Film Theory: Is Thor STRONGER Than The Hulk? (Thor: Ragnarok)

Oh man, is there a new Thor movie? I wonder what it's about? I mean, they already had him fighting Loki and the Dark Elves. What could be next? Oh, I know, maybe they mention that time Thor attacked China. Maybe they tell the story of that time Thor helped Hitler kill Stalin. Yeah! Those are the MCU movies I'd really be interested in seeing. Hello Internet, welcome to Film Theory, the show that keeps digging until it finds the thing everyone hopes you'll forget. So after ruining Ant-Man and Spider Man, I thought it was time for a change. It's time to take on a superhero that isn't about something you crush under your boot.

That's how it is. Today we're talking about Thor Ragnarok and I'm pleased to report that my shameless groveling at the feet of Disney finally allowed me to preview one of his

film

s. Fear not, today's

theory

is one hundred percent spoiler-free. Now, in the latest trailer for Thor Ragnarok, they tease a moment that served as a joke for the

film

. "Voice activation required." "Thor" "The Strongest Avenger" "Let me try. Banner" "Welcome, The Strongest Avenger" "Uh, what?" Thor constantly claims that he is the strongest Avenger, but Hulk undermines him time and time again. It's hilarious and it also made me think.

Of the two, who would be the

stronger

Avenger? Obviously Quinn's jet computer has been programmed to think that Hulk is the strongest, but Thor is literally a god. Shouldn't he then win the title? Stan Lee certainly seems to think so. In a radio interview asking who would win in a fight, Stan went on record as saying, "I would have to say Thor because as strong as the Hulk is, he's still a mortal, but Thor is one of the Norse gods." right here. Does Stan Lee really know his own creation, or will we show today that he is more out of touch than a father trying to understand what a Ricegum is?

Is Thor right to feel slighted by the computer, or is he simply stating a fact that this arrogant Asgardian refuses to accept? It's time to settle this superhuman grudge once and for all with the greatest superpower of all: research. First, let me make it clear: I want to determine who is literally the strongest, not who would win in a fight, since that involves strategy and fighting techniques. I'm talking pound for pound about who is physically

stronger

. Who is able to lift the most and hit the hardest? So let's start at the beginning, which I think is a very good place to start: comics.

Over their fifty-five year mutual history, these two Goliaths have faced each other a lot, so maybe by seeing who wins these fights more often we can start to figure out who the stronger superhero is. Their first fight, in 1963. Avengers No. 3. There is no clear winner. Well, their second fight, Journey into Mystery No. 112 from 1965. There is no clear winner. Well, the third time is the charm, The Submariner 35 from 1971. There is no clear winner. Defenders 10. Draw. Incredible Hulk 300. Giveaway. Mighty Thor 489. Giveaway. By now, you may be noticing a pattern. The comics want to keep the winner of this battle vaguer than a Scott Cawthon story.

In almost every confrontation, the two either stalemate or the US government arrives and drops a nuclear bomb to prevent the two from fighting. That's your taxpayers' money at work, ladies and gentlemen. However, there are some tests we can use, hidden in these battles. In 1987's Mighty Thor No. 385, Hulk repeatedly says that Thor cannot defeat him without his hammer. Thor denies this and throws the hammer at him twice during the battle, but only once Mjolnir is back in play can he take down the Hulk. That wouldn't mean much on its own, but in 2011's Fear Itself No. 5, Thor confesses that he could never beat the Hulk, and it doesn't seem like he's exaggerating either.

In 2012's Hulk Smashes the Avengers #1, all of the Avengers work together to try to restrain the Hulk, with Thor using the handle of Mjolnir to restrain the Hulk's neck. The Hulk sends them all flying, giving us our first true evidence that, at that moment, he was stronger than Thor and all the other Avengers combined. Then again, we're talking about a guy who is canonically defeated by a strategic box of puppies. Therefore, the title of Strongest Avenger might not be as prestigious as it might initially seem. Okay, so his head-to-head battles might be a draw, but what if we compare his relative feats of strength?

During Marvel's Secret Wars 4, a cosmic entity known as the Beyonder sends various heroes and villains to an artificial planet to fight. At one point, the Beyonder throws a mountain range at them and our not-so-merry Green Giant literally carries the load while the others plan their escape. The mountain range is confirmed to be two miles high. Two miles of pure rock high, and the deck itself says it weighs 150 billion tons. That's three times ten to the power of 14 pounds of rock on his shoulders, which is incredible, but not as incredible as what we see in The Incredible Hulk 102, where he puts a planet back together with his bare hands.

He literally grabs two tectonic plates and pushes them back together. By the way, my favorite part of this comic is the explanation of this. "He...he changed the plates." "Of course he does, he's the Hulk." Considering that the weight of the Earth's crust is about 6,200 times 10 to 19 pounds, and there are about 15 major tectonic plates on Earth, each of those plates that Hulk is moving will add up to about 4.1 sextillion pounds, and it's moving two of them with his bare hands. Good luck facing that Thor. Except he does. He looks like he can go toe to toe with this number.

In Thor 272, Thor and Loki encountered the giant Utgard, who challenges the Asgardians to rather unique challenges, one of which is to lift his cat. No, no, you heard right. He picks up a cat. And you all thought the dark world plot was bad. Look at the source material you're working with here, people. In all seriousness, this story is based on Norse mythology and as you might expect, the cat is not actually a cat, in both the comic and the myth, the cat is actually revealed to be a Midgard serpent in disguise. That probably doesn't mean anything. to much to you.

Don't worry, it didn't mean much to me either. The snake is actually a huge snake also known as Jormungandr Jormungandr JORMUNGANDR whose sole purpose is to surround the planet and destroy it. Who is a bad snake kitty? No treats for you. Get into the corner. Most importantly for our purposes, Jörmungandr is tremendously heavy. Although we never got an exact weight for the snake, we know that it has the mass necessary to surround the entire Earth and destroy it. The force it would take to destroy the Earth, according to people who have spent a lot of time thinking about destroying the Earth, would be about 2.2 4 times 10 to the power of 24 pounds of force.

Although Thor fails the test, he manages to lift one of the cat's paws off the ground. A feat that apparently impresses Utgard the Giant. I don't know, I lift all four of Skip's legs all the time and he gets fatter every day. Anyway, that means Thor is exerting the equivalent of five septillion pounds of force, three digits more than the Hulk pulling on tectonic plates. So maybe Thor and Stan Lee are right in thinking that Thor is, in fact, the strongest Avenger. But here's the thing. Comics are weird. I mean, we just talked about how Thor's strongest feat in the comics is lifting a single cat's paw off the ground.

Power scaling in the comics is very different from power scaling in the movies, and honestly, this is film

theory

. Anyway, I'm more interested in movies. And the MCU operates to a different standard. A world where Thor is not a supporter of Hitler. As Stan Lee said, in the comic universe Thor is literally a god, but in the MCU Odin makes it clear that they are not gods. They are mortals like us "We are not gods" "We are born" "We live. We die, as humans do." "Five thousand years or so" And while the Asgardians have proven to be quite useful in the MCU as in the original Thor "There you go, girl," it now puts it in a completely different vein than the Asgardians of Earth-616 .

That's the main Marvel Comics universe for those unaware of top-notch geek speak. So for our final answer, let's focus on the movies' moments of strength to determine if Ragnarok's computer is just one big troll. Our first baseline measurement is Iron Man in all 17 MCU films at this point, we've seen Tony Stark take on both Hulk and Thor so relative performance against him will be a good benchmark. The battle against Thor occurs in the original Avengers. movie. During the battle, Thor uses his lightning powers to destroy Iron Man's suit, which has the reverse effect he intended and charges the armor up to 475 percent power "Power to four hundred percent capacity" "What "Is that so?" Are you sure about that, Jarvis?

So why does it say four seventy-five in Tony's reading? Anyway, Iron Man comes out of this battle alive. Sure, you could say that Thor may have been holding back, but at least he was trying to stop Tony and ultimately failed. Compare that now to Hulk vs Iron Man in Age of Ultron. Here, Tony wears his special Hulk-buster armor, a suit powered by 11 reactor cores. Even with 11 times the output of a normal suit, Tony still couldn't overpower the Hulk. "Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep!" So we have to give the point to Hulk. And then what about Hulk and Thor's first cinematic battle?

Here's Thor struggling to restrain Hulk's arm. But then here's footage of Thor completely destroying the Hulk just seconds later with Mjolnir, which is something we haven't taken into consideration yet. The hammer. Why do we spend so much time calculating and comparing, when shouldn't Mjolnir give us our direct answer? Thor can lift Mjolnir when no one else can, so he should be the strongest, right? Well not exactly. You see, if these were the comics, that might be the case. The comic Mjolnir has a specific mechanism by which it works. When unworthy people try to lift it, it begins to gain mass.

That leaves open the small but very real possibility that someone else could lift it. In fact, Hulk can do it. The hammer gains mass more slowly than the Hulk gains strength as he gets angrier and angrier trying to lift the damn thing. His strength eventually overcomes her and he becomes one of the few who can wield Mjolnir. However, we know that mjolnir is actually not based on weight, but rather on Odin's enchantment. "Whoever wields this hammer, if he is worthy, will possess the power of Thor." It is not a question of mass but of dignity. the hammer is allowed to be lifted by those who consider themselves worthy.

When Thor was on the naughty list, he couldn't move the thing. Only after he is back on the good list will he be able to raise it again. So the ability to pick up Mjolnir is a moot point. But the hammer itself can help us crown our final winner. Back in The Avengers, Thor goes toe-to-toe with the big guy and doesn't hold back. After Mjolnir knocks the Hulk down, the Hulk attempts to pick it up and retaliate, but discovers, as we all know, that the owner will only move for those deemed worthy. The result is Hulk pulling him with all his might and then I don't remember his feet sinking into any rocks.

After doing some calculations on the size of Hulk's feet and the resistance of the asphalt on the S.H.E.I.L.D. ship. To dig into a floor like this, the Hulk would have had to exert three million seven hundred and sixty-eight thousand pounds of force to dent the asphalt floors, for each individual foot. Now compare that to Thor's big moment of strength in the movies, Crushing Iron Man's arm. At the end of the original Iron Man, Tony corrects a small fallacy about his suit: "It's not technically accurate, you see, it's an alloy of gold and titanium..." It's not Iron Man, it's a gold and titanium alloy man.

In 2016, a Rice University team discovered a real gold titanium alloy that was four times harder than steel. Four times. According to Wikipedia, structural steel can withstand a force of approximately 36 thousand psi before it begins to fall or break. So that would mean that an alloy four times stronger could require about one hundred and forty-four thousand pounds of pressure per square inch. For a hand the size of Thor's to produce the same level of pressure to crush Iron Man's gauntlet. It would translate to three million four hundred fifty-six thousand pounds of force Three hundred thousand pounds of force under what we know is the output of one foot.

So any way you look at it, Stan Lee is dead wrong. It's easy to assume that a god-like superhero would be the most powerful, but most of that comes from Mjolnir itself. What Ragnarok plays as a joke at Thor's expense is simply true. According to what is said in the comics, his feats of strength. , logical comparisons and simply mathematics and science. There is no denying that Hulk is the strongest Avenger.Well, until we factor vision into all of this, the Hulk better start watching out. But hey, that's just a theory! A cinematographic theory. Aaaand, cut