to the phrase “jumping the shark”.
If you don’t know what that means, it was when the series Happy Days ran out of ideas
and so they made the character Fonzi jump over a shark on waterskies.
These days we say something has jumped the shark when it brings in something crazy like
that because it has exhausted all other ideas.
Ok, we digress, sorry about that.
So, you have the gauntlet, what would you do?
You can basically beat anyone up, you are invincible.
So invincible that you could just destroy an entire nation.
Let’s say you are English and Germany beats you on penalties in the world cup, you could
just go over the Germany and kill everyone.
On a happier note, you could likely stop every war in the world.
You could even steal as much money as you wanted and redistribute anywhere you chose.
You might rob the rich and give to the poor, take some of America wealth and hand it over
to the Central African Republic while demanding it’s used to create a better standard of
living for everyone.
No one can stop you, so you can take anything you want.
But maybe you’re not the kind of person to want to destroy countries or attempt to
create global social justice.
Maybe you might just look into the future and leave warnings to humans about what is
to come.
Oh, you see global warming peak in 2036 and imminent human collapse.
So, rather than be hands-on you decide to take to Twitter and send some warnings right
now, or maybe become a journalist.
But then you get thousands of people calling you a shill for a left-leaning government
who are using global warming to gain more control.
One day you find you have been doxxed, so it’s a good job you have the space stone
because you’ve just about had enough of fighting on social media and you take off
to an island where you can relax in the sun and not deal with a human being again.
But that’s a bit boring, and you just sit there twiddling your thumbs knowing you have
the power to do anything.
You get it, the hands-off approach just doesn’t work because most humans are too dim and inflamed
with their own sense of righteousness to take any advice or embrace multiple ideas at the
same time.
You now know it’s time to get back to society.
You decide to make yourself invisible for a while and then teleport to the bedroom of
the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, but you soon realize this kind of superheroic
voyeurism is just not ethical.
Hmm, how can you be ethical.
You then start reading about pain in the world and realize that statistically a lot of people
suffer from chronic physical and emotional pain.
You use your powers of empathy (mind stone) to seek out those that suffer the most and
you use your reality stone powers to change their reality.
You make them happy, forever.
That PTSD, gone, childhood trauma in the trashcan, psychosis and anti-personality disorder, away
with you.
You are using superhuman speed to fix everyone on the planet.
It takes a year, but then you start seeing that global happiness has caused the world
to become entirely boring.
So boring that entropy is slowing everything down and soon the world will be no more.
What have you done!?
Having superpowers isn’t as easy as you thought it would be.
So then you do what most superheroes do and leave the humans behind and go find someone
in your league to fight with in space.
That’s our version of events anyway.
We looked online to see what other people would do and here are some of the answers.
Make myself immortal, said one person.
The same person said he’d take a trip around the solar system, kill the North Korean leader,
give some cash to his parents and find out if God was real.
Another person said he’d get rid of tobacco, weapons and alcohol, bring back Robin Williams
and Chinese philosophy and legalize drugs.
Hmm, a bit of a contradiction there.
But he said he would also bring back animal numbers of endangered beasts, clean the oceans
and make food bountiful for people who had little of the stuff.
Nice guy, but needs to think about the meaning of “drug.”
Let us tell you, a lot of people are asking this question.
It must be the modern version of the “If you had three wishes” question.
Many answers sounded the same, kind of Miss World good intentions answers.
World Peace.
Food for everyone.
No more disease.
No Pollution.
No war.
It’s actually very hard to find selfish answers, such as: sleep with anyone I wanted.
Drive fast cars.
Beat up that kid that bullied me in high school.
Win the Olympic 100 meters sprint and be the pound for pound best heavyweight boxer and
UFC champ at the same.
Win the Nobel prize for everything.
Write the best novel ever written.
Etc.
Nope, most people want nothing for themselves, which if you read evolutionary biology and
what makes us tick, you could be so cynical to say not everyone was telling the truth.
But then our favorite answers were those by people just thinking outside of the box, folks
that are obviously just plain strange or not very creative.
Here are some of those answers, verbatim:
“If I had the infinity gauntlet, I will increase the size, mass and the dimensions
of the universe.”
“Go to Italy maybe.”
“I’d use the Reality Stone to turn most of Hitler’s army into a big gaggle of hens.
Or, I could use the Mind Stone to make them all line up, and take turns publicly sodomizing
Adolf…
When Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, I’ll turn all of their bombs into apple pies, and their
bullets into cigarettes.
I’ll turn Benito into a bowl of spaghetti, and make his stupid wife eat it.”
“I would get rid of ‘half’ of Trump.”
“Goodbye Smash Mouth.”
“Mega Fap.”
“Sing and snap along with ‘The Adams Family’ theme song.”
“Destroy the observable universe then kill myself with it.”
We’ll leave you with that comment, obviously a person with some anger issues who might
think about seeing a therapist sometime soon.
As for turning the German army into hens and having each bird take it in turns to physically
abuse their leader, we think that person should get in touch with the script writers at Rick
and Morty.
Jokes aside, what would you do with the stone.
Truthfully, selfishly, absurdly.
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other show YOU vs Thanos.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.