Scott Lang versus the mad titan.
One with the ability to completely eliminate all living things within the universe, and
the other with the ability to get really, really small.
Which one will win?
Give us a shout in those comments with your pick, using either hashtag ant man or hashtag
Thanos.
Hey everyone!
Welcome back to Versus, the series we do here on Top 10 Nerd where we take your favorite
characters and throw them into a hypothetical battle with one another.
Today, we’re taking a look at two characters getting a whole lot of attention in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe - Ant-Man, and Thanos.
One of the bigger questions floating around the interwebs is whether or not Scott Lang
harbours the secret to defeating the mad titan once and for all, and while he just might
as far as the Quantum Realm is concerned, when it comes to a one on one face off, there’s
a lot of questions about whether or not he’d stand a chance.
So we’re aiming to solve that question today with this hypothetical match-up.
A few rules before we begin!
This is a one on one fight, meaning no help from any outside characters, and it takes
place on a barren expanse - hell, the ruins of Titan will do.
We’re looking at these characters in the MCU - we’ll be briefly touching on their
history in the comics, but aside from that, we’re looking at them as they currently
exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Meaning Thanos does have the gauntlet.
ORIGINS
Starting off with Scott Lang.
Scott got himself a master’s degree in electrical engineering - useful skills he then put to
good work by stealing from criminals to give back to those they had stolen from.
Eventually, he met his eventual ex-wife Maggie, and the two had a daughter together named
Cassie.
Maggie wanted Scott to give up the life of crime, so he got a job at Vistacorp.
He discovered that the company was overcharging customers, but when he adjusted the coding
error, he was fired by Geoff Zorick, his boss.
Turns out the error was intentional, and Zorick was making money off of it.
Zorick fired him after ordering Scott to revert what he fixed.
Scott was not cool with that.
So he broke into the VistaCorp headquarters, hacked their systems and paid the money back
to their customers.
He then broke into Zorick’s home, stole some stuff, and drove Zorick's car into his
pool.
Needless to say, this got him arrested, landing him their year sentence in prison, and quite
the reputation.
But by the end of it, he had renounced his criminal ways, wanting to keep his focus on
raising Cassie.
Moving on to Thanos.
Unlike the comics, the specificity of the mad titan’s past hasn’t fully diverged
yet.
But what we do know is that he is a powerful Titan warlord who rules over a distant region
of space, and commands two massive armies - the Chitauri and the Outriders.
His whole schtick in the MCU is to bring stability to the universe since he believes that its
population would use up all of the universe’s resources.
Except for the way that he went about solving that little problem was by seeking out the
infinity stones in order to wipe out half of all living beings in the universe.
Yeah, maybe a little extreme there.
Thanos was born to Alars, one of the Titans.
Titans are a race of god-like beings from the planet Titan.
Thanos was born deformed, which made him an outcast amongst his people, but despite this,
he still cared dearly about them and tried to save them when Titan became overpopulated.
Thanos suggested killing off half the population, he was deemed crazy and drastic, and with
no solution, catastrophe inevitably struck Titan, making it uninhabitable, and making
his race almost extinct.
This motivated Thanos to look at the rest of the universe, and see that it’s finite
resources were being depleted by its massive population, and that would lead to its destruction.
So he became a world-conqueror, and went from planet to planet, eliminating half of each
planet’s life, gathering orphans from each race that he conquered.
Corvus Glaive, Ebony Maw, Cull Obsidian and Proxima Midnight were the oldest of his children,
forming the Black Order.
He also collected Gamora and Nebula, and pitted the two against each other, removing a part
of Nebula’s body whenever she lost to Gamora in order to make her stronger.
ABILITIES
Let’s start off with Thanos, and begin by looking at his powers without the gauntlet.
Titans are one of the most feared races in the galaxy.
Thanos is immortal, he has superhuman strength, durability, reflexes, agility, and speed.
He has a genius level intellect, is a master tactician, manipulator, and combatant, and
knows a thing or two about torture techniques.
So essentially, he was already a massive threat before he got his hands on the infinity stones
- which, by the way, he was able to touch without any consequences, which we saw when
he popped them into the gauntlet.
The gauntlet was needed to safely harness the power of all of them combined.
Now, with the stones, Thanos has nigh-omnipotence, a regenerative healing factor, terrain manipulation,
energy absorption and transformation, death inducement (aka that snap), he can manipulate
energy, he can manipulate space, he can manipulate time, he can manipulate reality (which includes
illusion conjuration, invisibility, matter transmutation, biological manipulation and
soul containment), and so much more.
Moving on to Scott Lang.
As Ant-Man Lang is capable of size manipulation, superhuman strength, superhuman durability,
and insect manipulation.
He’s also an expert engineer, thief, tactician, and he’s really acrobatic, having shown
on multiple occasions that he’s very adept at parkour and free running maneuvers.
Hope van Dyne trained him in martial arts, which he’s proven adept at, having taken
on both Falcon in his own film, and managing to keep up against Black Widow in Civil War,
combining his martial arts skills with his shrinking abilities.
His size manipulation lets him reduce himself to the size of an ant, but he’s also shown
to go sub-atomic and return from the quantum realm - a neat trick he first discovered in
the initial Ant-Man film that’s now opened up a whole world of possibilities that we
still don’t know a whole lot about.
Scott also showed off that he can get real big, too, as seen in Civil War, and in Ant-Man
and the Wasp.
His durability increases significantly when this size - he was able to withstand missiles
from War Machine.
Although this does put an enormous strain on Scott and hinders his speed and balance
significantly.
When it comes to his strength, according to Hope van Dyne, I quote, “when you’re small,
energy’s compressed.
So you have the force of a 200-pound man behind a fist a hundredth of an inch wide.
You’re like a bullet.
You punch too hard, you kill someone.
Too soft, it’s a love tap.”
It’s not just punching, either - this allows for him to leap with great force, meaning
he can actually move through the air like a bullet, or move halfway across a room within
a single bound.
His ability to speak to insects is from a combination of mental training and his EMP
communication device, allowing Lang to control and command them.
This affects the promotes of the insects and stimulates their olfactory nerve centers,
which allows him to command and direct them, from using them to complete various tasks,
attack in swarms, or create living bridges so he can cross.
He also can use them as a form of transportation or distraction.
Speaking of his shrinking abilities, he’s pretty dependent on his equipment.
The Ant-Man suit is what manipulate’s his size and enhances his density and strength,
and his Pym particle disks, which are filled with Pym Particles, can shrink or enlarge
any object or living thing when impacted.
THE FIGHT
We know that Scott manipulation of his mass in physical hand to hand combat is powerful.
But is it powerful to give Thanos a run for his money?
Without the gauntlet, he may be able to get in a few solid hits, but with the power stone
at his disposable, Thanos is practically invulnerable.
We saw that Tony Stark as Iron Man was only able to make him bleed ever so slightly when
they fought on Titan.
When Ronan had the stone at his disposal in guardians of the galaxy vol 1, a whole ship
fell on him, yet he was able to walk away from it.
So physical hand to hand combat is definitely out of the question for Scott Lang in this
one, meaning he’d have to deploy other tactics.
Much smaller tactics.
Scott’s shrinking abilities could be incredibly useful in this fight.
In a similar fashion to his fight with Falcon in his first film, Scott would be able to
use the environment to evade attacks - to an extent - and similar to his fight with
Iron Man in Civil War, getting really tiny and entering his foe’s armor would also
come in handy.
While that may be his move as far as the gauntlet is concerned - to slip in underneath it and
try to remove it from Thanos’ arm - what are the chances that he’d be able to get
there undetected by the mad titan if he was fighting him alone?
And what’s to stop Thanos from using the reality or time stones to either grow Scott
back to regular size or reverse any progress Scott actually makes by getting underneath
the gauntlet?
The infinity stones add a whole lot of unknown variables in terms of the things Thanos is
capable of, and without a proper distraction or some sort of teamwork, it seems next to
impossible that Scott would be able to really get an upper hand on the mad titan.
That being said, Scott can access the Quantum Realm.
That opens up a whole lot of possibilities.
If Scott were to go subatomic and use that means as a way to eliminate Thanos similar
to what he did to Yellowjacket in the first Ant-Man film, he could stand a chance against
the big purple baddie.
We know that Scott would be able to survive such an attack, as long as he has an enlarging
regulator on his person when he goes sub-atomic.
And perhaps if Scott, Hope, and Hank Pym had more time to learn about the Quantum Realm,
there could be more than one way to use it against Thanos - which, they might just, considering
that many speculate that the Avengers 4 film takes place years after Infinity War thanks
to casting news about Cassie Lang being replaced by a teenaged actor.
WHO WILL WIN?
While I’m sure we have a lot of hearts crying out for Ant-Man to win this one, it seems
that would be unlikely, or at least, unlikely if he was taking on Thanos solo.
Without the Infinity Gauntlet, Scott would have a pretty decent chance, but with the
gauntlet, and without a buddy to act as a distraction, Thanos’ omnipotence would surely
have him alerted of Scott’s presence and plan, even if Scott was really tiny.
Based on what we currently know about the Quantum Realm and what Scott is capable of
doing within it, Thanos being victorious in a one on one battle is the most probable outcome.
There we have it!
Do you agree with our choice?
Or do you think Ant-Man deserves more credit?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know what your thinking!
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In the meantime, thanks for watching!
Catch you all in the next video