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With everyone getting upgraded to 5-A, Hulk has been left behind. The power gap between Hulk and the post-Awakening cast was somewhat acceptable before as they were both in 6-B and Hulk had the "higher with rage" thing that could reasonably account for downscaling, but now it's absurd with how big the gap has gotten, I think it's long overdue to establish his relativity to the rest of the cast.
Just a plain viewing of the fight should tell you they're relative,
Thanos never fights as efficiently and viciously until in Endgame, where he once again is blood-lusted, and this is because Thanos started holding back after acquiring the space stone.
Several other statements also imply this.
Director's commentary - Thanos going forward only kills threats to his mission. Thanos was about to execute Stark, tried to murder Thor twice, and he was about to skewer the Hulk before Heimdall's intervention. Thanos considered only a handful of characters powerful enough to kill, Hulk was one of them.
Another statement from the directors say that Thanos won due to being more skilled, but Hulk is equal to him
“I would say that he’s just that powerful. You didn’t see him actively use the power stone in that fight. I think ultimately, the way we looked at that fight and the way talked about it with our stunt team when we were executing it was Hulk is obviously very powerful, but he’s a little mindless in his fighting style. It’s aggressive, it’s pummeling. Thanos is the Ghengis Kahn of the universe, he’s a very skilled fighter, equally as strong. So when you put those two up against each other, the more skilled fighter is going to win ultimately. Which is why Hulk has a moment where he overpowers Thanos, but ultimately Thanos is smart.”
Another statement from an interview says that Thanos is stronger, 4:30 but the Hulk is used as the benchmark of strength not 5-A Iron Man or Thor, implying Hulk is stronger than them.
Now there's obviously some contradiction there, but I think the most important thing is that Hulk is being used as the character to hype up Thanos. Hulk is the character that gets Worfed to establish how strong Thanos is and hype him up, while Thor got off-screened and had to get a power up to further compete.
The only thing going against this is Maw saying "let him have his fun," but I think it's a huge leap in logic to say that that translates to him holding back his strength billions of times over, especially since we can how Thanos performs to people who actually AREN'T relative to him like Drax or Strange or Black Panther, who all get oneshotted and don't require any martial arts moves.
Again, to not scale him to Ragnarok Thor is a huge leap in logic and you'd have to assume that Thor was holding back billions of times over when he decked him twice. The script even says that the first hit was an instinctual one - no excuse there.
"GROWLING, Hulk stands up and HITS Thor with a straight jab that sends Thor TUMBLING across the arena. Hulk immediately LEAPS after him and LANDS ON Thor! Hulk is now on top of Thor as they slide across the arena, just PUMMELING him with punches. Left-right-left-right. Thor's head snaps back and forth. In the carnage, Thor sees VISIONS OF ODIN. Then- -his eyes GLOW WHITE WITH ELECTRICITY. Like an instinctual defense mechanism, Thor suddenly KNOCKS HULK BACK WITH A BURST OF LIGHTNING! Seething with electricity, Thor springs to his feet and then BLASTS HULK WITH A MASSIVE LIGHTNING PUNCH! Hulk is LAUNCHED BACKWARDS and Thor hits the ground HARD."
Furthermore, they would have traded more blows, with Thor winning, but Hulk still keeping up in the fight
Interesting to note that Hulk was even holding back in this fight.
Ryan Coogler considers Hulk above Thor - this is backed up in the film with M'Baku using Hulk as the benchmark of strength for Namor, not Thor. Since this is essentially Coogler's scaling being translated into film, I don't think you can take M'Baku as an unreliable source, especially considering he's a member of a paranoid, ex-isolationist advanced nation that would probably have assessed the threats various power players posed.
Banner begs for the Hulk to come out to face Cull Obsidian. He helped design the Hulkbuster Mark II and even used an inferior model beating the Hulk as proof of its strength, why would he beg for the Hulk to come out if he was billions of times weaker than the suit he was wearing? That would be a death sentence.
A deleted scene even has Hulk overpower Cull with one hand after shattering the suit just by transforming. And the only reason this was cut was to give Banner a victory, not because of any power scaling issues.
1.59x10^34 J - value the post-Awakening cast is "at least" as strong as
1.6554879408 x 10^23 - value Hulk scales to
That would make the post-Awakening cast 96,044,191,009.4 times stronger than Hulk.
I think Hulk should just flat out scale to the post-Awakening tier. No downscaling, no "at most." Just a flat "At least 5-A, higher with rage." He takes more hits from bloodlusted Thanos, is constantly used to measure the strength of others,
Since various characters like Ultron would also scale (thereby making pre-Awakening characters 5-A), we can bring back the Gladiator key for Hulk, or just separate it as Ragnarok and onwards. With the weird time shenanigans that Sakaar has, he had plenty of time fighting and training to get stronger.
To my knowledge, the only one who would scale to this would be Abomination who briefly traded blows with a pissed off Smart Hulk. He can just get a new key.
Thanos
Just a plain viewing of the fight should tell you they're relative,
Thanos never fights as efficiently and viciously until in Endgame, where he once again is blood-lusted, and this is because Thanos started holding back after acquiring the space stone.
Several other statements also imply this.
Director's commentary - Thanos going forward only kills threats to his mission. Thanos was about to execute Stark, tried to murder Thor twice, and he was about to skewer the Hulk before Heimdall's intervention. Thanos considered only a handful of characters powerful enough to kill, Hulk was one of them.
Another statement from the directors say that Thanos won due to being more skilled, but Hulk is equal to him
“I would say that he’s just that powerful. You didn’t see him actively use the power stone in that fight. I think ultimately, the way we looked at that fight and the way talked about it with our stunt team when we were executing it was Hulk is obviously very powerful, but he’s a little mindless in his fighting style. It’s aggressive, it’s pummeling. Thanos is the Ghengis Kahn of the universe, he’s a very skilled fighter, equally as strong. So when you put those two up against each other, the more skilled fighter is going to win ultimately. Which is why Hulk has a moment where he overpowers Thanos, but ultimately Thanos is smart.”
Another statement from an interview says that Thanos is stronger, 4:30 but the Hulk is used as the benchmark of strength not 5-A Iron Man or Thor, implying Hulk is stronger than them.
Now there's obviously some contradiction there, but I think the most important thing is that Hulk is being used as the character to hype up Thanos. Hulk is the character that gets Worfed to establish how strong Thanos is and hype him up, while Thor got off-screened and had to get a power up to further compete.
The only thing going against this is Maw saying "let him have his fun," but I think it's a huge leap in logic to say that that translates to him holding back his strength billions of times over, especially since we can how Thanos performs to people who actually AREN'T relative to him like Drax or Strange or Black Panther, who all get oneshotted and don't require any martial arts moves.
Thor
Again, to not scale him to Ragnarok Thor is a huge leap in logic and you'd have to assume that Thor was holding back billions of times over when he decked him twice. The script even says that the first hit was an instinctual one - no excuse there.
"GROWLING, Hulk stands up and HITS Thor with a straight jab that sends Thor TUMBLING across the arena. Hulk immediately LEAPS after him and LANDS ON Thor! Hulk is now on top of Thor as they slide across the arena, just PUMMELING him with punches. Left-right-left-right. Thor's head snaps back and forth. In the carnage, Thor sees VISIONS OF ODIN. Then- -his eyes GLOW WHITE WITH ELECTRICITY. Like an instinctual defense mechanism, Thor suddenly KNOCKS HULK BACK WITH A BURST OF LIGHTNING! Seething with electricity, Thor springs to his feet and then BLASTS HULK WITH A MASSIVE LIGHTNING PUNCH! Hulk is LAUNCHED BACKWARDS and Thor hits the ground HARD."
Furthermore, they would have traded more blows, with Thor winning, but Hulk still keeping up in the fight
Interesting to note that Hulk was even holding back in this fight.
Misc
Ryan Coogler considers Hulk above Thor - this is backed up in the film with M'Baku using Hulk as the benchmark of strength for Namor, not Thor. Since this is essentially Coogler's scaling being translated into film, I don't think you can take M'Baku as an unreliable source, especially considering he's a member of a paranoid, ex-isolationist advanced nation that would probably have assessed the threats various power players posed.
Banner begs for the Hulk to come out to face Cull Obsidian. He helped design the Hulkbuster Mark II and even used an inferior model beating the Hulk as proof of its strength, why would he beg for the Hulk to come out if he was billions of times weaker than the suit he was wearing? That would be a death sentence.
A deleted scene even has Hulk overpower Cull with one hand after shattering the suit just by transforming. And the only reason this was cut was to give Banner a victory, not because of any power scaling issues.
1.59x10^34 J - value the post-Awakening cast is "at least" as strong as
1.6554879408 x 10^23 - value Hulk scales to
That would make the post-Awakening cast 96,044,191,009.4 times stronger than Hulk.
Changes
I think Hulk should just flat out scale to the post-Awakening tier. No downscaling, no "at most." Just a flat "At least 5-A, higher with rage." He takes more hits from bloodlusted Thanos, is constantly used to measure the strength of others,
Since various characters like Ultron would also scale (thereby making pre-Awakening characters 5-A), we can bring back the Gladiator key for Hulk, or just separate it as Ragnarok and onwards. With the weird time shenanigans that Sakaar has, he had plenty of time fighting and training to get stronger.
To my knowledge, the only one who would scale to this would be Abomination who briefly traded blows with a pissed off Smart Hulk. He can just get a new key.
