Did Thanos survive the Titan battle because he is a very powerful being?

Question

Question: Did Thanos survive the Titan battle because he is a very powerful being? Or was it because he had help from the infinity stones?

To be more exact, I was just curious as to how Thanos survived that huge lump of a machine that was probably millions of tons of steel or metal dumped on his head at what looked like the speed of a rocket?

Things to consider that he should not have been able to survive:

• Gamora was able to cut his throat with a sword, which shows he is not invulnerable to metal weapons and that his skin can be pierced. (I understand that this was a reality stone trick, but it begs the question that if she even tried to do what she did, she must have known he was at least vulnerable to an attack from a sword. Anyway, it is just some food for thought.)
• Tony Stark was able to pierce his skin with a metal weapon.

Things to consider that he could have been able to survive:

• He used the Infinity stones to protect him.
• He is already a very powerful being and something like that would not injure him.

I know you could just say it was because of the infinity stones power he had, but I was wondering if there was anything in or out of universe that would show that he would not have needed the stones to survive an attack like that.

Answer 1

Thanos is powerful and resilient but by no means invulnerable. Dropping an entire column onto his head at hundreds of miles per hour should have killed him with ease. We learn in the novelisation that he used the Power Stone, presumably to make some sort of bubble around himself, then used the Power Stone to push the column off himself before using the Reality Stone to turn it into bats.

On cue, Iron Man pushed a massive broken column down onto Thanos.

"Piece of cake. Quill," Tony called out, soaring around the wreckage.

"Yeah, if your goal was to piss him off" Quill activated his face mask and took off after Stark.

A burst of purple energy exploded from beneath the massive broken column. Thanos howled as the Power Stone shone bright. Then with another twist of the Gauntlet, the red Reality Stone turned the broken column's rubble into a flock of bats, which he immediately commanded to attack the completely caught off-guard Iron Man.

_{^{Infinity War: Destiny Arrives}}

You can see him using the (purple) Power Stone just before the column hits him at 00:53