In Werewolf By Night, the horror pastiche Disney+ special directed by composer Michael Giacchino, the aesthet🦂ic gestures in the direction of the Universal monster movies of the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s with black-and-white cinematography and artificial cue marks. But its writing, by Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron, can’t help but gesture to the actual time and place to which it belongs: 2022, and three years deep into the MCU’s post-Tony Stark identity crisis.
Iron Man, as defined through Robert Downey Jr.’s iconic portrayal, shaped the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Marvel Cinematic Universe in his image. His first appearance, in the 2008 solo film, simultaneously kickstarted the biggest franchise in the world, gave the flagging superhero movie trend a second wind 🦹that has sustained it for almost 15 years, and turned a B-tier comic h🎐ero into one of the most recognizable characters in the world.
The fledgling MCU warped to Downey’s sense of humor. The original Iron Man, though hewing close to a hero's journey structure, is equally defined by its loose comedic style. Director Jon Favreau, Downey, and the other members of the cast came in each day and . The result was a movie that hit all the beats an action movie needed to hit, but played like a comedy.
After Iron Man's success, Downey carried the MCU through its early years. Though 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Avengers seems inevitable on reflection, at the time that sort of team-up movie hadn't been done. And, outside of the first Iron Man, the movies setting up the team weren't especially good. When The Avengers finally came, Downey got a writer/director in Joss Whedon who was operating on a similar wavelength. Marvel Humor — in all its quippy glory — was born.
From 2012 through 2019, the MCU reliably delivered movies that had action and laughs. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Guardians of the Galaxy and Iron Man 3 were probably the funniest movies I saw in theaters in their respective years. But, as of Avengers: Endgame in 2019, Iron Man is dead and Do♍wney is gone. Without that guiding light, the MCU’s sense of humor has ꦜbeen dying, too.
I think we can highlight the decline with one joke, endlessly repeated over the past few years. The formula goes like this: “His name is X.” “His name is X? What? You’re serious? X?” “Yes, his name is X.” This joke started before Downey left, to be fair. When Peter Parker meets Doctor Strange in Avengers: Infinity War, Tom Holland's hero introduces himself. Cumberbatch replies that his name is Doctor Strange.
"Oh, we're using the made-up names," he replies. "I'm Spider-Man, then."
Meh joke, but fine enough if you use it once. But, in the few years since we've heard it over and over again. When Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus introduced himself as Otto Octavius in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter, M.J., and Ned burst out laughing. "No wait, seriously," Peter says. "What's your name?" She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has a similar recurring gag, though, at least there the obsession with her name stems from Jennifer Walters' character. She-Hulk was foisted on her, both the powers and the media-minted title.
Werewolf by Night, though, was a breaking po🍌int for me. When J🔯ack Russell tells Elsa Bloodstone that he has entered the monster-slaying competition to rescue the creature in the labyrinth, who is his friend, he and Elsa have this exchange after she asks the monster’s name.
“Ted.”
“Ted?”
“Ted, he’s called Ted.”
The joke is always half-assed, b💞ut it may stick out even worse in a movie like Werewolf by Night. While the film is homaging the monster movies of the mid 20th century, its characters are still talking like they’re in a Marvel movie. Why go to the trouble of presenting it in black-and-white if꧒ you’re going to serve up the most warmed-over humor the digital age has to offer?
There’s a simple (but not easy) fix for this kind of writing: rooting 🍬the dialogue in character. These name jokes could come from any character, and that’s the problem with recent 💃MCU writing. Much of the appeal of The Avengers team-up back in 2012 was due to the fact that the characters were clearly different and the movies they starred in felt different. Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America were anything but interchangeable, and the writing reflected that. Tony Stark wouldn’t say, “There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.” Steve Rogers wouldn’t say “Have a care how you speak!”
When the Otto Octavius joke in No Way Home got some criticism last year, I saw some people respond by quoting a line from Sam Raimi’🅰s Spider-Man 2 that they thought was similar. J. Jonah Jameson remarks, “Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs. What are the odds?” See, they told a joke about his name! The difference, though, is that Jameson’s quip is rooted in his perspective as a newspaper editor. As someone who thinks in headlines, he’s marveling at the cosmic gift of it all. ❀The humor goes deeper than “Haha funny name!”
It also just feels a little smug. The MCU is the biggest franchise in the world, but its writers still need to let you know that they're not taking any of this — or the comics from which the material is drawn with no or little reimbursement or royalties to the original creators — too seriously. I don't care at all about the sanctity of comics. Film is a different medium and liberties have to be taken to make what worked on the page pop on the screen. But, these movies make billions of dollars; millions of people are invested in these stories. You don't need to keep acting like comics are too silly to be presented with a straight face!
If the MCU is going to right the ship, it needs to return to this kind of writing; to look deeper than the surface and find what is inherently funny in the characters, their perspectives, and the situations they’re in. It’s harder than commenting on a character's name, but with great power comes great responsibility.