Welcome to another video when we pit someone, or something, that has extraordinary strength
and abilities against a regular Joe such as yourself.
Today we’re talking about Thanos, one of the most formidable bad boys in the Marvel
Universe.
He first showed his ugly face in the comic “The Invincible Iron Man #55” and has
since been a fairly regular fixture.
You might also have seen him in a number of Marvel movies and he will appear in the upcoming
Avengers: Endgame.
The creator of this villain, Jim Starlin, quite amusingly once said he got the idea
while studying psychology and “anger management.”
Yep, Thanos sure has a problem controlling his rage.
But now let’s have a look at his backstory before we get into the actual fight.
Indeed, if you look at Marvel’s Cinematic Universe fan site you’ll see that he would
have been interesting work for any psychologist.
His is described as being “powerful, extremist, genocidal, psychopathic, violent and tyrannical.”
Also known as the Dark Lord, Mad Titan, or even The Most Powerful Being in the Universe,
he is understandably a bit of a handful.
He was born on Titan, one of many of Saturn’s moons.
Just so you know, according to NASA, Saturn has 62 confirmed moons but a few more could
be added to that list soon.
Titan is special as it has its own atmosphere.
Thanos is the son of Eternals A'lars and Sui-San, and he has a brother called Eros.
He carries something called the Deviants gene and this somewhat helped shape his appearance.
After his birth his mother was so taken aback by his appearance that she tried to kill him.
The father prevented this from happening, but perhaps some of Thanos’ darker aspects
can be explained by how he was treated and how he looked.
He was friendly enough during his early days in school, but kept to himself and mainly
just hung out with his brother and his pets.
But then as he got older he became fascinated with death and some aspects of nihilism – a
philosophical belief that life has no inherent value, purpose, higher meaning.
But then he finds meaning later in life when he becomes obsessed with Mistress Death, the
personification of death itself.
Chasing after her is his raison-detre, and there is nothing he wouldn’t do for her.
We might also add that Thanos was not always portrayed as an out-an-out villain.
You see, when he was living on Titan there were way too many people and just not enough
resources.
Thanos had the idea just to kill half the people and the problem would be solved.
That didn’t go down well with his people of course.
He didn’t perform the great cull, and then he was proved right.
Titan was overrun and devastated and the Titan people almost became extinct.
Over his long history the story has changed many times, but you can read in the comics
how Mistress Death got Thanos to wipe out half the universe.
She said there were too many living people and not enough dead people, and asked him
to get the job done.
Thanos believed this to be true, having seen what happened on his own planet.
He thought sending off half the universe to an early grave would be an act of love in
some ways.
We should add that Mistress Death was also around from time to time to bring him back
from what seemed like certain death.
Thanos wants to exterminate half the universe because he thinks he’s doing a good thing,
that is based on his belief that there are not enough resources to go around.
The simple solution is to just get rid of many beings.
He commands armies and has many followers, and he seeks to find the Infinity Stones so
he can succeed in his plan.
If you don’t already know, the stones are six elemental crystals that each hold an important
aspect of the universe.
These stones were the creation of the Cosmic Entities and they each hold immense power.
So, for many years Thanos goes looking for these stones and that gets him into a lot
of trouble while often making alliances on the way.
He becomes a very feared tyrant, because if he came to your planet he might see to it
that he left with half the population dead.
It would be an understatement to say Thanos is a hard man to keep down.
He comes up against the best there are, including head-to-head with Thor, the Avengers, the
Masters of the Mystic Arts, the Guardians of the Galaxy and the nation of Wakanda.
He eventually wins in his last big fight, and with a snap of his fingers the universe
is depopulated.
He has no misgivings, sounding at times like German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche once said, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”
Thanos once uttered the dictum, “Flesh is weak.
Weakness must be cast aside for the sake of power.”
For Thanos, power and sometimes ruthlessness had to be embraced for the greater good.
Destruction was as necessary as creation.
He even had his adopted daughters, Nebula and Gamora, fight, and when Nebula lost he
removed a part of her body because he said this would make her stronger.
So, did this crazy tough-loving tyrant ever lose a fight?
Well, as some of you might know he once came up against the forces of Wakanda, who were
backed-up by some members of The Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy, and he makes
fairly easy work of them.
This ends with the Mad Tyrant putting the sixth and last stone in the gauntlet and harnessing
the power of the universe, thus making him omnipotent.
As we said, the end product is Thanos achieving what he always wanted to do: get rid of half
the universe.
He saw this as imperative to saving the other half, but we might ask if there was an alternative
solution.
Thanos didn’t seem to think so, kind of hailing himself as an unsung hero, once saying,
“The hardest choices require the strongest wills.”
That’s basically saying, “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”
Thanos incurred an injury, but he seemed happy enough after killing half of all beings.
What we usually see in such stories is the bad guy losing, but Thanos proved he had almost
unstoppable power.
But if you go back through all the comics, Thanos had his behind handed to him on many
occasions.
In 2005, you might have seen him losing a fight to Squirrel Girl, while Drax the Destroyer
once killed him by ripping out his heart.
Adam Warlock once turned him into stone, and that held him back for a while.
But as we said, when you have Mistress Death in your corner there are often ways of getting
resurrected.
He’s also been killed as a clone, and even as the zombie Thanos, and on many other occasions
when his anger and nihilism got the better of him.
What is so often his downfall is his devotion to Mistress Death, and she seems at times
to enjoy playing with his sometimes misguided mind and fickle heart.
Thanos might be the strongest of them all, but he has an Achilles heel: his heart and
ego.
When people were asked how Thanos might be defeated in upcoming movies, seeing as he
laid so many people to waste in the last one, a few folks had some ideas.
At this point we have an already almost unbeatable villain who now has been made even stronger
with Cosmic Cubes and Infinity Stones.
He has been made to look like he can’t lose, but as we know, everyone loses sometimes.
The closest we saw him to being badly hurt in the movies was when Thor hit him in the
chest with his Stormbreaker.
We at least know that he has a weakness, and perhaps as some pundits have said someone
will rustle up some kind of weapon in the upcoming movie and that weapon will be the
end of Thanos.
After all, everything so far has been thrown at Thanos and nothing worked.
Perhaps it will take some magic from the toolmakers, and who knows what can be created.
We looked at what people were saying on forums about how to beat Thanos, and some of the
answers were amusing.
One person said The Avengers will have to appeal to Thanos’ rather large ego, taunting
him to fight them without using all those powerful stones.
Perhaps Thanos might just do it to prove he can win, but we doubt this will happen.
There is also the fact that The Infinity Gauntlet might not always wield the power that was
required to wipe out half the universe.
Without its full power, and the fact he was hurt, this might mean he could be defeated.
As many others have also said, why didn’t Thor just aim for the head and not the chest.
Others are not so positive, with one person writing, “The Avengers essentially cannot
beat Thanos with the gauntlet.
He kills half the universe (regardless of power) with a mere thought.
He could literally end reality with the gauntlet.”
And with that in mind, how could YOU beat Thanos?
Well, as you don’t have super powers and you are up against a person that can destroy
just about everything in the universe, this is not going to be an easy fight.
In fact, let’s just forget about having a traditional fight and think about heart,
mind, ego, hubris.
So, let’s have a look at the name Thanos and his brother Eros.
If you know your Greek mythology you’ll know there were two characters with a similar
name and the same name.
The first was, Thanatos, the personification of death, and the second was Eros, the God
of love and desire.
The Marvel Comics just based their characters’ names on ancient Greek characters.
We might also note that psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud said that people are controlled by both
a death drive, Thanatos, a drive towards ultimate destruction, but also the drive to create,
which was based on Eros.
Ok, so if we are sticking with Greek myths we might acknowledge that Thanos is lacking
in the Eros department.
He has been devoted to Mistress Death, but that’s almost like looking in a mirror.
Perhaps your only chance of defeating Thanos is to teach him love, to show him love.
It’s a course of action that hasn’t been taken in the movies, but as a mere human one
of your only chances of not losing against this thing is by changing his very reason
for living.
You must transform the nihilist through your wise words and make him become an idealist,
a believer in the higher power of love.
That might of course just get you squished into a small ball and being thrown off the
edge of a cliff.
There have been some angry people on the planet that it seems had no spots to change.
The hate and fury is in the blood, in the very marrow of the bones.
Ok, so what next?
In that case, as a mere human you must try and trick Thanos.
We can look at Greek mythology again and think about the word hubris.
When we talk about hubris now we mean arrogance, overconfidence, too much pride, a boastful
ego, which more often than not ends with a downfall.
This could be good news for you, and let’s not forget that in mythologies wily humans
have beaten giants in the past.
Now, the one thing you have going for you in your fight with Thanos is the fact his
arrogance would be so high after beating everyone and fulfilling his objectives that you could
not possibly be a threat to him.
Now you must appeal to his ego, and it’s likely he will let you close because as we
said, you could not possibly hurt him in his eyes.
You become his friend and tell him you are devoted to him.
This is a great advantage, since you might be able to get so close you can get your hands
on the Infinity Gauntlet.
Ok, so that might vaporize you, but it might not.
Remember that Dr. Strange, a human, has touched one of the great stones.
Get your hands on this and you might have the power of the universe.
You were like a Trojan Horse, your feebleness made Thanos put his guard down and because
you stoked his ego he took a liking to you.
Then wham, you end his life just as he ended millions of others.
How would you defeat the great Thanos?
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