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? You thought this video was fun, check out
our You vs series! Go ahead! I’ll wait. Click the thumbnail on the screen!
