It's the 2020s and that's a trope that is trendy in movies right now
You can go back and look at prior decades and see that they all have decade-specific hallmarks that are kind of quality-agnostic but help distinguish the era
I want to revive the late 60s to early 70s era hallmark of the incredibly bleak endings that nullify the whole plot up until then. Like Midnight Cowboy, Planet of the Apes, Rosemary's Baby, Five Easy Pieces, Easy Rider, etc
How does one suggest an example of one of those stories without giving a spoiler just by saying it contains that?
I wonder if it has anything to do with the age of the target audience? What did boomers find familiar in movies from a couple decades ago?
What did boomers find familiar in movies from a couple decades ago?
Ubermensch killshooty protagonists with no meaningful flaws (their flaws are generally celebrated or actually a source of strength in the fiction) that win all the time and are kind of creeps, or worse. Clint Eastwood movies and Connery-era James Bond comes to mind. :grillman:
Gen-X had something like it when mid-life crises set in, which was "grizzled middle aged man must avenge his fridged wife and/or rescue/protect his dubiously sexualized daughter figure from them." :cringe:
grizzled middle aged man must avenge his fridged wife and/or rescue/protect his dubiously sexualized daughter figure from them
Aka divorced dad porn
Marvel makes a lot of money. Films need a lot of money to make back investment cost. Copy Marvel to make money.
This is basically it. The style existed before MCU, but it obviously was a dead cow by then. MCU just came along and started beating it, and new movies and even games came along and had sex with the corpse
In bastardised Marxian terms, Disney/Marvel “innovated” giving them a competitive advantage and now the competing capitalists in their industry are scrambling to catch up.
They're all trying to copy Joss Whedon, who basically invented soy banter in films/TV
"Marvel soy banter" is a vacuous complaint
people don't like repartee and witticisms that aren't funny and enjoyable. if the performers dont have good chemistry
people appreciate it when its done well. its barely even a trope because the contexts and applications of "banter" are ridiculously broad,
“Marvel soy banter”
anyone mad about it I guarantee you 1000% uses the word bazinga too much "ironically"
have you seen Star Wars which has Han Solo being sarcastic and too-cool-for-this for 3 whole films
like yeah, it can be poorly received if you don't establish a character and earn the payoff of a half-joke like that, but that is not inherent to putting it in a movie.
boring conversation anyway literally a phone call bit
and as i said, it works because he has characterization, they didn't pull it in his introductory scene
define this 'kind' of banter in such a way that it includes the first episode 7 quip, but not any of the other ones we're fine with. my whole thesis is that irony, sarcasm, lampshading etc. are things that can be done well and people just don't like when they don't land :edgeworth-shrug: and who likes a joke when it isn't funny? ascribing anything deeper to it doesn't work when we can find dozens of beloved similar lines and occurrences with the chief difference being they work!
i don't know what this argument is about, i fully appreciate the way that scene does not entertain a lot of people.
the more you get into it the more unique and less identifiable with broader trends it becomes, and the less you can use it as a yardstick to judge other writing. 99% of quips are not in the same room as Dark Helmet, in a situation that will threaten the speaker's mortality. that's not a problem with 'whedonisms' its a problem-with-joking-when-the-villain-has-the-protagonist-in-their-power.
bending the narrative logic to make room for jokes
this is not a good guiding principle. proper comedies and good jokes revolve the narrative around what would be funny. illogic of a situation is a base form of comedy, the subversion of the expectation is a base form of comedy. you can't make these pay off without playing with narrative logic. Pulp Fiction is a parade of wildly unlikely and absurd events, but it's written by a disgusting pervert who can do a joke well.
we can wax all day about story ,narrative, comedy, genre and how they should balance each other but at the end of the day we're talking subjective preferences and never about truly great movies. the new star wars trilogy is Not Good, everyone agrees on this except preteens. most of the Marvel movies are mid, most films -period- aren't blowing people's minds.
its not controversial at all to assert 'comedy in some movies these days doesn't land', but we've got to channel that through a grievance politics against "Marvel Soy dialogue" or whatever because everyone gets to use it as a stalking horse for [leftist] complaints about creativity under monopoly/capital [reactionary] complaints about diversity [contrarian] popular thing must be bad.
trying to find strictly material explanations for mass cultural trends is always going to be hunting geese in the dark
Where else does it come from? A deep sea monster :hegel-kraken:?
Eldritch horrors using their malevolent mind control powers to make modern media cringe.
I think that the Marvel soy banter has caught on because, as a successful mega franchise, producers want to do anything to emulate it and the banter is one of the most easily recognizable features.
Part of adapting marvel IP into the "Marvel Cinematic Universe," meant taking characters and premises that are inherently ridiculous and unserious and getting the audience to suspend their disbelief and sensibilities and just buy in and accept that the components of any given marvel movie are going to be unserious. the banter is partly there to assure the viewer that the main characters also find the situations they are in to be unserious, comically so, in fact.
"Isn't it all just so kind of heckin' wacky that we're fighting robots and aliens, and I'm in a metal suit and you've got a magic hammer? I'd rather be caught dead than actually take this premise seriously, so let's all just agree that the multiverse can be pretty heckin' strange and sometimes you don't have enough coffee to deal with memories of how your brother is a shapeshifting god of mischief and, oh brother, doesn't that mean I could use some therapy?"
let's take a break for a maudlin turn; our actors get to cry and demonstrate some pathos so someone in Brooklyn can write a medium article about how the modern superhero movie gives us the space to address our trauma in pop culture and find new ways to be valid. Thank you for the free press, and why yes, I guess I'm something of a hero myself for writing Hollywood slop because it means so very much to some people.
Actually producing something that's sincere and earnest means risking people disagreeing with you, so why be so dramatic? Why put yourself into a position where you can be judged for failing to make something good? We all know why we're here, we're here to have fun, so let's put the Whedon dialogue into everything.
"the storm troopers have jet packs? they can fly now?" "ummm, yeah, they fly now,"
We all know why we’re here, we’re here to have fun, so let’s put the Whedon dialogue into everything.
I don't find Whedonization fun :I-was-saying:
In order to do a proper materialist analysis we must start with the origin of language, around 150,000 years ago...
150,000 years ago…
Ahh yes, the first cave paintings of bison being hunted by Spider Men.
Bison vs Spider-Man
Hey, Marvel vs Capcom 2 wasn't that long ago. :chomsky-yes-honey:
Materially a terrible sci-fi mystery show called LOST was really popular like 20 years ago and idiots in the entertainment industry decided that meant that JJ Abrams had to be in charge of writing all dialogue forever after that.
Oh and I guess Buffy was marginally less sexist than contemporary media, which... is horrifying. But it was marginally less sexist, so Whedon became a big deal, too.
It's really the success of Buffy and Lost at a time when a bunch of shit with how the TV and Movie industry made money was changing. JJ and Whedon.
I hated LOST from the start, predicted very early on that there was no way that all the hype and pretension was ever going to have a satisfying payoff, yet that "mystery box" grifter kept getting paid to borrow other people's toys and break them while scratching his initials on their remains. :disgost:
on the plus side, LOST was the show that inoculated me against future mystery-box stories.
except for The Leftovers, which I recommend if you haven't seen it. A mystery-box show that's up-front about the lack of answers, and in fact the whole show is about how people go on with their lives (or don't) in the face of huge, unanswerable questions.
They fly now?
tHeY fLy NoW!
I suppose it's easier to create filler dialogue along these lines rather than something that's more substantial because they're just moving the story from one setpiece to another, because the movie exists to sell the brand and associated merchandise more than anything else. Because the real margins of movie making is brand deals and merchandising, the overall focus of movie studios is a massive collection of commodities, all formed in the likeness of the characters in the movies, the actual content of which is irrelevant to the capitalist.
So I have a theory (well, two theories). Theory one is that sincerity just doesn't land anymore. You can look at the wave of WWII-style takes on Iraq (they didn't even bother with Afghanistan) that had zero lasting impact on the cultural consciousness and which presaged the pivot to fantasy comic book adventures where the US's role can be less ugly - and I think Iron Man I demonstrates that this was a deliberate pivot.
The other is that the industry is either dominated by or generates sociopaths (Weinstein, godfather of quippy dialog Joss Whedon, that guy from that very ironically detached cartoon) and they're just bringing the glibness and sarcasm they use to camouflage their absence of souls to their work.
Theory one is that sincerity just doesn’t land anymore.
I tend to be sincere because it's how I am and what I'm comfortable with and it's how I like to convey myself to others, but I don't think that it'd help me trend on social media. :heated-gamer-moment:
The other is that the industry is either dominated by or generates sociopaths (Weinstein, godfather of quippy dialog Joss Whedon, that guy from that very ironically detached cartoon) and they’re just bringing the glibness and sarcasm they use to camouflage their absence of souls to their work.
That theory is backed by substantial evidence, judging by who gets paid in show business, how much, and for what. :doomer:
There is a movement in literary fiction called "New Sincerity" that tries to drag media back from the post-grunge irony cliff but I haven't read many contributions to the genre.
disney making movies for image macros, to achieve full spectrum domination over humanity mind
I'm sorry, are they actually making movies out of memes?
A big part for a lot of movies is that they're able to translate well to overseas so a lot of it doesn't get very complicated so it works for all international markets. the thing is i don't even know if i fully believe that concept, it's not like other countries can't have in depth and rich stories, but i'd reckon it is just so much easier to transfer it that it isn't seen as economical to have to slightly rewrite shit to make sense to certain audiences. A lot of people listed other good reasoning here too
Whatever else you can say about that style of dialog, it's definitely good for letting the audience know when something did in fact happen
It adds laughs, I guess, but aside from a few well-placed jokes it ruins the rewatchability and annoys many viewers.
Jurassic Park has jokes that aren't as misplaced. Same with some other older blockbusters. But studios just don't care anymore.
I watched Jurassic Park again for the first time since I was a child about a year ago. When it first came out, most people were stunned by the special effects and it was regarded as mainly a movie about the effects. I remember thinking if it were released now it would be considered oddly cerebral for a Hollywood movie.
So it may be more about quality of the writing and delivery than anything.
And including the quips in the middle of action scenes for no reason. The lawyer in Jurassic Park being eaten on the toilet is funny, Legolas and Gimli doing their schtick is kinda funny, but a Marvel hero saying something in the middle of saving Earth from aliens is annoying when it happens all the time.
A lot of it is also editing. Editors control a lot of the pace and tone of those moments
lack of creativity and a desire to play it safe to maintain appeal ability
also the dialectics of the cultural dialogue the quippy stuff started back when a lot of media was very serious all the time and back then it was a breath of fresh air. Fashion contains wars between various ideas and styles the winner of which immediately becomes cliche and tired
also the dialectics of the cultural dialogue the quippy stuff started back when a lot of media was very serious all the time and back then it was a breath of fresh air. Fashion contains wars between various ideas and styles the winner of which immediately becomes cliche and tired
The synthesis can be the worst for me, like when some "historically accurate" fantasy show with magic and ice zombies gets quippy during the hog feeding :awooga: :libertarian-alert: :hypersus: spectacle scenes.
When I have to involuntarily hear about such moments, apparently the enjoyer telling me about it sort of absolved the character because the cute quip meant that at least they were funny while doing what every other character with significant agency and screen time was also doing. :very-intelligent:
Same deal with Richard and Mortimer's synthesis of Justin Roiland's dead end of self absorbed pseudo philosophical "multiverse means a blank check for hurting others and exploiting them, just like this cool alcoholic ego insert with godlike powers and unassailable plot armor" nihilism with his alienated quippy smug detachment about everything. :kombucha-disgust:
:porky-happy: isn't very I N N O V A T I V E and any time there's an anomaly that has unprecedented profit :porky-happy: runs it into the ground.
