Rama (The Raid 2) vs MCU black widow

[big_adventure]

Looked into this one, 100 feet fall seems extremely generous. It's like 50 tops, I would pitch it closer to 40 myself.

Also, water doesn't look particularly shallow, she sploshes into it.

Clip, 03:23 for reference.



I think when Taskmaster hits her and sends her flying like 10-12 feet or so and it winds her is pretty impressive. Rama definitely doesn't hit that hard. Same with the kick that sends her flying off the bridge, she's eating those hits and staying up.

I think she's more durable than Rama is, for sure. But I don't think she's more skilled and he has a knife which he is very good with.

I'm talking about the whole scene Nik - which includes the car getting hit by some kind of missile and LAUNCHING sideways so fast that they go slow-mo to show it. The car flies, flips and rolls (at least 35-40 meters, perhaps more? You can see at 37 seconds of the clip where the car is, and all the way to the right you can see the road she was on before she was launched, you can measure using the car as a basis, I get about 40m) before smashing through the guardrail and coming to a stop against the bridge support. That's an insanely violent set of impacts. She's momentarily stunned by that, but otherwise seems unharmed. She has the wherewithal to grab a gun, make a quip, shoot to kill a few times, and slide out of the car with dramatic timing. Some HtH, she gets punched so hard in the sternum that it rockets her backwards 4 or 5 meters. Momentarily stunned but otherwise fine for combat. She takes a kick that knocks her backward about 3 meters. Fine for combat, and does decently for a bit, using Tasky's shield against her. She then takes a kick to the shield that launches her at least 8-10m back and up over the guardrail where she falls to the water. From the car to the water it's about 20 to 22 meters, using the length of Nat's body at full extension, or using the rough height of the car posed at an angle, or using the rough height of a guardrail. You can measure at 3:25 in the clip. Nat was launched up and over the remnants of guardrail, higher than the car at an angle to dead perpendicular to the bridge, and was still clearly going UP when she passed the railing and the car, at least. Before gravity asserts herself, she's flown at or near horizontal for, like I said, at or near horizontal for 8-10m. This is all at 3:22, 3:23 of the clip.

Hitting the water is the least of what she takes there, though hitting that freezing temp water at the speed she'd be carrying would still be pretty dramatic.

But yeah, definitely less than 100 feet, though definitely more than 40. I'd pitch around 60, 65, based on using somewhat known-length objects measured against the height of the fall, all visible in the frame at 3:25. In any case, it's pretty much the least impressive part of the scene for Nat's durability.

[Nik Hasta]

I'm talking about the whole scene Nik -

I mean, you demonstrably weren't:

Gets oneshotted a long way back and off a bridge, falling, I don't know, 100 feet, into freezing shallow water. All of this (the hit, the fall, the temp) does... nothing.

This is the claim I was responding to and pointing out that it's not even close to 100 feet and the water doesn't look shallow or particularly freezing.

You giving a blow-by-blow of everything else that happens in the clip that I linked doesn't really impact my disputing the original claim.

Also, I specifically cited her taking heavy hits from Taskmaster as being beyond Rama in my post so I really don't get what you're driving at here.

[big_adventure]

I mean, you demonstrably weren't:



This is the claim I was responding to and pointing out that it's not even close to 100 feet and the water doesn't look shallow or particularly freezing.

You giving a blow-by-blow of everything else that happens in the clip that I linked doesn't really impact my disputing the original claim.

Also, I specifically cited her taking heavy hits from Taskmaster as being beyond Rama in my post so I really don't get what you're driving at here.

Fair enough.

[Sharpandpointies]

I hear what you say - I agree with you - I was just bringing up feats, feats that are, for whatever reason, somewhat consistent to her over time. She's suffered and pulled right on through a lot of ridiculous things in multiple films - in Winter Soldier, in Civil War, in Avengers, and the stuff in Black Widow was above and beyond all of that.

The fact that bullets and blades hurt people who get hit by class 80+ individuals (NOTE: I'm not remotely claiming this for Nat) without turning into mist isn't a new thing. Comics and action movie writers aren't generally trying to be realistic. Here, we try to squish that stuff into a framework. Spider-Man has shown that he is most definitely not resistant to normal blades and bullets, but is highly, stupidly resistant to trauma that would inflict precisely the same kind of wounds, just a thousand times worse.

Sure, and for Spider-man we get into one of those rare cases of compartmentalized durability.

The car feat isn't particularly out of line with the building-fall feat or the smacked off the bridge feat from the same film.

I would say it is, myself. It's a constant ragdolling against all kinds of hard, unforgiving things like 'steering column' and 'other person's skull' if she's not belted in, and as you note at very high levels of force. Not to say the bridge and falling feats aren't very painful and such, and I'd be somewhat iffy about a CBPH just effortlessly walking them off as well, but it's not the same as being in a super-violent car crash with another person, neither belted in.

Which, I will note, her friend also walked off.

None of them are massively out of line with the tank explosion feat from Civil War or the bunker-busted feat from Winter Soldier or the smashed through a glass wall with Cap behind his shield by an explosion from WS or a few feats from Avengers. They all show a absolutely unrealistic resistance to blunt trauma and compression wounds - by a character in superhero movies. I don't see a particularly compelling reason to not allow her extremely high "CBPH level" resistance to and soak of that kind of stuff. If her body were made of normal stuff, all of those things would cause multiple broken bones, torn soft tissues and concussions at least. Instead, she shrugs all of them off, often with literally no shown effects.

Then the question becomes 'where is the cut-off line for high-end feats that match her presentation?

The character is all over the place. COMICS are more consistent than this, and that's saying something. Her over and over again walking off stuff without an injury might happen again and again, but it's completely inconsistent with the character's presentation. Even comic book characters suffer damage as compared to this, whereas Widow really...doesn't. It's entirely possible that Captain America in the movies takes more injuries and suffers more visible debilitation.

Bad writing is bad writing, and this is that. Character is presented as someone who is threatened by firearms, someone who needs to actively dodge punches and kicks from normal people, someone who cannot simply stand there and let Hawkeye whale on her to no avail. Said character then gets into an insane car accident and walks it off without any sign of debilitation, or gets exploded in a bunker or whatever and walks it off without injury. It's either PIS (that she's threatened by normal humans at all or even by Hawkeye hitting her) or SMvsFL (that she walks this stuff off), and given the character's presentation (which is what we use, here), it's pretty clear which one it should be.

Not really invested in the fight - I don't honestly care who takes this one, nor am I arguing in favor of either. But what I don't want is for this board to become some place where 'all feats are taken as valid just because it happens a bunch of times, despite those times utterly contradicting the character's presentation and other showings'. We have a whole lot of stuff in comics that happens that we don't consider valid that's rather in-line with this - how often can people trot out examples of Captain America getting hit by a class 75 and not getting mangled? Lots. And yet every time, we point out 'High-end feats in line with the character's presentation'.

Similarly here.

It seems these days we're forgetting that important 'in line with the character's presentation' part.

[big_adventure]

Sure, and for Spider-man we get into one of those rare cases of compartmentalized durability.



I would say it is, myself. It's a constant ragdolling against all kinds of hard, unforgiving things like 'steering column' and 'other person's skull' if she's not belted in, and as you note at very high levels of force. Not to say the bridge and falling feats aren't very painful and such, and I'd be somewhat iffy about a CBPH just effortlessly walking them off as well, but it's not the same as being in a super-violent car crash with another person, neither belted in.

Which, I will note, her friend also walked off.



Then the question becomes 'where is the cut-off line for high-end feats that match her presentation?

The character is all over the place. COMICS are more consistent than this, and that's saying something. Her over and over again walking off stuff without an injury might happen again and again, but it's completely inconsistent with the character's presentation. Even comic book characters suffer damage as compared to this, whereas Widow really...doesn't. It's entirely possible that Captain America in the movies takes more injuries and suffers more visible debilitation.

Bad writing is bad writing, and this is that. Character is presented as someone who is threatened by firearms, someone who needs to actively dodge punches and kicks from normal people, someone who cannot simply stand there and let Hawkeye whale on her to no avail. Said character then gets into an insane car accident and walks it off without any sign of debilitation, or gets exploded in a bunker or whatever and walks it off without injury. It's either PIS (that she's threatened by normal humans at all or even by Hawkeye hitting her) or SMvsFL (that she walks this stuff off), and given the character's presentation (which is what we use, here), it's pretty clear which one it should be.

Not really invested in the fight - I don't honestly care who takes this one, nor am I arguing in favor of either. But what I don't want is for this board to become some place where 'all feats are taken as valid just because it happens a bunch of times, despite those times utterly contradicting the character's presentation and other showings'. We have a whole lot of stuff in comics that happens that we don't consider valid that's rather in-line with this - how often can people trot out examples of Captain America getting hit by a class 75 and not getting mangled? Lots. And yet every time, we point out 'High-end feats in line with the character's presentation'.

Similarly here.

It seems these days we're forgetting that important 'in line with the character's presentation' part.

I agree that the writing doesn't necessarily make sense - she is presented as a super highly trained human. Even super highly trained "real" humans can't live through what she lives through: of course they couldn't.

So we can use the presentation of "she's just a super highly trained regular human" to reduce the amount of punishment she can take, or to throw out a LOT of feats that she has which vastly defy what a real human body can take. She doesn't just have one crazy outlier feat where she takes damage that is ridiculously incongruous with what normal flesh and bone can take, she has a bunch of them: the fall off the ducts, the jump to and catching of the speeding sky chariot, the fall from same, the bridge fight scene, the car crash, taking hits from many of her sisters and doing fine, the tank blast scene, the bunker bust, the ship blast scene, the blast and fall and ankle stuck before the Hulk transformation. She may have mostly shrugged off getting shot by a Chitauri weapon? Not sure on that one. There are a LOT of crazy scenes for her.

The problem, of course, is that if we do that to her, we have to do it for a lot of other people who are "just" highly trained regular humans: Batman, Cass Cain, Jason Bourne, John Wick, Shang Chi - the list is extremely long. And our man Rama is also on that list - he keeps going through insane punishment that is far beyond what a normal human could take.

Her presentation is as a highly trained normal human, but it is ALSO, like the people above, as a "hero" who takes an insane amount of punishment without harm, and who does this repeatedly. It's also someone who doesn't really have contradictory feats: she never gets dropped by a single punch from a mook (mooks never touch her), she never gets stunned by a push against a wall, never gets KO's by a brick, never gets KO's slipping in the bathtub, etc.

I don't have a correct answer - and I really couldn't care less about specifically who wins the Rumble at hand. I don't have a favorite: I enjoyed many of the MCU movies, I really enjoyed the Raid movies as well. I pointed out the last time, and this time, that, for whatever reason (well, "the writing of superhero movies" is the reason) Nat has durability that far exceeds what makes sense, and which exceeds even what most "normal movie / comic hero" types possess. We've presented the feats. I know that I made the joke in the other, linked thread that Nat's durability is about Luke Cage level - that was tongue in cheek and not meant to be takes seriously. The comment was more referring to the writing not making real-life sense than anything else.

If the group wants to decide that ALL of Nat's feats don't apply, that's fine with me. It seems a bit biased, given that nobody argues that John Wick or Jason Bourne or Rama don't deserve their blatently superhuman feats, but so be it. If we want to throw out some of the feats, again, fine. But now might as well be the time that we come to an agreement on what that entails: I don't think she's going to get more feats, good or bad, than what she has now. So where should we place her? What stays and goes?

[Sharpandpointies]

I agree that the writing doesn't necessarily make sense - she is presented as a super highly trained human. Even super highly trained "real" humans can't live through what she lives through: of course they couldn't.

So we can use the presentation of "she's just a super highly trained regular human" to reduce the amount of punishment she can take, or to throw out a LOT of feats that she has which vastly defy what a real human body can take. She doesn't just have one crazy outlier feat where she takes damage that is ridiculously incongruous with what normal flesh and bone can take, she has a bunch of them: the fall off the ducts, the jump to and catching of the speeding sky chariot, the fall from same, the bridge fight scene, the car crash, taking hits from many of her sisters and doing fine, the tank blast scene, the bunker bust, the ship blast scene, the blast and fall and ankle stuck before the Hulk transformation. She may have mostly shrugged off getting shot by a Chitauri weapon? Not sure on that one. There are a LOT of crazy scenes for her.

Your argument through this post against what I'm saying is depending on two strawman fallacies. Number one, I'm in no way putting forth the idea that Nat is just a highly-trained real-world human.

From my first post on the SMvsFL subject, only one post back from the one to which you are responding:

Widow has a certain presentation, and while we can kind of handwave off all kinds of stuff as 'comic book peak human' or 'that's just how humans can be in comics', when it gets into 'welp, she'd need to be bulletproof or better to take that kind of a beating without a single injury', it's violating her presentation in all kinds of different ways.

My issue is not 'Widow is taking punishment out of line with what real world humans can take.' That's to be expected, would be fine.

My issue is 'Widow is taking truly astounding amounts of punishment and literally walking away from it cracking jokes, unimpaired, by your reckoning. This is on a level that would require her to be somewhere in the bullet-proof region, and isn't in line with her being a non-bulletproof human in the movies'. And just accepting this, and all other feats where she takes punishment that would be something to make Captain America wince and walks it off pretty much unimpaired? That's not something we do.

The problem, of course, is that if we do that to her, we have to do it for a lot of other people who are "just" highly trained regular humans: Batman, Cass Cain, Jason Bourne, John Wick, Shang Chi - the list is extremely long. And our man Rama is also on that list - he keeps going through insane punishment that is far beyond what a normal human could take.

Number two, we already do that with the others. You've been here long enough to know that. Feats get examined, scrutinized, etc, with us trying to figure out what High-End feats are in line with a character's presentation.

Captain America has a hand grenade blow up in his face, gets hit all of the time by people vastly superior to him in strength (including Class 50+), and we don't consider those to be valid feats.

Cass Cain gets shot, keeps on going long enough to KO the person who shoots her. Valid - she's in the CBPH range herself, she's clearly impaired and shot through, etc. If she laughed it off, that would be different. Cass gets hit by a meta-level character who crumples steel with his fingers, and gets stunned and impaired, eventually passing out later on from the damage. Perfectly in keeping with the character, with stuff other CBPH suffer, etc. If Cass got punched by Spider-man and walked it off, we'd be saying 'Yeah, nope.'

Jason Bourne gets shot, falls 8 stories (or whatever) into water, survives. SURVIVES, not 'walks it off, unimpaired'. He's injured badly, ends up KO'ed for a long time, injury impairs him. Okay, cool. He gets in a car crash that's not even close to what you describe for Widow, and is clearly impaired when he leaves the car. This is not Bourne suffering stuff of this level and laughing at it or showing no injury. It's crazy, but.

Widow?

This is what you're saying.

Falls out of, I dunno, a 20 story building, smashes through a robust steel duct and lands on concrete. This does... nothing.

Rolls then crashes a car at perhaps 150 kmh. This does... nothing.

Gets oneshotted a long way back and off a bridge, falling, I don't know, 100 feet, into freezing shallow water. All of this (the hit, the fall, the temp) does... nothing.

Emphasis mine. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

So no, I am not saying what you seem to be thinking I'm saying (or are at least claiming I'm saying). I'm saying that with Widow, we do what we do with every other character in Rumbles and put the stupidly high-end feats under the same kind of consideration that we do with 'Captain America has grenade blow up in face and is fine to continue or gets punched by Class 10 Spider-man and just rides it out', or (to go in a different direction) 'Cass Cain reacts perfectly well to an onrushing Supergirl or slaps 90's Superboy through his forcefield'. And some of these feats, with Widow getting into these kinds of incidents and suffering NO impairment <-- this part kind of important, they do not mesh with Widow's presentation, which is 'crazy action movie/comic-booky fighter who is nonetheless not bulletproof, who cannot simply stand there trimming her nails while Hawkeye whales on her, and who should have some upper limit on durability'.

And thus, SMvsFL.

[Sharpandpointies]

If this comes off as somewhat irked, it's a little exasperating when my point is being rather misrepresented. Edit: Especially when I'm looking back to make sure, and seeing I was pretty clear on it.

[big_adventure]

If this comes off as somewhat irked, it's a little exasperating when my point is being rather misrepresented. Edit: Especially when I'm looking back to make sure, and seeing I was pretty clear on it.

I'm NOT misrepresenting your point. I'm sorry you think so, it's not my intention to irk you, and if debating this bothers you, I withdraw.

My only point - MCU Widow only has the feats that she has, and she has nothing contradictory. She really doesn't. The fact that she's not bulletproof shouldn't be an issue as there are tons of people who aren't and who are tougher then she is who are likewise hurt by bullets. Bullets are often magical in comics/movies.

MCU Cap has MUCH better feats than MCU Nat for durability and soak, and also got pretty badly messed up by bullets from a tiny pistol.

ASM Spiderman (Garfield) specifically has much better feats for durability and soak than Nat, but is marginally crippled by a pistol shot.

DCEU Wonder Woman has MUCH better feats than MCU Nat (or MCU Cap) for durability and soak, and also got punctured by a World War I rifle bullet.

Absolutely granted that each of them have super powers to make them tough - but the question isn't the explanation of why they are so tough, it's what is shown on panel.

If Nat had feats for getting hurt by punches from normies, then sure, there would be an easy, obvious argument that her real level is there. If it was usually "stunned like hell by X 5 times, then ignores it after" we'd say that the "after" is an obvious outlier. She simply doesn't have those things. She even has specific arguments AGAINST that - when the mad scientist running the Red Room falls into her trap and hits her, as she wants because she needs her nose to break, she doesn't take enough damage and has to damage herself by headbutting his kingpin desk.

Anyway, that's all I'm saying. She lacks the low-end that would invalidate the high-end - the high-end is her only end. That said, I withdraw from this discussion, enough ink has spilled and you believe I'm not understanding you, and I believe that you aren't understanding me. No worries, life is too short.

[Sharpandpointies]

If I have misunderstood your meaning, then it’s my turn to apologize.

[big_adventure]

If I have misunderstood your meaning, then it’s my turn to apologize.

There is no there there: you have nothing to apologize for, my friend. Pure text, real life, lots of time zones and marginally different opinions can be fickle mistresses (and if Mrs. Andpointies reads this, I am NOT implying that Mr. Andpointies has a mistress! ).

I come on the board to discuss things. It's easy to read an attempt at discussion as an argument, especially when tone is conspicuously absent in black-on-white. Here, I've just been discussing. I couldn't care less who wins this fight, I have no horse in the race. I just like using some spare moments to present and be presented things - it's a fun bit of escapism, and the pressures of real life can make one appreciate that from time to time.

[Godzilla2099]

Been a while since I've seen the movies, but my money is on Rama.

I remember Widow surviving some impressive hits and leaps but I can't recall much of her fights.

However, I remember Rama being insanely skilled (His fights looked far more organic and so well choreographed), hits hard, moves fast, and although Natasha took harder hits, I remember Rama having a high amount of stamina. His fights lasted a long time and that dude never slowed down. He's one of the baddest hand to hand fighters I've seen on the screen.

Personally, I see Rama on a far higher level than Natasha.

[Guy1]

If I have misunderstood your meaning, then it’s my turn to apologize.

There is no there there: you have nothing to apologize for, my friend. Pure text, real life, lots of time zones and marginally different opinions can be fickle mistresses (and if Mrs. Andpointies reads this, I am NOT implying that Mr. Andpointies has a mistress! ).

I come on the board to discuss things. It's easy to read an attempt at discussion as an argument, especially when tone is conspicuously absent in black-on-white. Here, I've just been discussing. I couldn't care less who wins this fight, I have no horse in the race. I just like using some spare moments to present and be presented things - it's a fun bit of escapism, and the pressures of real life can make one appreciate that from time to time.

I'm proud of you guys. We need more of this on the board. Great job both of you.

Have a cake!

[Postmania]

I'm proud of you guys. We need more of this on the board. Great job both of you.

Have a cake!

No, they should have a Rumble! With the sickle Knives Rama uses!

[Guy1]

No, they should have a Rumble! With the sickle Knives Rama uses!

IIRC, they're called karambit knives.

[Sharpandpointies]

IIRC, they're called karambit knives.

Karambit, kerambit. But not Karambit knives. That’s like saying Katana sword. ^_^. Like in Bloodsprot [sic].

“You cannot get katana sword by stealing.”

…actually have a kerambit.