#194 – The More Thanos, The Better (Infinity War vs. Endgame)

Welcome back to Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. I'm your host, Mr. Honest. Trying some new intros here. We with a new style of episode. Let's just try all these new things today. We're gonna go purple, okay? Big, grim, inevitable purple. That's right. We're talking about Thanos. Longtime listeners might know he's probably my favorite character in the mcu, let alone one of the most bad guys, epic bad guys in cinema history. Okay, super villains. At least he can go up against Darth Vader. I think. I think Darth Vader might win. I don't know. With the Infinity Stones, who would win? Email me marvelmaniacpodgmail.com Darth Vader or Thanos with the Gauntlet? Darth Vader. Darth Vader without the. Sorry. Thanos without the Gauntlet. What. What are your thoughts on. Personally, I think with the Gauntlet, Thanos wins. Without the Gauntlet, I think Vader wins. So for this episode, my thesis is just simple, plain and clear. The more Thanos, the better. He's not just Marvel's greatest villain. He's two villains in one. He's. He's calm and inevitable in Infinity War, and he's raw fury in Endgame. And somewhere in between, he also became my comfort movie character. Yes, Infinity War is my comfort movie. Don't worry. I'll. I'll explain. So let's talk about Infinity War Thanos first. Thanos. And Infinity War was chilling because he doesn't think he's the bad guy. He almost is convincing enough to let us believe he's not. If he wasn't pounding on our heroes half the movie. He's not twirling a mustache. He's not cracking jokes. He is sort of clever with his words, though, we can admit. And he's calm. Most importantly in Infinity War, patient and purposeful. He truly believes that he's wiping out half the universe for an act of mercy. He doesn't see it as mass genocide. And the scariest part, he explains it so clearly that you can almost understand his logic. Like, almost. I don't agree with him. I really don't. I just had a PlayStation name to get to trigger people. Thanos. Thanos is right. Or Thanos wasn't wrong. I changed that soon after End Game. So the opening of Infinity war with Hulk vs. Thanos and Loki get killing, you know, it's a different level of villain. You're terrified of Thanos the minute you meet him because you've heard about his rumbling through the MCU throughout The whole saga, little by little. We seen him like two time, three times technically on screen. One will be the post credit scene for the first Avengers. The second would be the post credit scene for the Avengers Age of Ultron. But in the middle of that, we have Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy and Gamora, the children and daughters of Thanos. So we see him talking to Ronin a little bit, we get to see a little bit of his progress. But when he shows up on the Asgardian ship in the beginning of Infinity War power Stone already in hand. He is terrifying because we don't know what he's capable of. He's a big brute with a big brain. So I just. I gotta be honest, like, when I went to see this in theaters, he terrified me. Not like I wasn't pooping my pants. Okay. I was just thinking like. Sorry I said. Sorry I said that. I'm just thinking that, honestly, Thanos has been built up so well. It makes me think of Dr. Doom and where it's going. The way Thanos lays out Hulk is the most intimidating thing. And the way he kills Loki is the most traumatizing thing. Because we just got kind of like a redemption Loki. He will see the light of day or something. We will see the light again when I forget what he says. But anyway, perfectly balances all things. Should be Thanos. I am inevitable Thanos. So many good quotes. Hardest choices require the strongest wills. I don't know if it's will or wills. The man could publish a freaking book of villain affirmations. I'm serious. And let's not forget the Infinity Stones themselves. Each stone adds a splash of color, not just visually, but thematically. Reality bending red time twisting green. Soul stealing orange. It's like watching him assemble the ultimate villain rainbow. So I did mention Infinity War. It's become my comfort movie. I know, I know. It's one of the darkest stories Marvel has told. But the rhythm of it, the colors of the stones, like I was saying, the quotable, quotable lines, almost everything he says, it's just endlessly rewatchable. Like curling up with a cosmic tragedy. I think it is a big part of it really is the colors. For me, I really like rainbow colors, RGB and all that. And I think seeing him get the gauntlet together is something everyone kind of secretly wanted until we see. We see the results. And I was just going to give you guys a spoiler warning just now. Come on. The movie has a pace where you sit down and it feels like you watched 45 minutes but it's been like two hours almost. And we get to see so many cool moments from our heroes. There's still a lot of victorious moments, like when Steve Rogers shows up. Tony doing every single thing he can with all the newest technology to just make this guy bleed a drop of blood. And he even states all that for a drop of blood. And another thing, Stark. You know me. I do. You're not the only one cursed with knowledge. I mean, how fucking biblical is that? My only curse is you. He's like, come on. Yeah. So cool. Drops a building on his head. They're fighting at his home planet. They set up Thanos for more backstory in Eternals 2, which was gonna come with the star Fox guy who's brother of Thanos. We want to know Thanos's story. Want to know how he became the Mad Titan. I want to know how old he is. I want to know so many things. I want to know when he discover the Infinity Stones. How he discovered the Infinity Stones. Are they a known thing in the outer galaxies, or are they just a myth that he wants to find? I mean, it takes him so long to find the Soul Stone, up until Infinity War. I'm just curious. I'm insanely curious. So I even think the color palette on Thanos, he's more purple and more bright purple for Infinity War than he is in Endgame. We'll get to end game. I just love the journey he has. And I'm not, like, waiting for other scenes to end for him to come on screen, but I'll just say when I'm watching, when he's on screen is when I'm the most invested. So tragic. He likes turning things into bubbles. And he does like having, like, super villainy talks kind of with, like, Dr. Strange. And I. I just find it so complex, the fact that he has to kill his daughter. She doesn't believe he can love anything, let alone her. And that realization by Gamora is heartbreaking. But the tear rolling down Thanos's cheek is heartbreaking, too, because this man believes he had to do this to get the job done, that he was destined for, that his glorious purpose was burdened with. And it's an Infinity War just turns out to be a slaughter fest for the Avengers. You know Spider Man. No, Far From Home, the second movie kind of spoiled it because, I don't know, let's see, there's a trailer for this Spider man movie, and, well, Thanos isn't in it. No, there was a trailer for the Spider man movie and Spider man wasn't alive, and he was in this trailer. So it's like, prequel. And everyone's like, no, this is just Sony doing what they do. Thanks, Sony. Anyway, I was able to pretty much understand that all the heroes will be brought back. Just didn't know how. It had to be a time heist. Took me a long time to see that coming. So let's, like, move a little bit inward to end game. And this Thanos, this is where he gets even more fascinating. The Thanos we face in 2023 is dead. Killed in the first 15 minutes of the film. And who comes back younger, him, angrier, Less of a philosopher, more of a warlord, a tyrant. He sees that his plan worked through Nebula's feature, because when Nebula goes back in time, she connects with the other Nebula network. So he's able to see everything through his Nebula. And he knows the Avengers, unruly wretches are trying to do a time heist to fix what he did. He is so inspired by himself. The ego on this version of Thanos probably grew four times. And he already has a huge ego. And this early in the story, I mean, you give him a little extra time, apparently he becomes more of a walking, focused, inevitable, actual bad baddie. And this Thanos thinks he already earned it because future him earned it. So he feels this, like, entitlement to it. And because the Avengers found out a way to undo his snap, that breaks his illusion of inevitability, he shifts from saving the universe to dominating the universe. He is not calm anymore. He is vengeful. He literally says, I'll shred this uniform universe down to its last atom. Another awesome line. This isn't balance anymore. It's just straight punishment. He is a conqueror, and he wants to see the Avengers hurt. So the contrast between the battlefield and in Endgame, composed to the manipulator, the battlefield warlord in Endgame versus, like the manipulator of Infinity War. Same man, but two totally different villains. The duality, it's what makes Thanos so unique. Most villains, they peak once, but Thanos, he gave us two different peaks, two different versions. The first example of variants, almost, we see variants and man, the Avengers are about to go on a whole different level of wickedly crazy out of this world. Lunacy. And Thanos is the door to that. Thanos changes everything. Everything runs through Thanos, and everything runs out of Thanos. The effects on the Multiverse saga, he. He takes still takes the stage as a name reference and what truly almost ended the world. But more importantly, how The Avengers legendary Tony Stark was able to take him down. I don't know if him saying his last I am Iron man makes it into the stories of that universe, but I think it's pretty cool. So we've looked into both Thanos's. Now let's talk a little bit about his legacy. Here's the truth. Marvel has been living in Thanos's shadow ever since he arrived with Destiny and got snapped away all the same. Kang, sure, conceptually. Conceptually big. But he hasn't hit the cultural nerve like Thanos. Honestly, the Kang flop was a big disappointment because we were getting invested and we don't want to get too far into that right now. There's rumors of Dr. Doom taking on Kang and the King of Council of Kings. We'll see. We'll see. You don't hear people quoting Kang memes at the gym. No. You don't see kids dressing up as king for Halloween, but Thanos sees the bar. The one Kang line I remember is see you soon, which is from first season of Loki. Completely, completely terrifying. And then one of my other favorite king lines is pumpkins. And that's from Loki season two. That's Victor timely. They were setting it up all the way up until then. Kevin Feige likes to say that he plan Dr. Doom because of how he was badly he was performing in Quantumania. So he started to have the Robert Downey Jr's Dr. Doom idea before that. You know, I have a feeling that in Doomsday, we're gonna see Thanos and we're gonna see him rip the spine. Are we gonna see Dr. Doom rip out his spine? I think we are. It's an iconic scene from the comics. It's. It's equivalent, but more scary than what Thanos does to Hulk. I mean, that would really set the tone for the movie. If we get to see Dr. Doom rip into Thanos chest with his hand and pull out his entire skeleton. That is so gnarly. They probably won't show it. They probably wouldn't show it, but they definitely would frame it like they did the comics. Oh, my goodness. I mean, Thanos's willpower is what made him terrifying. His logic is what made him believable. And his defeat felt earned both times. I mean, when Thor chopped off his head, I don't know if we'd call it a defeat. He definitely died winning. So what would it take to bring Thanos back? Well, I'd say they'd have to have some sort of multiverse presence. A variant of Thanos King Thanos, who's been teased in an Avengers ride at Disney World. There are lots of possibilities and they're infinite. And I think we will see Thanos get beat up by Kang in Doomsday. But I think in Secret Wars I'm going to put money that Kang has a team and I think King Thanos will probably be on it. Maybe not. Maybe. I. I don't think they're going to pass up the opportunity to bring a big chin back. To see him defeated will be hard, but if they pull it off right, they are going to make Dr. Doom an even crazier villain somehow. And I hope they pull it off. I really do. I'm its biggest cheerleader. But I'll be honest, if it isn't good, we do see Thanos and what if a couple times, what if Star Lord was t' Challa or I forget the exact name, but you get the gist. Thanos is a good guy in that one. T' Challa talks Thanos out of the Stone genocide. He jokes about it being a good idea, but he's a. He's a Ravager. Is he a Ravager? Is that what they are? Personally, I, Dustin and tj ever since before all these possible cameos that they're like, it's over for Thanos, man. Get over it. But I think the more Thanos, the better. Okay, only if Marvel uses him as a reminder to what inevitability looks like. Very, very important. So here's where I land. Thanos isn't just Marvel's best villain. He's Marvel's most complete villain. Calm philosopher in Infinity War, vengeful warlord in Endgame and in my world, the ultimate comfort. Watch the more than. Bring it on. Give us a Thanos movie please. Kevin, give us that Thanos movie please. I want to hear from you. What is your favorite Thanos liner moment quote? Anything. Drop it in the comments or tweet me@marvel maniacpod. We also have marvelmaniacpodmail.com and we have a Patreon. You can click our link tree all those links, all the socials give me a follow so you get updated on new episodes. Join our community in Patreon and and be a part of the the discussion in there is fun. We got a great guy named Michael Finney. He has been in there chatting with me about my minisodes. Yes, we also release five plus minute minisodes every Saturday at 6am so you get an extra dose of Marvel Maniac. Save them to binge him if you want if you're not feeling them. But we'd love to see you there. Never expected, but always appreciated. I really want to build a community here and I love what I do. I love talking about to you about these crazy scenarios with all these insane heroes. And I know when I listen back to this one, I'll have so many other things I realized I wish I could have said about Thanos. And that's why you can always expect another Infinity War breakdown somewhere down the line. As always, thank you for joining me on Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. I'm your host, Eric, aka Mr. Honest, and I'll see you next time. Until then, Avengers disassemble.