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MCU and taking itself seriously, what's appropriate and not
- Thread starter DragonSJG
- Start date
True, Morbius is the best Marvel movie by the memes alone. MCU, Morbhead Cinematic Universe
Impossible to say what's appropriate and what's not. The whole pitch is that the universe is flexible to accommodate all kinds of tones and approaches.
Some sections/jokes in L&T didn't land for me, but that's not because they were inappropriate for the MCU. I just didn't like them/their execution 🤷‍♂️
Some sections/jokes in L&T didn't land for me, but that's not because they were inappropriate for the MCU. I just didn't like them/their execution 🤷‍♂️
I swear, when some people detect a "quip" they react like this...
hilarious when people actually think the MCU invented the concept
yep. i get if the jokes didn't work for everyone. but the idea that a thor movie can't be really jokey is wildly off-kilter with the source material.
I feel that's up to the writer/director. I'm slowly getting tired of the Marvel narrative though. Especially after Wanda Vision, Falcon, and Multiverse of Madness. They're taking on serious issues with very "Disney" takes. It's starting to leave a sour taste now.
What does this mean?
Pinocchio is the story of a little boy who skirts death and worse over and over and over on a desperate quest to be accepted as a person
What are all these tones people are speaking of? 99% of MCU movies have a very obvious template. It can be seen from a mile away. None of the serious moments really land because one never feels any of these characters are in danger. In T2 there are some jokes but when things get serious you really root for these characters and are worried if they will make it through. In MCU every single thing can be telegraphed so easily and people are constantly so jokey. When the characters themselves dont take their situations seriously in every film why should I
I assume OP made this thread based on reactions to the new Thor. Would you say L&T has the same tone as the first movie or Dark World?
Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers Infinity War, Ant-Man & The Wasp...basically all the same movie
I would say its the same terrible combination of serious moments and jokes except taken to the extreme to the point of self parody but yeah I dont think its that different.
Would you say Thor 1 is tonally super different from the Guardians or is tonally super different from No Way Home? Its the same shit in different clothing. You almost always know when a scene is going to end with a joke what's going to happen next and how it is all going to end
Like if someone said this movie is part of the MCU I would believe it. I have seen the same shit but with super heroes. Its basically this tone rinse and repeat ad nauseam with very few variations.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiMinixSXII&ab_channel=ParamountPictures
This would be fine if the action choreography , movie cinematography, soundtrack etc. were worth a damn but alas that is worse than the stories.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiMinixSXII&ab_channel=ParamountPictures
This would be fine if the action choreography , movie cinematography, soundtrack etc. were worth a damn but alas that is worse than the stories.
As a long time (32 years) Marvel Zombie.
Be wierd and silly when you want.
Be serious when you want.
Each movie's creative people can decide its own tone.
Seriously it's all based on comics where right now in the Marvel has Captain America (Steve) teaming up with people who were alive during WW2 intercepting ham radio transmitions about people literally playing chess with world events. An Iron Man book that had Tony Stark give everyone in the world his level of intelligence and then took it away because it was literally a violation of every mind on the planet. And a Captain Marvel book where she is being judged by a tribunal of magic users because she killed a person from the future, while a energy clone of her is running around learning about what it is to be human.
Comics are wierd, embrace it!
Be wierd and silly when you want.
Be serious when you want.
Each movie's creative people can decide its own tone.
Seriously it's all based on comics where right now in the Marvel has Captain America (Steve) teaming up with people who were alive during WW2 intercepting ham radio transmitions about people literally playing chess with world events. An Iron Man book that had Tony Stark give everyone in the world his level of intelligence and then took it away because it was literally a violation of every mind on the planet. And a Captain Marvel book where she is being judged by a tribunal of magic users because she killed a person from the future, while a energy clone of her is running around learning about what it is to be human.
Comics are wierd, embrace it!
I mean yeah, generally speaking an MCU movie is gonna have jokes, and sometimes those jokes are gonna be used to offset tension or serious subject matter. If you take issue with that then fair enough, it's def not for everyone. But a movie's tone is dictated by a lot more than the presence and frequency of "quips".
Just like Pai Pai Master's saying, Winter Soldier > Guardians 2 > Homecoming > Infinity War, etc. The movies share a lot of qualities but I'd have a tough time arguing that they all have the same tone.
What I would argue is that there's plenty of room to take things even further. Gotta keep widening the boundaries if you plan on keeping the franchise going another decade
Some serious, some funny, some a mix of both...
I seriously don't care so long as the vision is strong and clear and uninterrupted by executive meddling.
Comics can be anything, tone-wise, let the films be no different.
I seriously don't care so long as the vision is strong and clear and uninterrupted by executive meddling.
Comics can be anything, tone-wise, let the films be no different.
Not a sunset, but just like Luke, Peter has an emotional moment of reflection spurred on by the death of his family. The movie never stops to joke about May's death, and it in fact spurs him to act more violently out of anger during his flight with Goblin at the end.
And this is Spider-Man, where the quips are basically a part of the character.
It's okay not to like certain jokes, but acting like the movies never have any moments of seriousness and emotional depth within them is just plain wrong.
Not a sunset, but just like Luke, Peter has an emotional moment of reflection spurred on by the death of his family. The movie never stops to joke about May's death, and it in fact spurs him to act more violently out of anger during his flight with Goblin at the end.
And this is Spider-Man, where the quips are basically a part of the character.
It's okay not to like certain jokes, but acting like the movies never have any moments of seriousness and emotional depth within them is just plain wrong.
No Way Home beat this trope but Doctor Strange 2 and Thor felt like massive diversions.
I do agree that there is still a ton of heart as NWH, BW, and Sang Chi showed but it feels like their D+ shows are the most character centric lately.
This is my take too.
A good movie is a good movie, regardless of what tone it takes.
Genuinely forgot this show existedHawkeye
Rogers Musical (Full Version)
This is the Mid-Credit scene of Hawkeye 01x06.Rogers Musical - © Marvel & Disney+youtu.be
Those two had serious moments too. All the Wanda stuff in MoM was played straight as we're the consequences of all the Strange's actions and his heartache. The L&T stuff was mentioned earlier.
Exactly this. The idea that the MCU as a whole should have a uniform tone sounds utterly insane to me. The franchise is filled with wildly different works that trying to do wildly different things so it only makes sense that they have wildly different tones as well.
It's graded on a curve. There is absolutely a way to balance your comedy with drama and there's plenty of shows and movies that manage to do that (Xena, Legends of Tomorrow, Everything Everywhere All At Once). The MCU is usually pretty good at doing this as well. It's just something that people will just know if it's done well or not. I can't say that with some of the more recent MCU films.
I'm at a place of peace with the MCU. I'm not a fan of the tone of 90% of this stuff post endgame. I also recognize that I'm in the minority. Asking for more at this point feels greedy. The MCU catered to me for 10 years and offered an unprecedented cinematic mythology that went beyond anything I could've ever asked for.
This new lighter tone MCU is definitely not aimed at me anymore and I'm good with that. I have ten years of amazing stuff and when I want that feeling again I'll just watch the Cap Trilogy, Black Panther and everything in the final phase leading to Endgame. Marvel and Sony even gave me the most lovingly-crafted Spider-Man movie anybody could ask for with No Way Home.
If Marvel wants to make a goofier and sillier and less tonally serious set of movies for the mainstream at this point? Well, I hope they make a bunch of new fans as happy as I've been for the last decade. Enjoy!
This new lighter tone MCU is definitely not aimed at me anymore and I'm good with that. I have ten years of amazing stuff and when I want that feeling again I'll just watch the Cap Trilogy, Black Panther and everything in the final phase leading to Endgame. Marvel and Sony even gave me the most lovingly-crafted Spider-Man movie anybody could ask for with No Way Home.
If Marvel wants to make a goofier and sillier and less tonally serious set of movies for the mainstream at this point? Well, I hope they make a bunch of new fans as happy as I've been for the last decade. Enjoy!
This is like asking "Where do we draw the line on guitars in music?"
Like...you don't? Some songs benefit from guitars and some don't? Some songs have some guitars and others have none and still others have multiple. There are no strict rules to this.
Like...you don't? Some songs benefit from guitars and some don't? Some songs have some guitars and others have none and still others have multiple. There are no strict rules to this.
Aliens invaded earth and everyone seems pretty chill about it. Also there is a giant humanoid figure that almost burst out of the planet. Potentially half of humanity perished during the Snap. Everyone seems pretty chill after they all came back. Even kind of chill when they were gone playing Fortnite and shit.
Everyone seems very, very chill with their existential threats in this universe. The MCU was never an actual proper conversation about these major issues or gave them a tonne of weight. They use them as basic "steaks" to move from one action piece to the next with some very mediocre surface drama. There's no reason to care a whole lot why some things aren't taken seriously: nothing truly is in the franchise.
Everyone seems very, very chill with their existential threats in this universe. The MCU was never an actual proper conversation about these major issues or gave them a tonne of weight. They use them as basic "steaks" to move from one action piece to the next with some very mediocre surface drama. There's no reason to care a whole lot why some things aren't taken seriously: nothing truly is in the franchise.
Marvel comics have funny, light hearted, serious, dark, and bad story arcs i think the MCU should be afforded that privilege as well.
Yeah. I think it's also unfair to badge 'jokes' together too, as an antithesis of seriousness. When some characters are famously witty and constantly talking (Spider-man), but the 'I'm learning while I'm doing this, I can't believe that worked' of younger heroes is different from the chattiness combined with self-awareness (Deadpool), self-confidence in their own abilities (Stark, Widow), or sarcasm implying experience and I'm-so-done-with-this (Hawkeye, Strange, Fury). Some have a more pointed, laconic sense of humour that doesn't undercut their essential nobility/heritage/seniority where every word seems chosen with precision and insight (Rogers, Black Panther). Thor is essentially a Norse-god combined with a young man, the clueless posturing and buffoonery combined with moments of insight rounds him out considering he's also an extremely powerful combatant.
The humour is a huge part of what makes the characters interesting when they interact as they rub each other up the wrong way and pierce each other's egos and hubris and assumptions. That's why I find Thor mocking Star Lord funny- as Star-Lord thinks Thor is 'competition' for his tough-guy spot, showing off his own lack of maturity. Thor is so far above that (in terms of raw power), but that also shows the extreme immaturity of Thor for feeling the need to engage in it- it makes the ancient asgardian feel more human, more boyish. And harks back to the earlier films where Thor was effectively the leader of his own band of heroes too.
It's fine as it is.
There is no line and there shouldn't be one. The directors should decide how to handle that for each movie seperately.
And the MCU is fine as it is. The movies strike a good balance between being fun and serious enough most of the time.
There is no line and there shouldn't be one. The directors should decide how to handle that for each movie seperately.
And the MCU is fine as it is. The movies strike a good balance between being fun and serious enough most of the time.
I'm not sure I find this accurate. Marvel movies prior to endgame were incredibly light hearted and full of quips. Sure Thor went really hard on the comedy but MoM for example half felt like a horror movie at times and went to some very dark places. Shit Spider-Man went too some dark places as well.
I don't think the MCU has at all been any goofier or sillier since endgame.
Honestly the difference between different movies and this idea is that those tones are separate to those characters and movies stylistically. Meanwhile Thor Ragnorok/L&T are taking a previously established character and removing the tone it had in favor of one that undercuts what came before. Same with Infinity War being far more humor focused and undercutting of the drama of Endgame. You can have different movies have different tones, and differences in how seriously they approach their worldbuilding, but if they start undercutting the gravity in their own continued narrative, rather than a separate story you can ignore/isolate, then why care about the drama of these characters to begin with if they can choose to undercut it as not important in the future?
(Though idk if I have a problem with OP's example from the previous thread; the MCU as a continuing narrative has regularly gone out of it's way to trivialize it's events before. Moreso a smaller element of this.)