Marvel Dialogue HAS to Change

[Applause] Captain Midnight this video is brought to you by givewell I struggled when I was deciding to make this video for a while because honestly we all know that at this point talking about or mocking the dialogue of MCU movies is pretty old hat it conjures up the same old talking points about how every line in these movies is like he's right behind me isn't he or well that just happened sometimes the movies deserve that mockery but it's not exactly new territory what I want to do here is a little different I want to take MCU dialogue seriously not to dismiss it out of hand but to talk about why I think it worked well early on and in other contexts and most importantly why it could be time for a serious shift in tone and style when it comes to the words coming out of Marvel heroes mouths Oh and before I fully jump into this I did want to mention that if you got the digital edition of my comic binary C definitely check your email we sent those out last week the physical copies will be sent out in February and if you didn't get a chance to check it out but want to I'm going to be finding a new home for it soon and I'll probably be announcing something about that in January so let's talk Marvel the quip heavy comedic tone of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has of course been there from the very beginning Iron Man was famously a heavily improvised movie with director John favro and the actors reworking a pretty barebone script into something crackling with comedic energy and I don't think there's any denying how fresh that felt in 2008 the looseness of the whole production made it feel like almost a combination of a big budget superhero film and an appow directed comedy something we hadn't quite seen before all held together by a career defining movie star performance but if Iron Man built the first level of the MCU house style it was The Ultimate Comics of the early 2000s that provided its foundation Brian Michael Bendis is Ultimate Spider-Man and Mark Miller's the ultimates especially were hugely important to the development of the MCU and how these 60s Heroes could be reinterpreted for a more current context with bis's Flare for verbose Woody dialogue setting the stage for much of what is followed in superhero comics and the MCU but of course it can all be boiled down to Bendis Miller or favos improv style not with Avengers director Jos Weeden looming so large in both the popularization of this kind of dialogue and of course bringing his particular flavor of it to those first two Avengers movies so despite not directing Iron Man or creating the Ultimate Universe I feel like it's kind of impossible to talk about MCU dialogue without talking about him Weeden who also worked as a screenwriter and script doctor on massive movies in the 90s from Toy Story to speed really established his own voice on The wb's Buffy the Vampire Slayer now okay I don't want to make it sound like Weeden invented quippy dialogue the '90s and early 2000s were very kind to hyper verbo screenwriters from Quinton Tarantino to screams Kevin Williamson to even Buffy's fellow WB show Gilmore Girls Where showrunner Amy Sherman Paladino was heavily influenced by the fast-paced wit of 30 screw ball romantic comedies but his voice has had an unmistakable influence on a lot of TV movies and Comics that have followed in this wake and I should say here that I spent years obsessed with Buffy Angel and Firefly I've watched them all at least five times all the way through probably more for Firefly I posted on Buffy message boards hell I remember exactly where I was when I found out that Weeden was directing The Avengers I was all in and to be honest I still love a lot of his work Buffy's surprise innocence to parter Angel's devastating series finale fireflies out of gas this was all really foundational stuff for me even as I can now recognize a lot more easily why some people find his style obnoxious now public perception on weeden's work has radically shifted in the past 10 years or so much of that is due to the man's own allegedly terrible conduct on his set for two plus decades but there's also the feeling that his style is now everywhere that it has become the norm and thus incredibly stale but something Weeden was able to do so effectively on his shows was keep the focus on the character drama and their emotions while lampshading some of the more cliche or contrived genre story elements with knowing and subversive humor like yeah the villain may give the kind of speech we've heard these kind of characters give a thousand times before but then it would be undercut in a way that we didn't see coming when Buffy's Mentor Giles would give his usual spiel about the monster of the week the magical details always went down a lot smoother alongside a healthy dose of banter about the types of cliches that this show knew the audience would already be thinking about it worked because the genre elements of these shows or what I guess many people would call the World building was not the point of them far from it Buffy was not Lord of the Rings sure the magical universe of the show had some interesting elements to it I could talk about the Watchers Council all day but I'll spare you at the end of the day it was mostly a vessel to push the characters and the relationships into interesting new places when most Buffy fans think about the season 2 finale I doubt it's the very barebones lore behind a catha the demon who opens up the hell Dimension that they remember it's the gut-wrenching choice that buff is forced to make because most of those genre elements are just set dressing for these moments this worked spectacularly well for a lowbudget WB show where they could talk about crazy monsters and apocalypses all they wanted but rarely had the budget to really show them the Weeden dialogue helped make all of that stuff feel beside the point we were here watching these characters talk to each other to follow them through their personal highs and lows Supernatural threats were really just there to up the Annie on the drama it was the perfect fit for that context it can work pretty well for Marvel too but I also think that approach tends to get old when applied across dozens of big budget often spectacle driven movies especially when with the possible exception of the Guardians films these movies aren't really willing to tackle the same emotional range as those shows were there's no Buffy the body of MCU movies because as a brand it tends to play it a little safer than that when you apply the the same flippant tone to nearly every situation and you're pairing that with playing things pretty safe narratively these movies can end up feeling like they just have no stakes and that none of these villains are a real threat everything can be handled with a smirk and a hint of irony now don't get me wrong that can be fun and it has obviously netted results but it's also been taken to annoying Extremes in movies like love and thunder and has been the default tone for far too many projects overall also and maybe this is just my old Fanboy as I'm showing here I do think the first Avengers movie was just better at handling this type of humor coming from Weeden himself and not some of these later projects that feel like they're doing a poor job of imitating his style so where do we go from here well recently I watched the new Godzilla minus one and honestly was blown away by it the movie definitely does right by the big guy and gives you all the building Smash and action that you'd hope for going in and so much more the the film which follows a young pilot in Japan trying to rebuild his life in the immediate aftermath of World War II won me over to its characters almost immediately in a way that none of the recent American Godzilla films have managed it takes its character's plights really seriously while never feeling joyous or overly Sullen it's a fun crowd-pleaser while being really emotionally involving and though I do have my criticisms of the film really one twist at the end as a whole I was legit legitimately thrilled by it and I don't use that word lightly I was on the edge of my seat in that third act hanging on those characters every Victory and defeat there was an earnestness to its storytelling that the MCU just lacks now don't get me wrong I don't think that this tone would be right for every movie or even every Marvel movie I don't have a problem with irony or undercutting a dramatic moment with a joke far from it but those things are tools and like any tools they're not fit for every job maybe that style of shouldn't be applied to nearly every movie or show that goes out the door like it's just a standard part of the MC recipe that they always need to abide by when watching Godzilla minus one it's tough not to feel like much of the MCU these past few years and really a lot of American Blockbuster filmmaking at large are telling their stories in air quotes where no emotion can feel too Earnest or visceral and that's a shame because so much of the old Marvel Comics where these films draw their inspiration from are both of those things I really do think there's a place for MCU style dialogue I just wish it would be used more sparingly and with far more purpose so there are over 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the US and millions more around the world and it can be really tough to know which ones can make the biggest impact with your donation givewell was founded to help donors with that exact question they pour over independent studies and charity data to help donors direct their funds to evidence-backed organizations that are saving and improving lives givewell has now spent over 15 years researching charitable organizations and only directs funding to a few of the highest impact opportunities that they found over 100,000 donors have used givewell to donate more than $1 billion rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save over 150,000 people and 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Channel: captainmidnight

Views: 273,906

Keywords: Marvel, MCU, Iron Man, Joss Whedon, Phase 5, Phase 4, captain midnight, captainmidnight, Disney, Kang, Avengers, Secret Wars, Godzilla, Minus One

Id: 23-VupMsmJA

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023