When does humor have its place on the narrative & when it doesnt?

[Clement Rage]

It depends on whether it fits the characters/scene or not.

The Avengers are all naturally snarky, so it doesn't jar too much when they snark in combat, they do that.

The Justice League are broadly more serious people, so snarking doesn't fit as well. Batman usually doesn't snark out loud in the middle of a fight or does it in a specific way. So he can't do it the same way without it seeming silly.

There is a joke in the Superman/Zod fight, where Superman is thrown through a 'X Days since an accident' sign and knocks it back to 0. That doesn't disrupt the scene, because both fighters are still taking things seriously, it's just an easter egg.

I didn't bother to go see Ragnarok at all, because I couldn't reconcile the reviews saying 'the funniest Marvel movie yet' with the 'complete destruction of Asgard' implied in the title.

Re: Geonosis, that scene actually does a fair amount of work.

a)we get a close look at the scale of the army being manufactured
b) Anakin is put at a disadvantage by the hostile environment, allowing the Geonosians to be a threat. He ultimately loses his lightsabre, allowing him to be captured easily without spoiling the surprise of Dooku's abilities. Also gets to show his skills in avoiding the crusher while pinned.
c)character moment for R2 -he can be kind of a dick. Also gives him a way to contribute to the battle by shutting down the machines/repairing C3PO
d)shows that the droids come off the assembly line fully functional and combat ready
e) ridiculously unsafe working conditions gives us an idea of how the separatists treat their employees (although bear in mind they can fly)

[Tennyo]

Obsidian Fire wrote:

In Thor: Ragnarok, I felt like all of the characters hit their "I don't give a fuck" point and had to pick between angsting about it all or enjoying themselves when they could (while they saved their world). Fortunately for the movie, they all pick the latter option. GotG2 is similar. Both of those movies though have humor that feels very character driven. It'd be pretty hard to cut the humor out and still establish who the characters are and what their relationships with each other are like.

I feel like there's a difference between humor that happens between people who agree with each other and people who disagree with each other. And the former feels a lot more forced then the latter. Example from MCU: the humor between Captain America and Iron Man feels forced, usually because they don't agree with each other about fundamental things. Humor involving them often is funny because their relationship is always a little tense. Given how Civil War turns out though, this is almost certainly intentional. Thor: Ragnarok and GotG(2) humor is mostly between people who do agree about fundamental things. There isn't tension underneath most of the humor in those movies so the humor feel very "pure".

Drama almost always is tense. That's part of what makes it drama. Putting humor in drama if there's not a good reason for it often causes neither to have the right emotional impact.

I'm not talking about quips and the main cast's reactions to things, I'm talking about the movie inserting humor into scenes at the expense of the cast.

Spoilers for Ragnarok Valkyrie's intro scene, Thor trying to smash through the window to get to the quinjet, and Bruce Banner jumping out of the ship to turn into the Hulk and save the Asgardians. These moments could have given us the heroic and badass moments the movie needed to juxtapose the humor in the rest of it. If even one of those scenes would have been allowed to play out more seriously without going for a cheap laugh, the movie would have been improved by leaps and bounds. Of those, the Hulk one would probably be the best choice, simply because that's the climax of the movie when everything we've been sitting through is supposed to pay off. But when Bruce just face-plants on the bridge I kind of rolled my eyes. Humor is good, yes, but where's the emotional payoff?

The video Fangu posted brings up a good point with the Joss Whedon quote. "Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke." Yes a movie that is all serious, all doom and gloom with no fun at all is boring. But going in the extreme opposite direction is also not good. Learn to be serious when it's time to be serious.

Going back to Spider-Man: Homecoming, that movie also had plenty of bathos, choosing humor instead of drama in places the previous Spider-Man movies would have gone dramatic, but all of it was delightful and none of it seemed too much or out of place, because it is used more sparingly than in Ragnarok, and the movie allows itself to be serious when it's time to be serious. It allows itself to have the big epic sincere moments that the video was talking about.

And Wonder Woman was just plain badass throughout. I don't think it really had much in the way of bathos at all that I can remember, but it still remained a lot of fun to watch to the end.

The Last Jedi, though, outside of Luke tossing the light saber I don't remember there being a lot of this? There were some funny moments with the aliens who tended the island, but I actually kind of liked that. Maybe I'm just not remembering.

[X-SOLDIER]

Clement Rage wrote:

Re: Geonosis, that scene actually does a fair amount of work.

a)we get a close look at the scale of the army being manufactured
b) Anakin is put at a disadvantage by the hostile environment, allowing the Geonosians to be a threat. He ultimately loses his lightsabre, allowing him to be captured easily without spoiling the surprise of Dooku's abilities. Also gets to show his skills in avoiding the crusher while pinned.
c)character moment for R2 -he can be kind of a dick. Also gives him a way to contribute to the battle by shutting down the machines/repairing C3PO
d)shows that the droids come off the assembly line fully functional and combat ready
e) ridiculously unsafe working conditions gives us an idea of how the separatists treat their employees (although bear in mind they can fly)

None of those 5 points you listed address the fact that as an audience, a situation where we're supposed to feel that our characters are in life-threatening danger is simultaneously being portrayed as a slapstick comedy for a protocol droid in between nearly every cut. Because of that, it also immediately fails believability in the context of the setting, by just being a massive Rube Goldberg head-swapping sequence. That further makes everything in that sequence feel that it's designed to allow that exact choreography to take place, like the fact that there just so happens to be a pocket exactly the size of Anakin's arm holding a lightsaber that he gets trapped in. It all feels intentionally scripted, like they're acting like they're in peril while being in no danger at all. It guts the scene completely, and also doesn't deliver any humor effectively.



X

[looneymoon]

Honestly, the tightest writing I can think of in modern franchise that has the right balance of humour and tension is the first act of Fellowship of the Ring.

[Clement Rage]

'Fails believability' isn't some objective standard that is automatically reached at a specific point, it's a threshold that varies from person to person. Every zombie story that isn't Resident Evil (games, I haven't seen the films) fails believability for me because the writer has to keep pulling strings to keep the undead threatening and destroy any place of safety the survivors get to.