Marvel's Comedy Problem

I won't lie to you, I enjoy the majority of Marvel's big flashy comic book flicks. While not to the same extent as others, not even within this site, I can’t help but smile inside at the thought of superpowered individuals beating the everloving snot out of each other. It’s good fun, and that's the problem.

As this cinematic universe of theirs slowly builds to its big finale, or at least, the first part of it, the content of each film grows darker and darker, most of the time. But that's not the problem, the problem is the unending cavalcade of ceaselessly unfunny jokes.

With the exception of Thor Ragnarok, itself an out and out comedy, the Marvel films have never had an explicit focus on making people laugh. There have always been humourous moments, with some films having more than others, but they've never aimed to be comedies. So it feels a little strange when, during the events of Civil War and its big set-piece battle that a character like Spiderman is swinging around making jokes. It's out of place, it doesn't belong. Everyone else in the film treats the event as serious as the movie wants us to believe it is, with the exception of the wisecracking Tony Stark who is never far from a bad one-liner, and one character brings it crashing down.

Now, the jokes themselves are not the problem and, while many of them are weak to say the least, enough of them are genuinely funny. The problem is the films they inhabit. In Marvel's first phase, that being Iron Man through The Avengers, there were many jokes, jokes that fit within the lighter tone of the film. But as movies came and went and almost every one of them tried to deal with heavy issues, chief among them being Age Of Ultron, The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Iron Man 3 and the upcoming Infinity War. And the jokes don't belong here.

Sure, the occasional quip will work, provided they're timed right (see Guardians Of The Galaxy and its sequel), but majority of the jokes in the darker films feel more obligatory, a call back to the past, than they do necessary. I can't see Spiderman asking Thanos why he's purple, nor do I see Iron Man bringing another party to Wakanda, but I won't be surprised if Marvel tries to pull it off, and I won't be surprised when they fail.

Marvel needs to make a choice. Keep the jokes and lighten up a bit, dropping the doom and gloom they're so desperate to establish, or drop the jokes and embrace the inherent darkness of many of these stories. They've made their cake, they can't eat it as well.

#Marvel #MCU