Board Thread:Movies/@comment-3048593-20171206004220/@comment-3048593-20180517193229

Ben 1,000,911 wrote: I heard a theory that the Soul Stone gave Thanos "knowledge". Like we barely saw the Soul Stone do anything in the movie besides turn a lot of rocks on Titan into bats. But Red Skull as the guardian of the stone claimed to have been cursed with knowledge, so I think that's part of what the Soul Stone does in the MCU. The theory was the stone gave Thanos some insight into people's souls, so from him having that stone-onwards, he knew everyone he was facing. That's why he said he was cursed with knowledge when he was fighting Stark, and how he claimed to know him. He also called Spider-Man "insect" when he should not have known that was even his name. And he seemed surprised when fighting Cap but not too much so, as if he at that point read Cap's "soul" and was like "oh this is who you are, ok".

Also yeah wow if they make Red Skull the next big bad that'd be wild. He has cosmic-level knowledge, he'd be way more dangerous than before. If that was the intention, then that is an interesting take on the Soul stone, since I assumed with "soul" it was going to have the properties of controlling lives, hence why it required the sacrifice of a loved ones' life to obtain it (a soul for a soul) and the ability to extinguish lives across the universe. But even the comic book version describes one of its properties as giving the wielder the ability to "reveal information by peering into another's soul" (along with properties involving living beings' souls), so that does make sense for the movie.

Regarding Red Skull, I'm pretty proud of myself, simply by the fact that I predicted something like that would've happened to him back in Phase 1. Since before 'Avengers 1' came out, I prepped for it by watching 'Thor 1' and 'Captain America: The First Avenger', in that order (I had already seen 'Iron Man 1'). So when Red Skull apparently died in the latter, I thought to myself: "Wait a minute... When he disappeared, it looked remarkably similar to the design of when Thor & co. were teleported by the Bifrost in the former movie, so I don't believe Red Skull is actually dead."

So when the Russos and Markus-McFeely said that previous threads and plot points introduced in previous movies would be resolved, I somehow forgot about Red Skull's apparent death being potentially on of them. So I do give props to them (and possibly even Feige) for remembering something that most of the audience have and other movie-makers would've forgotten about.