Ask the average comic book or superhero movie
fan to name the deadliest, most lethal, and
brutal comic superheroes, and the same names
will probably rise to the top: Wolverine is
almost guaranteed to take the top spot, with
insanely powerful heroes like Thor or the
Hulk close behind.
But those characters are only blessed with
superpowers that let them destroy enemies
one by one, with brute force, or directed
attacks.
But what about the heroes whose very abilities
threaten the lives of everyone around them?
The movies won’t go into too much detail,
since it’s the claw-slashers, punchers,
kickers, and enchanted hammer-swingers that
get the most attention.
And usually, the least convenient side effects
of a cool superpower are written off or ignored
completely.
But not by us.
In the interest of giving the unsung heroes
their time in the spotlight – and pointing
out how the science of their superpowers poses
a threat to everyone they meet – we’re
taking a look at Marvel’s most lethal heroes
in our latest docu series.
Here is Screen Rant’s closer look at The
REAL Deadliest Marvel Superheroes.
Cyclops
In most comic books, an incredibly powerful
ability or, in the world of the X-Men, mutation,
is both a gift and a curse.
For Scott Summers, that’s his energy blasts,
projected out of his eyeballs (or for the
comic geeks, an alternate energy dimension
released through gateways inside his eyeballs).
But most fans won’t actually realize just
how dangerous Cyclop’s power really is.
Taking off his glasses and unleashing energy
onto the target he’s staring down, or focusing
it through a visor might seem simple – but
human eyes are anything but.
Just try to focus on a single point, or word
on a page, and you’ll realize that eyes
almost never keep still, but jump around from
point to point.
These tiny jumps, called saccades (pronounced
“suh-kodds”) happen dozens, if not hundreds
of times a minute, and even more once adrenaline
starts pumping.
The worst part?
They can happen reflexively, as in, the brain
moves the eyes without us even realizing it.
When you add in potentially lethal kinetic
blasts firing on each and every single point,
Cyclops goes from a mutant powerhouse to a
mutant nuclear weapon.
Honestly, most superheroes have at least some
way of controlling the powers they’re given,
even if it takes years and years of concentration.
But for Scott Summers, no training will keep
his eyes still, meaning just a few seconds
of scanning a room could reduce it to rubble,
along with anyone inside it.
And even if the movies show it as a more fine-tuned
power, they ignore the fact that not every
kinetic beam hits its target.
If this were the real world, not only would
Cyclops be a walking eyebeam menace, but every
shot off target could wipe out a bystander,
a house, a nearby building, or even an aircraft
– even if they were hundreds of yards, or
miles away.
Who knows how many he killed before he found
those ruby red Ray Bans.
Thor
It isn’t just the Asgardian’s superhuman
strength, endurance, or combat skills that
make him deadly, but the electricity that
comes with being the god of thunder.
When the fight gets out of hand, or he just
needs a trick up his sleeve, Thor calls lightning
to his hammer, Mjolnir, and fires it onto
entire hordes of enemies, or massive monsters.
But if this actually is lightning – and
fans are told that it is, since it’s coming
straight from storm clouds above – the release
wouldn’t be anywhere near heroic.
For starters, it would wound, incapacitate,
or actually kill the heroes fighting beside
him.
Since lightning being fired would be equal
to a flash from around 100 million lightbulbs,
and loud enough to rupture eardrums or burst
blood vessels in anyone unlucky enough to
be standing within a few dozen yards of him,
Thor would be as effective as unleashing a
stream of flashbang stun grenades into a crowd.
But the scariest part is that the sound makes
up just 1% of lightning’s energy – the
rest is light… and HEAT.
Enough heat to raise the air temperature to
close to 70,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
In nature, that heat dissipates into the air
faster than it can actually burn, which is
why people struck by lightning can survive
it.
But when you have Thor unloading constant
streams of lightning, it’s a different story.
That may not be a problem for the invincible
Thor, or protected Avengers like Iron Man
or Hulk, but for the human ones, including
Captain America, it means injuries.
And the same goes for any innocent civilians
anywhere near him.
The movies might ignore what lightning actually
is, but if Thor was to come to your rescue
in the real world, it would mean that blinding,
ear-splitting, burn-inducing blonde bomb was
suddenly the biggest threat to your life,
not the villain he’s there to battle.
Quicksilver
No need to worry about the Marvel movie right
here, since both versions of the Marvel speedster
– the one from The Age of Ultron, and the
one seen in Days of Future Past – are probably
responsible for more deaths than most supervillains.
As the saying goes, speed kills.
And it’s just as true for mutants or “gifted”
test subjects.
But speed doesn’t usually pose a risk to
the actual speedsters, since their muscles,
organs, metabolism, and perception have all
been magically heightened too.
But no matter how sound the science fiction
might be, a human being can only go so fast.
Or, more accurately, accelerate.
Good old-fashioned physics and inertia spoils
the fun for speedsters, since it’s a rule
that can’t really be broken: it’s only
a matter of time before Quicksilver takes
a non-speedster along for the ride (his sister
in Age of Ultron, and Magneto in Days).
In 
X-Men, he even makes sure to hold Magneto’s
neck to prevent whiplash, showing the filmmakers
grasp the problem.
So his neck is kept straight, great.
But the rest of his organs are liquefied about
a second later.
Even if a person’s skin, muscles, or bones
remained intact after going from 0 to 600,
the same effect as a car crash traveling 600
miles an hour, the organs inside wouldn’t
stand a chance.
The human body is mostly water, anyway, and
the acceleration means a person unlucky enough
to be “saved” by Quicksilver wouldn’t
even have a split-second to feel as their
internal organs were left behind, and disintegrated.
It’s a frightening idea, too: that rescue
scene in Age of Ultron may actually be the
most gruesome massacre ever committed in a
comic book movie, with each one of Quicksilver’s
victims collapsing a second after the camera
cut away.
The horror.
(the scene aboard the train in Korea when
Scarlet witch and Quicksilver rescue people
from being run over).
Ant-Man
That’s right, Ant-Man.
It seems only fitting that the superhero who
seems the most out of his depth, and literally
the smallest would pose the biggest threat,
but he does – and it’s thanks to actual
science.
The movie, like the comics, tries to base
Scott Lang’s powers and the Ant-Man suit
in actual quantum and atomic science.
They explain that the suit doesn’t shrink
the wearer, exactly, but uses Pym Particles
to shrink the distance between the wearer’s
atoms.
In other words, an object’s mass stays the
same, but is just compacted by removing some
of the negative space between the molecules
it’s made up of.
The movie ignores that simple explanation
when it makes small things bigger, but it
explains how Scott packs the same punch, weight,
and strength as a full-grown man when he’s
cut down to size (him shattering the tile
of the bathroom in his first shrinking scene).
But that science becomes a potential planet-killer
in the movie’s third act, when Scott is
forced to go “sub-atomic,” shrinking to
a size smaller than any atom, electron, or
recognizable form of matter (crazy shrinking
montage at the very end).
The problem here has to do with singularities:
what science fiction fans know as the infinitely
small, infinitely dense point that a black
hole is formed around.
Usually, it takes the mass of an entire star
collapsing to create one, but quantum theorists
like Stephen Hawking have claimed that microscopic
black holes might happen all the time, when
atoms and molecules collide – and some at
the Large Hadron Collider are even hoping
to create one.
So why don’t we notice them?
Because they’re so microscopic, there isn’t
enough matter to fuel them, and they explode
almost instantly.
And that’s where Ant-Man comes in.
By shrinking to a size smaller than any observable
particle, but doing it with all of his mass,
Scott would, according to actual science,
have created a black hole with a ton more
mass than would actually be needed to keep
it stable.
Stable long enough to start pulling in the
matter around it – which happens to be Earth,
and everyone on it.
He might escape and save the day, but according
to the science that the movie lays out itself,
Ant-Man wouldn’t just be the greatest killer
in the history of the planet… he’d be
the last.
And we thought it was a comedy.
That’s our shocking look at the not-so-heroic
effects of Marvel’s most heroic superhumans,
and why sometimes it’s better for comic
book movies to play fast and loose with science
and their own science fiction.
Still, it’s always nice to see our favorite
heroes in a new light.
Which superhero powers do YOU think could
prove to be more trouble than movies or comics
make out?
Let us known your own suspicions and reactions
in the comments, and remember to subscribe
to our channel for more videos like this one.
