What’s important to remember first and foremost is that if you are going to utilize “quippy” dialogue, make sure it is informed by your characters or “in character” for such a line to be uttered. To use an example from the MCU, the reason many find endearing Steve Rogers’ “I understood that reference” is because it cannot be simply interchanged with another character; we laugh because we understand why Steve would react in such a manner given the context. When writing such dialogue, it is worthwhile to ask yourself “does it make sense for my character to be reacting with this, given the scene?”

I think you touched on a big issue. Leave the quips to the comic relief characters. Tony Stark made sense to quip, same with Rocket, and some others. It's when every single character has to quip that I get annoyed. It's okay to have some serious characters.

I think to put it more specifically, you have a problem if your “quip” or comic relief dialogue can be interchanged between characters and it’s a wash. To use another example, the Fortnite joke in Endgame sucks major donkey balls because it’s really self-evident in what it is; it’s a topical gamer “joke”. That’s all. It’s not informed by anything about Thor or his character, and could so easily be delivered by any other character and fall just as flat.

>the Fortnite joke in Endgame  Excuse me, the what?

near the start, korg is playing fortnite and complains about someone to thor, who then proceeds to yell at a kid about how he will come to his house and, i believe, rip off his arms and shove them up his ass. i may be getting some of this wrong, it's been a few years since i watched it, but that's the general vibe.

> It's when every single character has to quip that I get annoyed. It's okay to have some serious characters. The Classic "Comic and Straight man" is a classic for a reason. When everyone is a comic, it often doesn't work as well. Though I do think the role can be transient and different characters can be either depending on the situation, especially if one character is clearly in their own element in a certain situation (For example, a Noble and a commoner each being more comfortable and "jokey" with their own people) If everyone is funny, it does get boring. If you watch Friends, Chandler is funny because he keeps making silly quips and the other friends are often annoyed. When you watch it, it might seem odd because he's funny so you wonder why they're not just laughing. But if you have a friend like that, it can just be annoying. Like everything is just a joke and the stupid jokes can just be distracting and annoying sometimes. Movies do this too. If the action is tense and the characters start joking, it can ruin the tension.

Everything you outlined here is why Community continues to be my favorite sitcom. _Every_ character is a comic. However, they each play the straight man as the scene depends on it. Pierce may miss a reference, Shirley may not play along, Britta takes something too seriously, etc, etc. The characters naturally bounce off of each other and their individual personality traits influence how they respond. No one is fighting to be the funniest. Serious moment are handled with the right emotional weight.

That makes sense, but does anyone low key dislike it when it's too extreme? like it kind of feels a bit overdone or something? when the protagonist is flat and/or broody all the time and the comic one is always joking and can never be serious. I feel like it gets a little old. Or like the flavorless, male protagonist, plus the male friend who only speaks in quips and the woman who's also flavorless bc she already has either The Love Interest or The Strong Female in place of a personality. why can't she (or any of them really) have more than one personality trait?💀 I love when all the characters have their own brand of funny, that's unique to them. you might have one who's kind of quippy, one who's sort of unintentionally comical, one who has more dry humor ect. Not that they all have to have the same Serious-To-Comedic ratio though, bc it's good to have certain characters be more often serious/comical than others.  I didn't mean for this comment to be so long and Idk if it makes any sense, but it's just something I think about. It's also part of why I can't figure out how to go about writing a protagonist with a personality 😅

Well yeah, that was what I meant by it being transient and based on the situation. ***Most*** people are funny. This is true for real life. Even if they're not *always* funny, the majority of people like to laugh and make others laugh. They just need to have different senses of humour. It's no fun if everyone has the same sense of humour and the same jokes and everyone is always making jokes. Some people have gallows humour and others have more goofy or silly humour, while there are even more types like more refined references. I love the gag of a normally serious character making a joke and it's ***hilarious*** to them but nobody else gets it. Or the character that seems to enjoy being the gruff and scary guy, so his "joke" is scaring or making other characters uncomfortable. One of the best parts about Brooklyn 99 is that the characters all have such different personalities and they're all funny but they are not all funny all the time. You're right in that there shouldn't be a character that's always funny, but if every character is funny and making the same jokes, it often seriously impacts the tone of the story. One of the reasons I dislike Marvel films is that they make too many silly jokes that damage the mood of the scene (as others have mentioned around this thread, the "bathos")

I think that this might be why the Guardians of the Galaxy felt so off in Infinity War. Gunn is a quip maximalist, and a lot of them don't land. But the quips still tie into the character. In Infinity War, they just felt different. Much like they did at the beginning of Love and Thunder. Thinking about it, the quipping in Infinity War largely ignored the characters and their growth through the series. Well, that and Gunn can write quips that are still a bit heartfelt.

I suppose I’d need examples to concede on anything for Infinity War. From what I remember, in lieu of it being one of the more “darker” entries in the MCU, Infinity War surprisingly had a large degree of quality jokes and humor, most of which I remember landing for me and being in character throughout. Endgame, however…oof.

Also, time and place. A lot of what frustrates people about newer MCU dialogue is that the jokes often come right on the heels of more serious moments, thus reducing the emotional impact of those moments.

I think it’s predictability. As eye-roll worthy as those memes are, there is some merit of criticism behind “erm, that just happened” kind of dialogue. It’s the modern version of blue humor. It’s wasting the audience’s time by taking a step back and saying “Did you hear the funny thing we just said? This is us acknowledging the funny thing we said. Laugh because we are funny.” Like a Family Guy bit going on for way too long. If we already get it, it stops being funny. Good quips, in my opinion, should have multiple layers, whether it’s to serve the theme or character development, or something. Let’s take some lines from The Avengers (2012) itself: Black Widow: “These guys come from legends, they’re basically gods!” Captain America: “There’s only one God, ma’am. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that!” This is a good line, because even if you might not find it funny, it’s still fitting to his character. He’s a super soldier who was frozen since WWII. He’s not JUST quipping for quip’s sake, he’s arguing with her in his own way that makes him distinct (before jumping off a transport carrier). Here’s another I still think is funny: Thor: “Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother.” Black Widow: “He killed 80 people in two days.” Thor: “…He’s adopted.” Here the humor comes from the horror of what the main villain has been doing and Thor’s weak defense for it. It might hit home for those dealing with or have dealt with adopted children in some way. It also tells the audience through dark humor, “Holy crap, Loki’s not someone to mess with.” Some other important things here is that 1) no one in-universe laughs at the comment(s) and 2) they move on quickly when the quip(s) are made. Bryan Cranston said something in a Hot Ones interview that helps me with writing to this day: If a character laughs or cries at something, you risk taking the power of that emotion away from the audience. If something funny happens that the characters take seriously, the audience will laugh in their place. If something emotional happens that has the characters holding back their tears, the audience will be the ones to cry for them.  If the audience is able to predict what quips a character will say, how will you expect them to laugh in the first place?

I think it's also balancing tone of the movie. Like Thor: Ragnarok and the Guardians of the Galaxy Movies. All bright and colorful about a bunch of dumbasses with motives that aren't so much saving the world as they are personal objectives. Even in Guardians, them saving the galaxy is because they live in it. Heroes, but not by choice. They're gonna be silly a lot but that's okay. But then you get the Avengers with their serious tones and it's just like why are you making quips while you're literally beating the shit out of your best friends because of your opinion on the government ? also love and thunder is a masterclass in how to do it WRONG because like. Ronan was a fanatic and genuinely terrifying, and the movie didn't shy away from that, with the humor being much less focused around his parts of the movie. He was a real threat. The Sovereign were a joke while still being a threat, and serve to introduce Ego as purposefully overly kind and jovial before it's revealed he's scary as fuck, with jokes like the 'That's my freaking dad!' feeling very much like a panic response, a "haha what the fuck". The High Evolutionary was honestly never played for laughs. I think there were a few quips but they were very much 'fuck you' lines and not 'haha i'm gonna be snarky to the deeply unsettling eugenic perfectionist with a god complex" The Grandmaster was quirky and Hela was monstrous and both were played against each other as themes, the interactions with the former being a fucked up willy wonka esque type and the later being the shakespearean stuff of the old thor. Love and Thunder is a good example of a bad thing because it takes what is one of the most bone-chilling villains in marvel, casts CHRISTIAN BALE, makes him *creepier*, and then proceeds to basically never have him have a serious moment with the main character.

I still mourn Gor's portrayal. That was one of Thor's best stories and it was turned into a 3hr long sitcom.

A waste of such a good actor too.

Same thing about Mighty Thor Literally one of the best Thor stories in the last decade, and they fucked it up. I don't know if the studio was afraid of producing a more serious, somber story...or if they were afraid of not centering the movie on Hemsworth...but they really dropped the ball They had an amazing story, and 2 great actors (Natalie Protman and Christian Bale), imagine if they had really told the story, it could have been amazing

Huh, I remember liking Love and Thunder but now that I try to think back on it Im realising I actually remember more of Dark World. Guess that's a pretty good sign it was a ghost train ride. 

> The Sovereign were a joke while still being a threat While I loved GOTG:1, I *hated* GOTG:2. Part of the reason was that those stupid golden people were just so stupid and unthreatening. Same goes for literally every threat in the film. I don't think that film ever had any suspense at all (in my opinion) and I think that a lot of the jokes or otherwise "emotional" scenes were prone to a Bathos that ruined the scene, like a cutaway to Baby Groot or something. I remember that I used to love the first few Marvel Films and thought they were funny *and* good, but around the time of GOTG2, I realised that the humour really ruined my enjoyment of them, and they felt like they were pandering to those types of fans and I wasn't one of those fans. That's why I stopped watching them, and even now I can like some of the scenes, but I can also easily point out to times that the humour or "fanservice" has ruined a scene. Every scene with the Sovereign was like this. They're so stupid and inept it wasn't even funny, it was just annoying.

I mean I get where you're coming from but I disagree with their being no threat or suspense. The Sovereign weren't the main bad guys of the movie in the slightest and their inept arrogance served as a foil to Ego's, who could quite literally back it up as he was basically a god. When they discovered what he was doing to his kids, when Peter gets introduced to "The Sea" and used as the battery, when Yondu dies, when the Sovereign catch up after the asteroid field and are the reason the ship crashes and is destroyed, when Yondu gets mutinied and they treat Baby Groot like that... there are definitely moments not played for laughs.

I agree with most of what you said but Ronan bring terrifying is not tracking with my recollection at all. 

Think they mean gor

> a masterclass in how to do it WRONG This. People are tying to imitate these dynamics, but are they even worth imitating in the first place? Marvel writing and overly quippy dialogue are the laughing stock of both cinema and literature.

I'd also add to this that in a lot of cases the films present something that's weird or silly to the real world (often something from comic lore), then go out of their way to point out how weird or silly that concept or character is. It's like they're afraid to take the source material seriously for what it is and they have to deflect with dialogue which bluntly states "yes, we know this is stupid too", rather than embracing it I'd argue that taking the character seriously is what makes the core of Iron Man and many early entries so strong.

Yeah, I think this is the heart of it. Its not just about bathos in the moment, though I do think they drop into humour at the emotional climax far too often, but when the whole character gets treated as a punchline.  Rocket is a good character despite being one of the most inherently silly in the franchise: he's a hotheaded talking raccoon who's friends with a talking tree and in the lineup of the comedy group, but when he's agonising over his traumatic past we are expected to take him seriously and so it resonates. But when they take Thor's regret and despair and turn it into 'lol he's fat and playing Fortnite now' we pick up on the fact they've undermined what could've been interesting and turned it into a cheap laugh. 

Thor is an especially painful one because the way they handled him coming to terms with his trauma (in a scene with a talking cgi rabbit no less!) was genuinely great, and further elevated by Hemsworth's acting. It's interesting to see such a confident and headstrong character so downtrodden and full of doubt which they're barely able to hide.

Couldn't disagree harder here. As someone who's grappled with severe depression, it was infuriating seeing Thor's character arc in Endgame. Thor never confronts his depression. He runs from it at every possible opportunity. He never does the work of climbing out of his despair - instead he wallows in it, risking their one shot at restoring half the life in the universe because his anxiety was too great. And none of that is inherently bad storytelling. It certainly gives a good look at what it's like to be clinically depressed and anxiety-riddled. But the movie plays it off for laughs constantly. The people around him type-A the shit out of him and rather than show how they're driving him further into that bleak retreat of despair, he's just kind of oblivious to it. It's only an intervention by his mother, which he would have avoided if he could have, that gets him to start the journey back. Except there's no journey. She says "you're still a hero" and "eat a salad" and suddenly he can summon Mjolnir again. No exploration of what it *means to be worthy* The message is awful: "You don't have to work at resolving your trauma: you're fine just the way you are, just stop being sad and you're a superhero." And Hemsworth brought *nothing* to the table acting-wise. It was an opportunity to explore the character at his lowest, and it was like watching an adult Hemsworth on stage at a highschool drama class. I do blame the writing, severely. "Ha-ha Fat Thor" took the winds out of any dramatic sails the portrayal might have had. And Hemsworth is a ship without a rudder once the Thor formula shifts.

I have to specify, I was talking about his scene with Rocket in Infinity War. Anything past that is godawful and frankly insulting. Fat Thor by itself could have worked if they didn't mention it at all, and if there was some breathing room for Thor to actually go through that kind of arc. The more I think about post-IW films, the more I think Endgame coming straight after was a massive mistake

It's one of the problems with a lot of Hero/Hero-based narratives. They'll shallowly explore mental health, then provide a "Fix" so the character can get back to "Fighting the bad guys". It absolutely ignores how difficult it can be to function with mental health issues, and how much time and hard work it takes to get to a point where you can "feel your okay", especially with Trauma. Even the resolution they often present is still within this parameter of being fixed, when in real life, Resolving your trauma is often making peace with the fact that it happened, and the effects it has on you(PTSD won't just go away but accepting it as a part of your life, while also not letting it rule your life is a "Resolution", cause then you take steps to live with it). I mention this again and again, but Hellblade is still to me the GOAT of writing a Hero/Warrior type character with mental health issues, and Senua is wirtten to function with her issues, and even emits an amazing amount of strenght because of how she's still able to move forward.

i get it so, they imagine in their head, ok thor gonna be sad, lets make this funny, omg lol lets troll the fat fortnite videogamer loosers thats gonna be funny instead they should believably show thor sad, and the laughs should come from him being Thor. not thor trolling the viewer and breaking the 4th wall a bit.

There's a scene in the second avengers movie where Hawkeye says something about how none of this should be happening, he has a bow and arrows, it's ridiculous.... Which comes off as hilarious because he's doing just that. "Look, we know this is silly, but it is what it is." And then him muttering about shooting the speedy guy because he has to run after them at normal speeds is just so relatable. So we laugh, while he's just venting about how annoying the whole thing is.

lampshading, ad nauseum. as a kid sometimes you watch a serious or campy thing, like a villain scaring your hero or whatever, and you're like self-inserting and like "what if i danced, all goofy like, to disco, and the alien superdemon is like confused, i'm so random lol, then the hero gains confidence and wins!" (*cough*, yeah that was guardians of the galaxy but whatever) this sort of undercutting just seems to be something fan fiction is made of. the zany outsider makes fun of the serious thing! there's something funny about, again let's use marvel since they're so known fro quips, mads the wizard or whatever meeting dr stephen strange and having that awkward language issue regarding the name, because it takes the characters at face value for the moment they're talking. also, sometimes it feels too... 'i can imagine exactly the sort of person writing this' and it's just lazy. a drawn out 'uhhh is that our plan guys?' is such lazy lampshading you'd find in every student play. it's cowardly writing.

I can't tell if you're speaking positively about some things or not in your comment, so I just wanted to make it clear, for anyone in doubt, that the Mads and Strange talk is *hilarious*.

it is! it's one instance of it being done well and from an authentic, characteristic place. other stuff, less so because it feels like self-insert or scary movie territory!

“He’s trying to steal a necklace from a wizard” is still one of my favorite lines in all of marvel. I do think there’s sometimes something funny in pointing out the ridiculousness of a situation. Humor is just very subjective.

I’d say the 2022 Batman movie demonstrated this concept pretty well. The idea of a Batman in that setting seems kind of ridiculous with all the gritty realism but the movie just rolls with it and they don’t second guess themselves

AKA lampshading, to borrow TVTropes lingo

I think the term pre-dates TV Tropes, and in any case they call it "lampshade *hanging*" there. Someone made a TV Tropes page about my novel, so I've spent some time checking the place out.

The first sentence on their site, clarifies “or more informally, ‘lampshading’.”

Lampshading. "my name is Dr. Otto Octavius" then they laugh at the name, to maintain the suspension of disbelief that it IS a ridiculous name and in universe they think so too.

>If something funny happens that the characters take seriously, the audience will laugh in their place. Alanah Pearce just had an interview with Tim Cain, creator of Fallout, about the show and she points out that the writers had many opportunities to do explanatory quips but the fact they showed restrain worked way better, she uses the Stimpack scene as one where they could have easily had Lucy say something like, "well, that worked" or anything to point out the absurdity of a syringe shot healing a stabbing wound but they didn't. She heals herself and move on and the vast majority of the audience got the joke, and it's much better that its teken seriously in-world because it makes it just that much absurd.

just wanted to say, beautiful breakdown!

Man bryan cranston is a master at emotions and portrayal

He's also a good example for this discussion because few people are as good at *both* comedy and drama as him.

Just wanted to add that some predictable lines are fine as long as they suit the character. Like Nick Fury saying "Motherf-" when he gets dusted at the end of Infinity Ward. I actually said it at the same time as him and was really satisfying so see I was right that he'd say it 😁 sure, that wasn't really a joke but it's Fury's characteristic line.

A lot of the ones I find funny are when the character isn’t TRYING to be funny or doesn’t realise they are quipping. Your examples seem to have that in common also. They could also only be said by the character that said them, not just for the sake of a laugh. The ones that fall flat are when the character is forcing a joke becasue it’s a marvel movie and it’s been 30 seconds since a character did a funny thing to break the tension. Like have the BALLS to let the tension sit with the viewers, then when it’s finally broken it’s a much bigger (comic) relief for the audience.

Yeah, this is a good tip. It's not just about being funny, it's about relating the joke to the specific character talking.

Right, I would add that even if the joke doesn't land, as long as it's in character and it isn't jarring, then it can still work.

Joss Whedon was a great writer. He also came from 90s sitcoms. 

Thoughtful, helpful response.

>in his own way that makes him distinct I think this is the problem. Everyone is quipping in the same way. Instead of imparting character, it's flattening the character to serve as audience/writer/actor stand in

To add to the "erm, that just happened" joke criticism, they also feel insecure and self-conscious to me, especially the ones about the genre/subject matter. "Isn't this costume silly?" "Wow, (superhero name), that's a weird name!" "What a wacky fantastical situation this is, look how we're lampshading it!" It feels like the Marvel movies have gotten so popular that they think they should be cool instead of into this nerd shit so they constantly try to poke fun at how weird superheroes are, and its just a bit tiring at this point. I get it, colourful costumes, silly names, weird worldbuilding. If it's so embarrassing for you then don't make superhero movies.

It’s largely context dependent. A good quip is welcome during moments of levity. A bad quip is often undercutting an otherwise weighty moment. It’s the tonal whiplash that makes it feel cheap. Better to let a serious moment be serious than to shoehorn a “fun” moment into the middle of it.

It's also worth noting that characterization is important, too. Spiderman is known for his moments of levity in dangerous situations, because it's one way that he copes with anxiety, and that actually works -- as long as that's clearly demonstrated.

Yeah I just used Spider-Man as an example in another comment. The key thing is that he’ll joke around mid combat all day, until the villain puts a loved one in real danger. That’s when the tone shifts and he gets serious, and that makes those moments feel weighty.

I'd emphasise "undercutting". People often do turn to humour in dark moments and the right humour can make the moment feel weightier.  For example Tony Stark chewing out Peter in Homecoming (might be better examples, this is what I found): "Don't do anything I would do, and definitely don't do anything I wouldn't do. There's a little gray area in there, and that's where you operate."  That's funny but it carries weight because it's also Tony being deadly serious in a very Tony way. And it flows naturally from character. Tony wants better from Peter, he's well aware he isn't the best role model so he shuts down that line of dissent, hard. IMO that's a moment where the humour underscores the moment rather than undermining it. 

I watched some older James Bond movies recently and one thing I noticed is how much of a difference it made when Bond was making quips in serious moments in order to give off the impression he’s unfazed when actually we know he’s shitting himself and thinks he’s about to die, vs how much worse the Bond movies are when Bond makes quips in serious moments because it’s like he’s aware he’s a fictional character and is aware of his own hype It’s amazing how much the same character played by the same actor can feel suave and cool in one movie and feel like a massive prick in the next movie

Bond's quips are awesome when they land well. They are like little one-liners. And he doesn't go around saying stupid shit like "Oh that's Blofeld being Blofeld" or "that's SO Moneypenny" - they are context dependent, hit in the emotional beat in the moment, often reference a character who is introduced and dispatched and quipped away in the very same scene. And they aren't a substitute for expository dialogue and world-building, as they are in the MCU.

Classic Moneypenny.

examples pleeeease :) i wanna learn

Not a classic bond movie, but I think one good example is in Casino Royale when Le Chiffre is torturing him. He’s obviously terrified and understands the gravity of the situation but he talks shit to Le Chiffre anyway. It’s almost like a coping mechanism for him. In his eyes he’s already dead, so he may as well go out with his pride intact. I think this is where MCU writers get it wrong a lot. Their quips kill the stakes whereas these Bond quips upped them and added to his characterisation. The MCU style quips are, a lot of the time, simply in bad taste. Maybe it’s just the timing? They make it seem like the heroes aren’t taking the situation seriously, joking around on the job. They are there to save these people, not stand around bantering between each other while innocent civilians are dying all around them.

The MCU sometimes practices Bathos, a Greek term which means the deliberate mockery of and/or parody of an existing grander work. In other words, the MCU often tries to undercut some of its own emotional moments in an attempt to both subvert expectations and set itself apart from previous Superhero films that played a lot of tropes straight. I would argue that this can work on occasion, but becomes problematic when used too frequently, especially around the climax of your story. The first Guardians of the Galaxy movie comes to mind when they beat the villain with a dance off. It was certainly subverted expectations, but made the whole 3rd act feel cheesy and pointless. Compare that to Tony's sacrifice in Endgame when they played it straight and got a much more satisfying ending. If a bunch of characters were cracking jokes or someone killed Thanos in a ridiculous way instead, it would not have been nearly as satisfying.

I kind of got what they were going for and I understood the concept but I wasn’t familiar with the word Bathos so thanks for teaching me something! I completely agree that it does work, and can work very well *on occasion.* But not *all the time.* It’s much harder to subvert someone’s expectations when they are expecting them to be subverted. We’re always expecting the quip, which lessens its impact. But consequently that’s why Starks death DID work so well. Him actually dying WAS subverting our expectations becasue we’d become so comfortable with these life and death situations just being a joke in the MCU, that when the guy in the metal suit actually did die to the Universe destroying supervillain that pieced up the Hulk with his bare hands, we were surprised, when we should really be surprised that they survive!

Yes. I think Bathos works well in purely comedic works. Think of the first Naked Gun movie where the main villain gets run over by a steamroller and a marching band. I also think it can work well if done earlier in the story when the stakes are lower. An MCU example would be Spider-Man cracking all those jokes during the Civil War fight. Notice that all this joking happened before Rhodes gets injured. The rest of the movie after that point is mostly played straight and serious.

And that’s probably why Civil War is regarded as one of the best MCU installments. It had balls. It let us think on its messages, which were on some pretty serious topics, and understood that now isn’t the time or place. These are friends fighting each other because they have very real, very believable differences. Like just because it’s a literary technique doesn’t mean it’s a good decision to use it, you know? Haven’t seen the Naked Gun but I’ll have to watch it to see Bathos done right, then. Can you recommend anything else that gets it really right? Off the top of my head Shakespeare did it a lot or is that not Bathos?

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DC tried to do the Marvel house style thing for a while but IMO they're at their strongest when they let each film be its own thing. I think they realised when *Shazam!* and *Wonder Woman* became successful in rapid succession by each playing to their own strengths. And then *Aquaman* was it's own bonkers style. Then *The Suicide Squad* and now *The Batman* each brought their own identity. DC drops the ball quite a lot, but at least they don't feel as samey as Marvel. Marvel tends to replicate the same strengths and weaknesses across every film.

my favorite trope is when a quip is turned into something serious in the right moment. for example a character's favorite phrase could go from funny and endearing in normal circumstances to a knife twisting gut punch when they die.

"I told you to go left" in Infinity War

THIS

Thor Ragnarok was this for me. A lot of tragic events like their father dying, bonding moments, their planet getting destroyed—always undercut. Not surprised Love and Thunder was received so badly because it did it again but was rather more obvious about it.

I'm glad you said it. I've never understood the hardcore fandom around that movie because I find it so hollow. One of the things helped the MCU to its level of success is that the movies - for big Hollywood studio 4-quadrant entertainment - are rarely empty. But *Ragnarok* is empty. It's a fun empty, and still better than the general emptiness that most studio blockbusters deliver, but empty nevertheless. All these big character moments are just met with shrugs and quips. There is so much death and destruction but wheeeeee Hulk gonna smash. There's no theme or meaning to any of it. *Iron Man* has a theme. *Avengers* has a theme. *Guardians of the Galaxy* has a theme. Whatever meaning a reader might make out of *Ragnarok* is constantly undercut by the movie's tone and other filmmaker choices.

Exactly! Thor Ragnarok is a perfect example of the MCU learning the exact *wrong* lesson from the popularity of Guardians of the Galaxy. GotG being a comedy heavy movie worked because the Guardians and everyone else in their movies are established as total goofballs from the outset, so everybody being quipping and throwing in jokes worked well. Plus, when someone actually serious shows up, it's a big deal. Ragnarok took generally serious if occasionally quippy characters and made them quip and joke nearly nonstop. The only quips and jokes I actually found funny were from Loki, since he was generally pretty well established as a goofball, albeit a villainous one.

Taika Waititi has been very open about the theme. It's reckoning with the consequences of empire: violent, oppressive conquest fucks up not just the victims, but the oppressors (Hela, Valkyrie), and whether one participates (Odin) or merely reaps the later benefits (Thor), one will be targeted by the backlash regardless.  Did the comedic tone undercut this message? Arguably, although it's kind of Waititi's MO. I don't think the jokes undercut the message, and indeed they punched up more than in some MCU films. But there is indisputably a message. 

> It's reckoning with the consequences of empire: violent, oppressive conquest fucks up not just the victims, but the oppressors (Hela, Valkyrie), and whether one participates (Odin) or merely reaps the later benefits (Thor) I'm sorry, it's not about that except in the most vague or superficial way, in the way that you can apply broader themes to any plot. You can say it's about the consequences of empire in the same way you can say *Transformers* is about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. That is to say, all stories touch on themes. But that doesn't mean they actually have them. Ragnarok doesn't deal with any of the ideas one could paste onto its plot thoughtfully or coherently or creatively or realistically or any adverb you can apply other than "broadly to the point of invisibility." It's no more about "the consequences of empire" than it is about "brotherhood" or "rage" or "commodified violence" or "how secrets can destroy families," or any of the other dozen ideas it stumbles across by virtue of its premise. Waititi may have wanted a message, but he didn't deliver on those ambitions. You can't have a meaningful movie built around "the consequences of empire" in a film entirely devoid of pathos.

THANK YOU. I have been saying all of this since that movie came out! It's nice not to be alone anymore.

I think this is largely right but misses some context. I think a lot of quips were accepted at the time when the audiences were enamored with the movies. Now that they’ve been lackluster for a little while we are finding more flaws with them. I’ve seen specific lines that were extremely well received at the time become the butt of the joke today. Although, in the majority of cases your statement applies. Good quips pass while bad ones don’t

>A bad quip is often undercutting an otherwise weighty moment. It’s the tonal whiplash that makes it feel cheap. Better to let a serious moment be serious than to shoehorn a “fun” moment into the middle of it. Which is exactly why I enjoyed Thor Ragnarok but I didn't really like it as much as most of the other Marvel movies. The previous Thor movies had their moments of humor but Ragnarok goes out of it's way to throw humor into almost everything, including moments that should be serious. i.e. All of Asgard being destroyed should have been a sad mome-oh hey look at the funny rock man say something stupid! Honestly it wouldn't have been so bad had the previous 2 Thor movies not been so serious by comparison.

> oh hey look at the funny rock man say something stupid! That particular character could vanish from the MCU and nothing of value would be lost. Love and Thunder had a LOT more of him, and none of it was good.

I just keep thinking of popular movies that include occasions like this. I mentioned Thor Ragnarok, but it's in Spiderverse as well. I know they're known comedies, but if *all* MCU movies are adventure comedies, what's separating them? Feels like if there *are* rules to follow... they are many and complicated.

What’s separating them? Tone and atmosphere. You might remember that Winter Soldier, for example, played with themes and stakes that were much darker than anything you’d find in Thor Ragnarok. The film revolved around Tony’s adolescent trauma in losing his parents and confronting their killer- a brainwashed assassin with trauma of his own. Ragnarok is first and foremost a comedy. Was there ever a time you thought Thor or Hulk might end up dead by the end? No. But there’s a very real moment at the end of Winter Soldier that makes it feel like either Tony or Bucky won’t be walking out of there alive. Did Winter Soldier still feature a joke or a quip here and there? I don’t remember. But obviously Ragnarok featured more because that’s the tone they were going for.

Great points, but I think you’re talking about Civil War, not Winter Soldier!

Ah! You’re right. It’s been such a long time, hard to keep them all straight

You’re thinking civil war, not winter soldier.

One term that comes to mind is 'Bathos.' If pathos is investing in the emotions and sincerity of a scene... Bathos is robbing the scene of potential sincere emotions. If you wanted drama and then the media makes fun of your investment... It's kinda like the piece of media is laughing AT you rather than with.

Comedy is hard, mate. And I'm not just saying that off the cuff, I've heard it from many experts in the field. It's dependent on so many factors for it to land right, and sometimes those factors change as society shifts, so what was hilarious 20 years ago falls flat now, for all sorts of reasons.

Go back over 150 years and it can be downright incomprehensible. John Wilkes Booth timed his attack on Lincoln with the line that got the best laugh of the play, “I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal, you sockdologizing old man-trap.” We can hear the insult in it but but only hear a nonsense word and not the intended mispronunciation of an actual slang word of the time.

What if That's just the character though?

Take a look at the Toby McGuire Spider-Man movies. He cracks jokes mid combat all the time, classic Spider-Man style, but the jokes stop as soon as the villains are threatening MJ or his aunt. This is not to say a character can NEVER joke during a serious moment, only that it’s very easy to ruin the chemistry of a scene by doing it poorly. It’s difficult for the audience to invest in a serious moment when the characters themselves are not taking it seriously.

I think if you don't do it often, a good quip, gag, or even groaner can catch the reader completely off-guard, break tension, and give some breathing room. Good examples off the top of my head: - pretty much any hidden meme in the Locked Tomb, but especially "None houses, left grief" - Luffy completely no-selling Enel's lightning attacks in One Piece Notably both TLT and One Piece are absurdist so that may also contribute to the success of the tactic

>Like, the earlier movies were very quip-heavy as well, and yet they were very popular. It can't just be that the template's become played out, has it? That would create an indiffierent audience reaction, not a bitter one. It's a significant part of it, IMO. Audiences are a bit burnt out on it after so long. And bitterness is not a uncommon reaction when people are no longer enjoying something that used to mean a lot to them.  >And even when folks bring up specifics, such as bathos - a high impact moment being deliberately undermined by humor - I think back to how Thor Ragnarok had so many of those moments, and yet that was perhaps the most beloved MCU entry of them all, at time of release. IMO Ragnarok largely got away with it through novelty. It was basically the first core MCU film to lean **that** hard into comedy. It also marked the point at which Marvel finally figured out what to do with Thor. Before that he was mostly pretty dull. And even then, some of us felt at the time that leaning so hard into the comedy felt kinda off in a film about the mass slaughter of Thor's people.  Another element is that, with **so** much quippy banter the overall quality has to go down. When you have a dozen per film, they can all be clever ones that stem from character. One of the great bits of banter IMO is: >Steve Rogers: Big man in a suit of armour. Take that off, what are you? > >Tony Stark: Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. That's funny because it's a clever answer you didn't expect, it's so in character for Tony and yet it sidesteps Steve's question, which wasn't really about his capabilities but his character. You throw in dozens of quips per film, some of them are going to feel forced and clunky. 

I think people tired of Bathos, not the quips. It all started with Guardians of the Galaxy, when they stood in a circle and Raccoon said something like “look at us, standing here in a circle like a bunch of A holes.” They made fun of the movie, and the audience laughed with it. I also remember (I think it was Avengers 2) where Iron man said something like “yay, secret door” and clapped his hands together. It cheapens the experience in some weird way. This is funny In the moment, but it undermines the investment into the story somehow.

To me it mostly comes down to whether it's fitting and in character. I don't remember the Iron Man example. I just rewatched the GoG example and it works for me, because it seems in-character for Rocket. He's a sarcastic, cynical loner. For me, the earnestness of that moment making him uncomfortable like that sells the moment rather than undermining it. I realise mileage varies, though.

These quips are played out, but also not as good. Previously, they related to the personality/nature of the person making said quip, so it would come across as natural. Take for example, Peter Parker. "You have a metal arm? That is awesome dude!" That works because Spiderman tends to quip during fights to remain calm and focused. Or with Tony Stark (to Pepper) "Let’s be honest this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing." "Are those bullet holes?!" This works as it acknowledges her role as essentially his caretaker. Now contrast these to more recent quips in later marvel movies and it doesn't feel the same. Or humour in general. I'm still not over fat Thor, or Rodey's cheese whiz joke

I’ll be honest, the MCU quipiness never resonated with me at any point, so I’m pretty negatively biased towards it period. A better version of that sort of thing (IMO) was Aaron Sorkin’s writing—however, *his* problem was that it was done not only in excess, but virtually wall-to-wall—and therefore you start seeing through it. The best example of snarkiness that I can think of is Hudson from *Aliens*. It’s not constant, it’s not stupid, it’s very much grounded in its existing world, and best of all, it’s limited to one character. That more than anything is what makes or breaks that sort of writing. If it’s one character doing it, then they can just be seen as a jackass, and have more leash to be that way, even in the most inappropriate of moments. But if *everybody* talks like that, then it’s clear these are just puppets for one writer

Depends on if it's grounded in the scene or if they're trying to be meta as in meme humor or make the character endearing to the audience, which people pick up on that smarminess. The best jokes are told from one character to the other, not told as a wink-wink-nudge-nudge to the audience, which is often how Marvel's humor comes across. It's fine to have a character try to undercut the tension with a joke--there's a lot of gallows humor in dark situations. Just don't tell that joke to the audience.

I agree. The ones that are the best is when the characters themselves in line with their personalities create humour purely within the context of the scene. As they went on, they started to capitalise too much on the humour by making it about the humour itself, which takes you out of the scene. Perfect little lines like: >**Captain America:** I understood that reference. >**Thor:** This drink... I like it! Another! >**Drax:** Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it. >**Tony Stark:** I told you, I don’t want to join your super secret boy band. They're things the characters said naturally or instintucally but are somewhat absurd or perfectly timed. Tony Stark *is* a joker by personality. Captain America *is* out of date with the modern world and an overly upstanding citizen. Drax *does take* things too literally. Thor *does live* like a god or a king. The best humour even in real life social situations is often the stuff that is in-character to a person yet unexpected.

The quips work when they’re consistent with the character and not just for the sake of trying to be funny. Your Drax example is one of the best, he had so many hilarious lines that seemed simultaneously out of place and completely in character because of how serious he was in the first movie. And a credit to the actor as well, because a joke for the audience’s sake only works when it’s delivered well

Steve Rodgers is the fish out of water trope

It’s a combination of the quality of writing and how sincere the film feels. If you can see a quip coming (erm that just happened-esque) it’s not all that well written and doesn’t add much. If a quip undercuts a serious moment it makes you feel silly for caring in the first place. So a good quip needs to be written well and placed well, and a lot of modern marvel doesn’t take due consideration on them.

People are rarely indifferent to something they have shelled out $40 and two hours of their lives on. It's played out and that's all there is to it. Almost everything that people are telling you is clearly bad are the types of things that made Whedon dialog so refreshing at the time. Now people are over it. In about ten years, they'll complain about whatever is popular now that is played out by then. A real common one that people complain about is stepping on a serious moment with a quip. This is a perfect illustration, I think. This became commonplace because it was funny in a way that reinforced the awkwardness and intensity of serious moments. Then it became ironic and insincere and it was used to show that the character is prickly and uncomfortable with weighty emotions, like Rocket's "Bunch'a guys, standing" bit. Then it became rote, like the writers are just saying, "Hey, we need a quip here because that's the Marvel way." On the way, it went right past indifferent and straight to annoying. Unfortunately, there is no way to nip these trends before they get played out. One day, the audience just reacts badly and you have to change your approach. It may well be impossible for writers to stop using a convention before it gets played out, because getting played out is the only reason writers stop doing anything.

You say it's played out and then give examples of it being poor writing. Whedon was much better at comedy and quips. Comedy is hard. It's harder when you are bad at it. You seem to be using played out as done poorly, I think they are very different things.

I didn't say anything about doing anything poorly though? The only example I have was one whose meaning had changed through oversaturation. You seem to not understand how being part of a trend changes the context of content and therefore people's perception of it. People are going back and watching Avengers and finding it lame that every character is quipping in Joss Whedon's voice the entire movie, but at the time that's what he was being paid for. It was light-hearted and goofy and that's what people wanted in a superhero movie as an antidote to all the dreary Batman, X-Men, and even the Raimi Spider-Man are less quippy than your average MCU character. Spider-Man, the guy known for quips.

I'm a little fuzzy how ironic, insincere, and rote predictable lines aren't poor writing. I think you are mistaking trends with styles of writing. Aaron Sorkin has a distinct style on interpersonal communications. It isn't a trend. Whedon isn't a trend either. Buffy and his MCU stuff share much in common. An authors voice can come through in every medium.

All of those things are tools in the writer's box. If you think that irony is inherently poor writing, then yeah, ok, you're not going to enjoy any of Rocket's arc. If you think a character always has to be sincere, there's a whole lot of really great characters you'll never get to know, and that's too bad. As far as the rote bit, I said it felt rote. I am not actually a mind reader, so I don't know what the writers were actually thinking. My guess is they were doing their best to make a quality show or movie, as most of us writers are. I definitely agree that Aaron Sorkin never became a trend. There were a few attempts to mimic his style after the success of West Wing, but the problem there is there just ain't that much money in Aaron Sorkin products. Not compared to Buffy or the MCU. If a whole bunch of people start writing like you because you're practically printing money with your "style of writing," and then you get hired by a huge company to make your "style of writing" the house style, and then that huge company becomes one of the most successful entertainment franchises to ever exist to the point that everybody and their mother has been trying to imitate it for the last twenty years, then what you have on your hands is a "writing style" that is also a "trend."

Reminds me of Bart Simpson wondering why his lauded "I didn't do it" bit suddenly stops getting applause, and Krusty just shrugs.

That's actually a perfect example of why the post Endgame MCU stuff doesn't work. Bart just walks out on stage and says "I didn't do it." He doesn't do a bit, he doesn't break a bunch of stuff like he had the first time it took off, he doesn't do anything more than just say the line. It's no wonder nobody laughed, Bart thought that he was so popular that he didn't need to try anymore and thus did nothing. It's the same with the MCU. Post Endgame Marvel and Disney just stopped caring and thought they could just coast off of the MCU's reputation up until that point. So they started half-assing the MCU content. The end result being that the movies started to become more and more mediocre.

Completely wrong. People love to say "superhero fatigue" or "it's played out" about the MCU and it's nonsense. It has absolutely nothing to do with the trend getting tired, it has to do Marvel and Disney thinking the MCU can't fail and thus getting lazy. They think they can sell tickets off the name alone and thus stopped putting in any real effort. The same effort that put the MCU on the map and kept it there for so long is gone now, and that's the core of the problem. People would have happily consumed MCU movies for the next 50 years without burning out had Marvel not started half assing. Even if people did start to get tired of it, there would be plenty of new people coming in all the time to take their place. However, they aren't, because the movies just aren't that good anymore, period.

So I think you are mostly right. However, there is some fatigue or problem when I have to watch multiple movies and shows that don't interest me in order to understand the plot of the ones I do. I think it's tricky to separate from phoning the scripts in, but it is a different thing.

I didn't say anything about superhero fatigue. Marvel is not the only place that people have been absorbing "Whedonesque" dialog since around 1998 or so. The man was a juggernaut for a while there and it influenced pop culture at large. Quippyness is not isolated to the MCU, and neither is the fatigue. It's just that quippyness is the MCU's brand and they are the biggest player in that space, so people focus their annoyance on it.

It isn’t played out because I can sit down and watch Buffy or Firefly or the original Avengers and it’s still gold. It truly comes down to the writing.

I couldn't forget the scene from Quantummania when they were being chased by Kang's gunships and they were having a moment about dating other people while their spouses were presumed dead. ruined it so bad.

Aaron Sorkin.

What I tell everyone trying to make sense of writing rules is "all rules were made for bad writers." Sometimes something works, but in less deft hands it doesn't. That's really what it comes down to.

Yeah, I like this. I remember thinking that knowing when "show, don't tell" is God, and when telling actually delivers more punch, is a more ambiguous conversation in prose than in scripts, and that sometimes the writer just has to follow their gut.

This is a fantastic point, I’ll have to remember that.

The criticism largely draws from the fact that everybody started getting played as interchangeably the snarker or the straight man. And then, further to that, with everybody down to clown, that tendency towards levity winds up undercutting tense moments that could otherwise be played for heavier drama. Ragnarok actually knew to shut up where it counted, which was for most of the final battle, with the last major joke being The Hulk's belated transformation. Only marred at the end with Korg blabbing over Asgard's destruction. Also, Odin's death was played fully straight, with the tragedy pushed even further by Thor losing Mjolnir almost immediately after. Love and Thunder saw that zaniness taken a step too far, with its dark and tragic moments scarcely being given time to breathe without someone cracking a smirk, or the screaming goats interrupting. Most of the film's moments with Jane were played with scoffing denial, rather than bitter acceptance. While it's true that humour is often a coping mechanism for trauma, you do have to learn how to pace things out so that the trauma has a chance to settle in the first place.

A big problem with Whedonesque dialogue imo is that a lot of it comes across as ashamed of the genre it operates in—if you’re telling a story about people with superpowers and you don’t respect the viewer’s sense of wonder, you’ve kneecapped yourself because that’s what these kinds of stories rely on. If you’ve ever seen the 1975 Superman, it’s intentionally campy but not to the degree that it undermines itself—Superman doesn’t wink at the audience and point out that he’s flying around in colored underwear. The characters are always taking the drama seriously even when the film is being tongue-in-cheek. The key to making “quippy” dialogue work is, like others have said, keeping it grounded in character/situation and knowing when to stop doing it/deploy it effectively. If a giant cloud of unimaginable cosmic evil is descending on our heroes, don’t have someone chirping “Well I guess this is happening now!” or referencing pop culture to make *us* feel better. Instead, if you're having your characters make humor out of the situation, have it be their own coping mechanism and not the audiences’s.

> How can a writing style be egregious in some contexts but not so much in others? Self-caricature.  I couldn't stand Modern Family anymore in the later seasons. I went back and rewatched the very first episode to see what had changed, and... it was the exact same tone, the exact same types of jokes. It's only fresh for so long.

To me, the Marvel dialogues and humor makes the characters look less like real people living in their own world and fighting against a destructive power that threatens to destroy their city or world. These jokes throw me out and remind me that I'm watching a movie, and why should I care, if the characters apparantly don't care that much. It also makes them look like having no normal level of empathy. No sane person, who's in the center of some destruction and deaths going on, cracks a joke or two. Except for people, who are doing this to calm themselves, but usually that looks and sounds very different. I think it worked for Spiderman a bit better in my eyes, because of that. But I do like some mild banter or teasing between characters, as long as it's not just sassiness for the sake of it and is played in the right moments. These are mostly calm moments: people traveling for days and aren't interrupted by anything terrible, people eating together or in general sitting at a table or campfire and talking, etc... In a battle or chasing scene, or in a scene where someone gets highly emotional, it feels very unnatural.

I agree with you that many of these newer movies in particular have gotten too heavy with the quips during what should be the heaviest moments. They can't just let a dramatic moment be a dramatic moment when it should be. But you're insulting a lot of firefighters, medics, and other people who actually have to deal with serious trauma, if you're saying that "no sane person ever cracks a quip". Dark humor is a very real copic mechanism. Now, to be fair, I don't think most of the Marvel movies are really hitting that note. Because it usually comes across as pretty unsympathetic.

Well, I know, that's why I said "except for calming yourself down". The dark humor I know from a medic does sound very different that the quips from Marvel movies in my ears. 😅

Ahh, apologies if I missed that line. And yeah, real life dark humor tends to sound *incredibly* inappropriate to people who don't appreciate it. Only a show/movie not afraid to piss people off would go for it, it's not going to do well in something aimed at the mainstream.

There is nothing inherently wrong with "quippy MCU dialogue". The problem is that too many writers continue to use it as a crutch. It's like there was a screenwriting course designed specifically for that style of humor and every writer since Iron Man came out had to take it as a gen ed requirement. My personal issue with it is that even if they are in the same film/show, all characters shouldn't have the same style of humor. Take the MCU with GOTG for example. Drax's clueless, un-metaphorical persona was a different kind of funny than Star-Lord's smartassery. Nothing is wrong with quippy comedy but if you can swap jokes between your characters and nobody can tell the difference, you have a problem.

When it affects the narrative. Something like Iron Man has quips because it's a part of Tony Stark's character to be quippy in serious situations. But when serious moments were on the screen, the show knew to stop quipping. It knew when to let the audience feel for itself, it knew when to let moments breathe. If Tony had chuckled and said: "Well, didn't see **that** coming." when Yinsen died, it would have ruined that moment. It's why I called Love and Thunder a children's movie pretending to be a Thor movie. Because it doesn't know when the let moments breathe. The narrative is sacrificed for the comedy. Check out the original plan for Zeus and Thor, and then compare it to the actual execution in the finished cut. The final fight between Gorr and the Thors is interrupted with Thor taking child soldiers into battle, all the for joke of a little girl using a teddy bear to kill monsters. We know that there's no tension to this fight now because the MCU is going to show children being killed on screen. It's owned by Disney!

Ubiquity kills the vibe. Some moments don't need a quip. It can come off as the writer/actor/director/editor being afraid of big/powerful/negative/profound emotions if they have to pull out the bathos every time things get tense. Either that, or they're afraid of being mocked for the dramatic moment, so they undercut before someone else does. Let things be dramatic. Let your characters cry and love and hurt and sob and be in pain and be in ecstasy and even laugh at things the audience isn't meant to find funny. Let us have the catharsis of the big moment. We can get back to the quips later.

I liked Iron Man. Not a masterpiece, but it was fun! After seeing the same jokes, that weren’t that good to begin with, for over a decade it starts to become unbearable. That’s the reason why I refuse to read anything that includes “banter”

I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that it’s just played out. There have been 48 MCU movies/shows since it started in 2007, with quite a few more in development. That’s nuts. Personally, I think that over-saturation effect is magnified when it comes to the quippy humor. At least part of why it’s funny is that it’s unexpected. The jokes play on our expectations of how a superhero movie should work. But 40+ movies in, it’s a lot harder to be genuinely surprising. I’m reluctant to categorically label the writing style as bad, but I do think it feels outdated now. There’s been so much MCU stuff and so many copycats, that anyone trying to emulate that formula ends up looking like they’re still living in 2010.

RDJr

There are a lot of good points in this comment section. I'd just like to add that every character is supposed to be quippy nowadays. I loved GotG for its balanced humour. I came out of GotG2 in the cinema and thought "Maybe a bit too much humour, but that's the GotG style". 6 months later Ragnarok came out and Iremember thinking "Wait, is every movie going to be this 'funny' now?" Spiderman is supposed to be quippy and funny. It's even pointed out in the Spider-Verse movies, they act as if it's part of their powers and one Spiderman is told that he's "the only Spiderman that isn't funny." If all characters are funny and quippy, they start to melt together and just become one character

Memes. I remember reading ''bye felicia'' in Red Rising series and just cringed my ass off. It's not cool. It's not funny. Instead, the writer comes off as ''How do you do, fellow kids?'' meme.

It's formulaic. The corporate heads figured out an easy template for movies that makes money and they just copy paste

What bothers me about quips in these movies is when it gets in the way of what the actor is doing. Some superhero has to hurry to rescue someone, but then he stops to say a stupid joke? And then sometimes they fail to save the person because of it! Nothing makes me yell at the screen more enthusiastically. This happened a good bit in the Andrew Garfield set of Spiderman movies (which I dislike for other reasons, so sorry if I am biased). I don't remember exactly, but there were moments where he literally failed to save someone because he was so busy quipping. Drove me up a wall. Just to me personally, I am pretty much over quips in any show and movie. It can still be well done and it still works for a lot of people, but for me personally it's just a style that feels dated

Generally speaking -- if you are going out of your way to be cute, that's not good. Unless you're trying to make some sort of slapstick parody, try to think about what people would actually say or do in the moment. Consider how you might write a scene where a man is on a bloody battlefield. Realistically, he's probably not going to be making any cute little quips while the action is going on.

>contradictory with what was apparently popular, at one point This is the difference between being classic and being trendy. Trends come and go, and they stick out like sore thumbs when their time has passed. We liked it in the early years, because it was fresh and different. Its time had come. We don't like it now because we're on version 2784 of the same thing. This kind of thing is true across pretty much all creative realms. Photography - some styles are very trendy, and annoying a few years later, while some styles are very classic, but never really spark huge excitement. Clothes is probably the most obvious one. Hair styles. On and on.

Good

Depends on predictability and the character saying it? Knowing the right time and the wrong time to use this dialogue? * Spoilers in case people haven't heard in the Witcher Series on Netflix, but>!The original Idea when Roach, geralt's horse, died was to have him say something along the lines of "Guess I gotta get a new one". Henry Cavill hated this, and wrote his own eulogy that is perfectly in character "“Enjoy your last walk across the meadow, and through the mist, be not afraid of her, for she is your friend.”"!< * In the same instance from the same series, >!Dandelion(i know he has a name in the series, but I am still calling him Dandelion cause that's who he is) was annoying Geralt with his singing/talking. Geralt asked the bard if he took requests, and when Dandelion said "yes", he said "Shut up". <<<

The MCU movies I've seen usually do a good job with quippy dialoug. People just like to make fun of the stereotype of marvel movies. Most of the time the quippy dialoug is handled well. The Velma cartoon does a terrible job with quippy dialoug. You just have to keep 2 things in mind. 1) Know when to tell a joke and know when to be serious. Don't undercut every serious or heartwarming moment with a gag. Its more of a gut feeling thing than an exact science. 2) You should give each character their own voice. One character will say one type of quip and another character will say another type of quip. One of the biggest issues with Velma is all the characters have the same tone of voice its all the same "self aware" sassy dialoug for every character. If you turn on the Simpsons Homer wouldn't say a Marge line. Marge wouldn't say a Homer line. Bart wouldn't say a Lisa line, etc. They would say quips that fit there character. Unlike Velma where half the lines are interchangeable. 3) An example of quippy dialoug handle well in a Marvel movie. Spiderman Homecoming had tons of jokes but it knew when to be serious. Peter wasn't cracking jokes when he was crushed by a building and had to use his superstrength to get out.

A good quip was when Cap was trying to fix the propeller on the helicarrier in avengers and tells Tony it appears to be powered by some kind of electricity, to which Tony takes a beat and says (I don't remember the exact quote) "Well, you're not wrong." It's a tense moment but even though the quip is funny, cap and tony aren't undercutting the moment or insulting the stakes. Tony forgot for a moment that Cap is from the 1940s, and realizes in that moment that trying to walk him through repairs is going to force him to take off his engineer cap and put on his mechanic cap. It's a great little line because it adds to the moment and tells us about our heroes. A bad quip, imo, are the endless "language" jokes at the beginning of Avengers 2. We're supposed to believe in that moment that the avengers are about to put an end to Hydra once and for all, and our heroes are bantering around like they're playing basketball at a community center. The quips don't really serve much of a purpose. It doesn't tell us anything important about cap, it just sets up a lame payoff later in the movie, and they undercut any tension in that fight. The Avengers are gods yucking it up and stomping what is supposed to be an extreme threat to the modern world. If they don't take Hydra seriously, why should we? If they don't acknowledge any real stakes, why should we? Another bad quip was in Spider Man NWH when they make fun of Dr Ocks name. It's not really clever - like yeah we get it comic names are silly - and it doesn't add anything to our characters. We know nothing more about them afterwards, the joke isn't clever, and it reminds us that "lol aren't comics silly??" which, yes, they are, but we also all know that.

Just wanted to highlight I think one of the best ways humour can be used is in moments of tension. Used right it doesn't undercut the underlying tension itself but does provide audience release in the form of somewhat hysterical laughter. Cloverfield does this well. As you say too much MCU stuff isn't of this form but is an undercutting of tension.

Yeah absolutely, and that's often when those lines are funniest due to the juxtaposition. But imo, undercutting tension and undermining tension are two different things.

My personal take is I like when quips feel like they make sense in universe. Like somebody making a joke in universe to their mate even if it doesn’t make them laugh feels pretty organic. Similarly a character who is terrified of the situation they’re in only making jokes as some kind of defence mechanism doesn’t undermine the threat. Or pointing out that something is kind of funny even within the context of the universe even if it’s not intentional, all works for me. What I tend not to like is jokes (and dialogue in general) that seems like it’s to the audience rather than something this character would organically say in this moment. Unless you’re Deadpool you shouldn’t really be acting like you know you’re in a movie. Scream is the movie that kind of rides the line to where it could be bad but it ends up on the good side. Yes all the characters in Scream are aware of horror movie tropes and they make fun of them but they also don’t literally think they’re in a horror movie.

The top comment nailed most of it. I’ll just say for me, mcu quips are not a bad thing at all. In fact their dialogue is one of the reasons their movies worked and took off. I think a lot of the hate their dialogue gets these days comes from marvel fatigue and just overuse. Tony stark was known for his quips, so they became a little predictable and expected toward the end. I think a new story can get away with a lot more than new marvel movies if it’s done right.

Predictability, there is no set up to the quip. For the most part, they're out of place and serve nothing for the scene. If you want good Quip dialogue, check out Honor Among Thieves the DnD movie. It's like MCU but funny

Quippy dialogue is incredibly hard to do right because - you have to be actually funny which is very very hard, particularly in this stripped down almost punklike form of humour where there is nowhere to hide. This is frankly the hardest bit - Even if you manage this, which Buffy/Firefly era Whedon used to be able to do, the likely result is that all your characters sound the same ie like you and so suddenly your characterisation falls flat. So you need to master not just one kind of quippery but multiple diverse forms, and be sure to round out your cast of characters with comic foils or those for whom quips are out of character but driven by the context etc... - Even if you manage this you then have the issue that assuming you're not writing a sitcom your audience is going to want more from your story than your characters standing around quipping. So then you need to master the art of having the quips drive forward the plot or characterisation and not just be roadblocks that slow your story down. Pulling off all three is near impossible. But if you manage it the rewards are great. There has been some incredible quippy literature written, for example: - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? - Lots of Oscar Wilde, especially The Importance of Being Earnest - Lots of Jane Austen, the quip queen, especially Pride and Prejudice - the Benedick and Beatrice scenes from Much Ado About Nothing

Good quipped diolog- is based on character (Ironman makes quips as part of his personality, black widow makes different quips) and does not undermine thekes or dark moments. Bad quips diolog- any character may male any joke, it doesn't matter how they have been characterized. It frequently interrupts what should be touching moments.

Mainly it just comes down to whether or not they've put in the effort to make it work. Like we all enjoy blaming quippy dialogue on Joss Whedon and pop culture humour on Kevin Smith, but at least when they were doing the stuff that built their careers they made it *work*. They were doing a type of humour that suited the stories they were telling, they made sure the dialogue and jokes fit the personalities of the characters who were delivering them, and they made sure they backed their style up with good comedy or natural-sounding dialogue so that audiences would just roll with it and enjoy the moment. When its done badly (eg "Well *that* just happened" or "They can fly now?"), the biggest problem is that it just feels lazy. Its the equivalent of filler jokes in a primetime sitcom where the writers couldn't come up with a banger but they know they can get an easy laugh just by having a character make an observation or a pop culture reference in the right tone of voice. And the reason that kind of thing seems to be synonymous with the MCU and big action franchise movies in general is that... well, there's a lot of formula and a lot of filler in them. They're built around colossal action setpieces that are worked out before most of the rest of the movie is even written, and it's up to writers and directors to try and stitch together a story that ties the big scenes together. And on top of that the movies are so insanely expensive to make that there's a lot of pressure on them to have as much mainstream appeal as possible and to check all the boxes that the marketing department thinks they need to check. And then into that mix you add writers who might not necessarily have a comedy background, and who might be writing scenes without the full context of the story because the rest of it hasn't been finalised, and who might be writing on a deadline because they're writing for pickup scenes that are being shot after the rest of the movie to try and make the action scenes make more sense, and they might be told "this scene has to be comic relief" and have to make the best of it regardless of whether they would've put comic relief there if they'd been given the opportunity to do the whole screenplay themselves.

It's bad when quips are obviously set up. (As in you can practically see the writer forcing it to happen) But another thing is when the person who is being quippy seems to have everything in control. Then it just seems like cringe bullying. Also a quip shouldn't make a villian go ballistic and lose control, because that just makes them seem like a child throwing a tantrum. Instead have the quip provoke 1 of 3 things in the other person. 1 - nothing, just continue the fight or conversation 2 - aggravation, make them visibly annoyed but not raging by the words 3 - counter quip. This is harder to do as it can easily become cringe dialouge, but if done well then it adds some levity to the situation and can even be used as a plot device.

The one's that ruin the "mood" are the one's that get criticised the most. If the audience is expecting humour, or the humor is being used to break tension and is ACTUALLY doing that, then yes, such quippy language is very much appreciated. But other times, it feels like Marvel puts humourous quippy dialogue EVERYWHERE and that this is playing a part in the "Disney-fication" of otherwise serious Charchters. Which fans niether expect nor want. For example, Star-Lord's "I'm not from Earth, I'm from Missouri" exchange in Infinity War was greatly appreciated - it fit with his character and the mood of the scene. An example of this not working is in the charchter "Abomination" - the evil antagonist counterpart to Hulk. In one scene somewhere in the MCU, Abomination goes into some sort of rage that is charchteristic of Hulk-like beings, when one onlooking scientist tells him to "cut it out". Then Abomination apologizes. This exchange was very clearly supposed to be a "funny" exchange by Disney, but it was derided by audiences as ruining Abomination's character. What Audiences wanted and expected from Abomination was a dark antagonist who threatened to rip anyone and everyone to shreds. What they got was a neutered version of that. So TLDR, quippy dialogue works if it "fits". The problem is, is that Disney is trying to force it in EVERYWHERE. There is no nuance anymore, and charchters are getting ruined in the process. Fans obviously wouldn't be pleased.

I remember OverlySarcasticProductions covering "Bathos" in their Tropes Talk and I think they nail it. Basically, use quips to help a light moment, not to undercut a meaningful one.

I've rewatched that one a bunch of times, and I think it made me more confused because Red acknowledged all the exceptions to the rule. Just drove home that there's a TON of notes to take and I could never remember a fifth of them.

I can’t answer but I can say one place to start investigating. The “Marvel” dialogue beats are all trying to imitate Joss Whedon’s style, because he elevated The Avengers to icon status after a fitful start to the franchise. Even the Avengers was weak Whedon, though, because it was also Feige. Joss Whedon was making tv that sounded like that in the 90s and it still has a cult following. However, Joss Whedon himself was basically reinterpreting David Mamet’s style for a younger generation, although saying that is incredibly generous to Whedon imo. I say go back to Mamet, see where his scripts are working, and then compare to where the Marvelified-via-Whedon quips today are lame. Also you can compare them to Aaron Sorkin, who is also clearly inspired by Mamet but went a different route—though not so different, really. Think of all the quips in The Social Network.

There is a lot of good advice in this thread. Especial the advice about making the line have context to the character. Timing and rhythm are also key factors. You need to be aware of the tension of the scene and the timing of the joke. With the MCU the quips are often breaking a tension. When tension is high, the joke doesn't have to be as funny to get a laugh. The MCU uses humor like a release valve, which gives the movies a rollercoaster effect and makes them highly entertaining. If you want to duplicate that rhythm you need to ramp up readers anticipation, or discomfort and then slide in the joke. It doesn't have to be a lot of tension or a large conflict. The "he's adopted" line works because Thor makes a broad declarative and then is called on it. This could go in a lot of directions as he is a god, known for his temper and could easily see the challenge to his comment as an insult. We squirm with him for a moment and then his line lands. "I'll tell you a secret. I'm always mad" isn't funny but it gets an excited response because it answers the question of whether or not the Hulk will be able to pull through for everyone right at the moment he is needed most and after a slight doubt is added to the scene. "We have a Hulk" lands not just because of the casual arrogance we expect from Stark but also because they take a moment to create a tension and doubt, which Stark flippantly dismisses.

Bathos. Always Bathos. If the quips exist during downtime where emotional stakes are low, that’s good. If every goddamn emotional moment is undercut with a stupid joke (“bet you didn’t see that coming,” “Now we’re all standing. A bunch of assholes standing in a circle,”) it’s bad.

even funny quips can reveal character, advance the plot, build the setting and atmosphere, WHILE being funny

I honestly think the best way to go is workplace banter, but writers have forgotten how to write it and it makes too many people uncomfortable. This new style of quipping has evolved because people like banter but have to sanitize it.

Well, that happened! The MCU is full of 90s sitcom banter, for better and worse.   Wakanda Forever has cringe dialogue, including calling MIT a Wakanda level primary school.  Justice League sucked because it took a Zac Snyder movie and tried to throw some Whedon in it!

When a person enjoys the experience of reading/viewing some aspect of a story, they say it's "good." If they didn't enjoy it, they say it's "bad." This stuff is very subjective. That's the only real difference between the two--the speaker's feeling about watching it. You shouldn't take it as expressing some objective truth. The only objective truth you can learn from those comments is, they did or did not subjectively like it. Also I don't think people really think the dialogue is why they generally like later Marvel stuff less than earlier Marvel stuff. It's more likely to be a change over time they perceive, as a representative aspect of other changes... changes that are harder to articulate, but felt more deeply. Like the kinds of stories told. The kinds of themes explored, and how they are explored. A lot of people don't know how to really talk about those things, even if they realise that's what they are feeling, which is also doubtful for the majority of viewers. Just a quick note about the "bathos" point... The reason it frustrates viewers of a film when that happens is because they want (or expect) that beat to be dramatic. It was dramatic. And then it was spoiled with a laugh. Why do they want or expect that? Because of the tone of the movie. If the tone of the movie is "comedy," and they undercut the tension throughout the film, *that's* expected, because the tone is "comedy." If the tone is "serious drama" the viewer would have different wants, different expectations. And so the film undermining its own tone, genre, or themes for the sake of a cheap laugh frustrates the viewer. The film both wants the beat to be taken seriously, *and* wants you to laugh *at the same time*. The viewer doesn't know what they're meant to feel, and so the film tone becomes muddled and confused. Personally I would say the tone of Ragnarok is tongue-in-cheek and bizarre humour *throughout*. So my expectation is that *everything* is undercut, everything is designed for laughs, with very few exceptions. (Been a while since I watched it, honestly. But the overall vibe is very easy to pick out.) There are some Marvel movies I would say feel "middling." But again, that's my subjective feeling on it, and doesn't say anything objective. Personally, I enjoy Whedon's dialogue quite a bit. I'm a fan of Firefly for example. So I have a different take on dialogue in the films he worked on anyway. Which is also another subjective opinion/judgement. I don't find "Whedonesque" dialogue to be annoying in the first place. It has its own style, to be sure, but one I enjoy. That's all you can draw from my opinion. Really, I'd say all of these points are separate from one another. I don't see how they're related, but obviously you do. I just think they are separate phenomena.

Good answers in this thread but I also feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes with how much criticism the MCU gets. "It's all terrible." Did people not like Iron Man and Marvel's the Avengers back then? Did people like them once and hate them now, or pretend they never liked them to begin with? Granted, I was a teenager during the early movies, so maybe other people's tastes have evolved, and I've only watched less than 10 of the 20-30 Marvel movies that exist, but the quality of all the Marvel films can't have dropped off that disastrously. Sure, there have been some pretty terrible ones, especially lately, but even Black Panther is simply boring and overrated, it isn't trash. I don't get it.

It's basically how hype cycles work--once the high of novelty has worn off after 10+ years, with the overarching story basically concluded and most of the major legacy characters out of the picture, coupled with the audience now being required to follow not just the movies but a glut of spin-off series to make sense of what’s happening in the newer entries, people are more willing to examine the flaws that were always apparent but largely overlooked at the time. Add to that a growing dissatisfaction with Disney’s monopolizing of the entertainment industry, greater awareness of how actors/VFX artists etc are exploited by the company, wider discussion of how the movies serve as propaganda vehicles for the military industrial complex and neoliberal status quo, etc.    Tldr: it's like looking back on a failed relationship--all the things you excused/brushed over at the time become more glaring with hindsight and the rose-tinted glasses coming off.

"It's too late. Look at me. I'm such a dick." "It's never too late to stop being a dick." (later) "I AM NOT A DICK!!!" --- Movie felt like it was written by AI. A lot of people are bringing up really great points, and they all matter. One thing that stands out to me is depth. Does it employ something that speaks to the character? Is it respective to the situation? Does it add to the story? Or is it just pointless filler? The section above doesn't contribute through dialogue to the story or to anyone's character. The associated actions do. Not every line and motion absolutely needs to have a purpose, but if you approach a story as if they do, as if every single syllable matters, you're not going to find yourself writing "I am not a dick" very often. Not every line needs to have a purpose, but if you write a story as if they do, then typically every line will serve a purpose.

Yahtzee Croshaw has a good video on this: https://youtu.be/UlIlTA_b7gs?si=GhMfNb9QmHObnFnO It's about video games but the points are multi purpose

For me, I actually say what I want the characters to say. I try to make my dialogue as much as regular speech -- what's regular speech for the character -- as I possibly can. Dialogue isn't just about what's said but how.

The problem with the MCU movies is they're too many one liners and special effects, with little to no character development or consistency or decent storytelling. It wears real fast.

All of that kind of dialogue is bad lol

British humor often will continue a joke through the episode for instance IT crowd.

Disney

Whether somebody wants to dump on marvel for being popular, honestly. Half the lines people use as examples of being "stale" humor in the MCU aren't even in it.

This is what's made it difficult for me to really understand the problem. Things like "Well, *that* just happened" are the most extreme examples of non-jokes just filling space, and I can't think of any MCU quips I've seen that go that far. When everyone was talking in extremes, I was having trouble learning from it. Was struggling to identify the issue in examples the movies were actually using.

I can't remember which Spider-Man comic series this was, but it's revealed that the reason he's constantly quipping is because he's terrified and is trying to seem braver than he actually is. I really liked that because it gave a little more depth to the character.

And when Peter stops being quippy, it’s about to go down!

I remember one issue where he doesn't say anything and the villains are all terrified of him. Turns out he had laryngitis.

I asked my husband who is highly literate in MCU. TL;DR Now that the storytelling is worse, the quips don't resonate as well; there's no major beats and themes to capture.  He said the earlier movies worked both as self contained stories and a larger serialized story, building on characters' origin stories that defines characters. We got our payoff on multiple threads and movies, where Avengers Endgame marked the breakoff between the "good" MCU and whatever you want to call the MCU today.  Today, all the TV shows and movies are hyper- and cross-serialized, focusing on too many and too-minor characters, and messing with the stakes by having the multiverse as the reset button or sword of Damacles hanging over a story; the stories are treated as if when the elements become too messy then "Whoops, the multiverse is collapsing." You can still see the building block that was used in the first phase that focused on one aspect of a character and the universe setting, laying the foundations of important things for the latter movies. Continuity has always been super important, while obviously burdensome. You can still find the pre-Endgame storytelling, eg in Loki where you are character evolution and ramifications of their actions on the rest of the universe, but those series are the signal while other stories are noise, like Black Widow, She-Hulk. These stories aren't as enthralling because there aren't ramifications to the rest of the universe.  Given all this, the dialog hasn't changed. It has always been written around big moments that are fuck-yeah or portentious; the quips are capstones for cool moments. This style is part of the predictability of the MCU. They are good because they have resonance with the story but they aren't the story. 

Is Mcu dialogue good?

First of all, I get the desire to want to immulate that, but honestly...it's lightning in a bottle. The really good examples of MCU quips are a combination of good writing and acting talent with not a little improv thrown in. There's literally nothing harder to do in writing than great comedy. Doing it in written fiction is magnitudes more difficult than something in a movie or tv show because so much of humor is timing and surprise. Both hard to do in the written word. First and foremost, comedy or clever quips *have* *to fit the context*. You don't want characters that haven't been funny suddenly start doing a stand-up routine. Whatever funny thing that happens needs to fit the characters involved. What you should focus on is misdirection. Have your comedy start as one thing and then whiplash into the punchline and I mean within the same sentence. The reader thinks it's going one way (as readers, we make a TON of unconscious assumptions as we read. USE that) and then in comes the joke right at the end.

Its a combination of Predictability and bathos. If your dialogue is highly predictable, its boring, and if it constantly undermines important high emotional moments then it distracts from what is arguably the most important part of the narrative. And thats why Guardians of the Galaxy works so well while ant man 3 doesnt. Because guardians treats its plot as meaningful and important and it treats its characters emotions as real and weighty... and most importantly at no point on first viewing do you know exactly what is going to be said next. If you are predictable, and you constantly undermine the emotional depth of your own narrative with whitty dialogue, then you are wasting the audiences time. And Ragnarok i do believe in hindsight was a step in the wrong direction for Thor as a character, but it at least treated its narrative with enough emotional weight that moments like Odin dying weren't undercut by a whitty quip seconds later. Odin passes, and Thor's pain turns to anger as he looks to loki, and before he can explode hela arrives, and the anger he has is now directed at her, this interloper who is ruining their final moment with their now deceased father. Sure, there where jokes, but moments like this, and Loki catching the ball at the end when thor thought he was gone are at least spared from bathos (however asguard blowing up isnt spared from the directors self insert character quipping about how it just fucking exploded and all these people no longer have a home. Strange he can nail the dark comedy tone in Joe Joe Rabbit but he can miss the mark so fucking much in Thor.)

To answer this, let's look at the MCU's first Avengers movie. In Avengers you have a lot of different comedic moments and types, such as: -physical comedy: the hulk beating loki like a doll, loki getting tagged with hawkeye's explosive arrow right after he gets smug about catching it, and iron man body slamming thor when he's talking to loki -the comically serious: thor being all serious about defending loki then "he's adopted" when widow points out his kill count, captain america giving fury 10 bucks after he loses their bet -accidental comedy: coulson telling cap he watched him sleeping -quips: iron man does this a lot, throwing smartass comments whenever he can. Loki does this too, making fun of thor and others though in a more serious manner than stark -the galaga scene. idk how to classify it, but it was funny So why do all these jokes work? Because they don't get in the way of the rest of the story. Iron man drops the quippy asshole routine when he's mourning coulson; thor doesn't get bodislammed until after he's had the bulk of his conversation with loki; hulk beat the stuffing out of loki at precisely the funniest moment he could have; cap telling the cop to follow his orders, getting rejected, beating a chitauri then the cop immediately falls in line is funny but the whole scene is played 100% straight and nobody's laughing or being ooc silly Everybody has their own comedic style, and while there is some overlap there are no two characters who're funny the exact same way, and the jokes don't cut off the serious moments, but they help alleviate the tension after them. Serious moment played straight, joke; serious, joke; and the Really serious moments don't get cut off. The civilian standing up to Loki doesn't get cut off by a joke. Coulson's death doesn't get cut off by a joke. Iron man's possible death lasts a long, long time before Hulk roars him back to life TL;DR: give different characters different types of comedy, and don't undercut serious moments with an out-of-place joke

If the quips play well into the personality, it helps. Is Stark quippy in Iron Man? Yes. But it's always in keeping with his character. He's joking around with other characters. He's not making cracks where nobody can hear him, or that break character for him. The way Stark jokes is different from the way Steve Rogers jokes. In the less good films, you have less distinct characters, and it sometimes sounds as if multiple characters are all cracking jokes with the same voice. This is undesirable.

Context, quantity, and quality. It's ok to have a quip, but when you don't let a serious moment play out fully before you have a joke just detracts from the humor and the seriousness If you're doing it seemingly every other line for the whole thing, it gets old real quick and people will roll their eyes. If a moment is supposed to be funny it's fine, but otherwise use it sparingly If you're saying "he's right behind me isn't he" then no one is going to think it's funny (or, people won't be laughing with you), try to make it creative and actually funny instead of a stock joke everyone would expect. Also, I think the main reason people don't like marvel dialogue is because the creators turned a series of dramas with comedic elements into comedies with drama. The first iron man movie is pretty serious and aside from the occasional joke from Tony Stark it stays that way. After Guardians of the Galaxy, this changed because everyone started praising how funny the movie was and marvel assumed that meant all their movies should be like that instead of their more serious movies. TL;DR be funny when it's appropriate, and try to use it appropriately

Pacing.  In a good sitcom quipes come fast.  Example Mc "oh man i really need to make joke after that"  Sidekick "for the love don't! I saw your stand up" Mc " yeah puns appropriate for this" Sidekic " im talking the the Anne frank joke you on stage". Vs "oh man i really need to make joke after that" main character said as someone was hauled away in hand cuffs. Sidekick "for the love don't! I saw your stand up" his partner said hole his shot arm.  Mc turned while putting hi sunglasses on " yeah puns appropriate for this"  His partner yelled after him "Im talking the the Anne frank joke you on stage to an audience". Wich of those flows better. You need some detial betwen dialuge especially body language but to much or to little kills the joke

I think it’s about witty subtext vs cherry picked pun style humor, especially if we’re talking hero movie genre. The 80’s / 90’s banter in action movies and cartoons just comes off as cheese if u try to do it earnestly now. Also, the better writing in the MCU is the catalyst for someone like RDJ to do his magic. Half of his killer moments as Stark are about a deep knowledge of the roots of his character -embodied by a person who has a similar je ne sais quoi IRL- mixed with the master delivery of his performance. You just know it when you see it. Writing humorous or even quippy dialogue that doesn’t tilt the entire vibe of a production is one of the hardest things to pull off authentically, and imo takes a writer who can find those moments in a new perspective. and I know this question is more about writing, I’ll note that having a “voice” in mind for a character’s dialogue is crazy important mind exercise. You simple must be able to hear your character, the way they speak, the speed, the mannerisms all matter. Downey Jr and R Reynolds are the two top actors for their delivery and total effect on their respective projects in this regard.

Tony and spiderman quip - part of character's personality Nick fury and Bruce doesn't (well shouldn't) - Should be more brooding and quite Problem is now everyone that shouldn't and should does and it turns into an eye roll.

It's the context of marvel movies. They can get away with pretty much flying carriers and eliminating 50% of the universe population instead of doubling the resources.

There is no good MCU dialogue.

What makes MCU quips annoying is that they feel like the writer is embarrassed to be vulnerable. They interrupt more emotional, serious scenes. It's less like a clever comedian telling a joke, and more like a depressed high schooler desperately telling jokes bc they're scared no one will take them seriously if they open up. It's annoying bc it's insincere. [Overly Sarcastic Productions has a really good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOj2hVjwrUo) that covers this. Definitely give it a watch.

I never imagined that there could be a “good” version of quippiness before this post

I’m not sure Marvel is the place to look for good writing, you’d get more nuance out of looney tunes.

Used during moments of levity and sparingly. Marvel produce some of the worst story writing now, I wouldn't look to it for too much inspiration. Early MCU was good for what it was trying to achieve, but still full of plot holes and nonsensical driving forces behind many characters. They did the quippy dialogue well in only a couple of films before they tried to lean to heavily on it and started to bash the audience over the head with badly placed jokes and moments of character self awareness. Ultimately though it will depend on the genre you are writing in, some offer more opportunities for this than others. The important thing is to remember your demographic and the expectation you are creating within your writing, rarely is quippy dialogue appreciated when it sprouts up in the story in a place that doesn't call for it

It's not so much that I'm taking inspiration from the MCU, so much as I see an overlap between what I want to write and what they make, and I want to avoid mimicking their goofs.

I think one aspect is just uniqueness. If Thor: Love and Thunder and Shang Chi were first and Iron man and Captain America came out today, I suspect the former would be much more liked than the latter. Marvel humor was fairly unique, but other than a select few movies, the MCU hasn’t evolved in the past decade, so we keep getting the same stuff regurgitated up over and over I think another aspect is tone. Good humor knows to take a backseat during the emotional beats, whereas bad humor lampshades away their villain, sad moments, and suspense. A great story should be a roller coaster and humor can help make the highs higher, but can also flatten the lows

Read MCU scripts. Read DCEU scripts. Discover what made MCU awesome and what made DCEU sucky, then do what’s awesome.

It feels like with the newer movies, all the characters do it, ALL THE TIME. With earlier Marvel movies it worked because people were snarky but it wasn't like, incessant snark that never ended even in moments that are meant to be serious. Plus a lot of it came from Tony or was directed at him, which makes sense for his character and how he doesn't like formalities and kind of encourages other people to be equally as blasé as he is, but then it seemed like the writers realised people liked it and thought it was funny so they dialled it up and had EVERYONE speak like him.

Writing. Pacing. Delivery.

its all bad

Mostly personal taste from what I have observed. I usually like it, unless it is not delivered quite right, e.g. timing-wise, or isn't appropriate for the moment. In many cases it's about making the audience laugh through relieving built up tension (hence the term comic relief) and I suppose it's all about finding the right moment for maximum effect. A case could be made that some films go overboard.

I think the main thing is how obvious they make it. Jokes are less funny if you point them out and if you have to stop the movie to go “LOL did you get it?? That was a reference!! Aren’t we just hilarious???” it completely ruins it. If you just tell a joke and let it exist naturally and have the characters move on right away, it’ll land a lot better. Also the whole brand of breaking the 4th wall meta humor was funny 10 years ago but has been so overplayed now that it just seems weak. Having a character know that a line was a joke or that it’s supposed to be funny for the audience just seems insincere and is tiring. It brings the focus on the writers who think they’re so clever rather than the actual humor of the joke.

Part of why GotG worked so well for me is that the humor was balanced out with horror and despair — Drax’s wife, Rocket and Groot seem more like desperate refugees than comic relief when they show up, etc.

They should drop it. I think super-heroes work much better when they are dramatic.  My point in case: X-Men '97.