What can Sue's force fields do that telekinesis can't, and vice versa?
The movie portrayed the force fields as a kind of pseudo telekinesis where it's not just a shield, but it can push, pull, and grasp things, so it got me wondering what the differences are.
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She doesn’t really use them to shield, she uses them to grab and manipulate objects.
Thought I was the only one who felt weird about Sue’s powers being downgraded to just being telekinesis and not the invisible constructs
Somebody needs to remake it with sue
And hell, MCU Ben might be able to beat MCU Hulk at this point. 😅
Jumping up to punch a 800 meter tall Surtur in the face and staggering him a good deal completely dwarfs what Ben pulled on Galactus (and he needed an assist to line up the strike).
AoU shows Hulk run all the way through a concrete bunker in a second with enough force to basically blow it up. He also basically does a vertical dolphin dive through a building while surfing Hulkbuster up it. He goes through steel beams like butter.
Sorry for nerding out lol but a lot of Hulk media is like permanently engraved into my brain
I guess its the presentation of it. They highlight Ben doing some cool things as a “hey look he can do this and more.”
Hulk punching the chitauri leviathan had that effect like “wow, Hulk’s juiced.” I also think I have higher expectations for Hulk but his feats seem to happen so fast and they kind of seem like Hulk just Hulking out. If you’re not sitting there calculating the logistics, you dont really get the full scope of what he did. I do think that Thanos fight and Endgame kind of ruined my perception of Hulk.
On the other hand, in the comics Hulk once pulled two CONTINENTS together. So we’re comparing apples to oranges here. MCU Hulk is a kitten compared to comic Hulk.
Maybe if Thanos threw some meteors at Hulk, or bent reality so he was bigger, Id be like damn, Thanos is ham. Instead Hulk got Bane’d.
There’s not many other strong characters to compare him to outside of Thor throughout the series and Thor just seems to opt out of doing Hulk like feats. Unsure if he can or not.
Sue is the heart and powerhouse of the group, and when she gets mad enough, she gets mean and has threatened to use her powers in very creative and extremely deadly ways from forming a force sphere inside a person to block bloodflow and simulate a stroke or heart attack and no one would know and the death would be ruled natural causes, or even the more blunt threat of putting one inside a fold of the brain, and expanding it outwards and popping their heads like a balloon.
I've seen it argued that taking in consideration that she has tanked blasts from Galactus, the Mad Celestials and other top tier beings, a lot argue that she could even then pop a planet or a star rather easily, as the force necessary would be infinitesimal compared to what was used to block their blasts.
I'm not sure I agree with that as offense use of her powers has always seemed to take a lot more effort than her defensive powers, and the sheer scale of it seems a bit out of wack as she's always been wrote as the ultimate turtle, not the offensive world or sun popper. But 1v1, she can take out about any non cosmic corporeal being if she was determined and ruthless, only telepaths could stop her, as no one is touching her if she don't want them to in the time she takes to give them a stroke or pop their head.
If you are throwing things at someone, it should be because you are literally flexing on them, aura farming, or they have some method of preventing you from affecting their body with direct manipulation.
Not accounting for the "phenomenal cosmic power" type superpowers, telekinesis is absolutely the power that needs to be *feared*.
Now theoretically, you could also easily power scale Sue with something like “she can control light, meaning she has magnetokinesis” and then do magneto power scaling. Any kinesis power honestly can be expanded to any other if you try hard enough
However, she *has* pulled off stuff like that in the other direction of "causing harm." Most recently, during the *One World Under Doom* arc, she performed [completely stealthy microsurgery to obliterate a brain tumor from Mole Man.](https://bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IMG_1118.jpg)
That same post someone mentioned she did it to the maker, but she knew it wouldn't kill him
she even creates tiny force fields on Reed’s arm to communicate in braille without saying anything
there’s a ton more and i’ll say North is great at finding unique twists for the team’s powers
(like Reed stretching his body to have several arms out his back like doc ock, or johnny recreating the exact same fire/light from the sun to protect from vampires)
The main difference between Sue's powers and telekinesis is that Sue creates light constructs that interacts with things while telekinesis doesn't have that physical element to it. Sue has more versatility because of this, like with Johnny, but the downside would be if she ever faces someone who can interact and potentially break her light constructs.
In the comics she projects and manipulates energy from Hyperspace,which gives her force-fields a bunch of different abilities like protecting from magic/reality warping/time erasure and psionic energies (telekinesis and telepathy) etc besides also packing much more "raw power" than even the most powerful telekinetics.
However: a) teeks can’t usually do invisibility/intangibility; b) Sue doesn’t have the granular control that a lot of teeks do. Like she’s more of a “making constructs” baddie than “rearranging the molecular structure of clothing” or “shifting a mountain range” kind of feat. (Granted, both of those tend to be on the high end of tk capability.)
We also saw they can make things on the other side of them invisible.
Like when Johnny attacked Cactus
Where they differ is that telekinesis is obviously incorporeal psionic energy, and Sue's force fields are invisible, solid matter.
Unlike TK which is force that does not need leverage, Sue has to brace her force fields against sturdy solid objects or else the impacts/lifting efforts will be transferred to her.
Here endeth the bullshit science lesson.