Captain Marvel points out how much Marvel comedy is getting in the way of the MCU’s character growth, but then does it anyway. The latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is an undeniable hit, in just a matter of weeks racing past many other superhero movies at the box office, but the discussion around its quality has been a little more complicated.

In many ways, Captain Marvel provides a twist on the now-accepted MCU formula: it’s an origin story but told almost in reverse with an amnesiac hero; a period tale whose foreshadowing is for movies we’ve already seen; an Earth/cosmic mashup where the assumed villains are the heroes; and it, of course, features the first female lead hero (and female director behind the camera) in the shared universe.

And yet at the same time, Captain Marvel still betrays many of the filmmaking traits that have come to define Marvel Studios’ output. In theory, that’s no bad thing: you don’t make $18 billion without getting something right. But there’s one area where Captain Marvel both tries to innovate yet slavishly adhere to Marvel’s tried and tested formula, and it leaves the film mired in confusion. That is, of course, Marvel comedy.

  • This Page: Marvel Movies Undercut Themselves With Comedy Page 2: How Captain Marvel Tries (& Fails) To Fix The Comedy Issue

How Marvel’s Funny Problem Evolved

Right from Iron Man (which made Robert Downey, Jr.’s refined snark a selling point two months before The Dark Knight), Marvel Studios was always on the more humorous side of the superhero genre, although it really became a full-on trope with The Avengers. There, Joss Whedon answered critics of the team-up with a full-on showcase of wit. Its $1.5 billion success made it the roadmap, and every movie made after has leaned heavily into the comedy.

At first, that was no bad thing. What better way to make fun blockbusters than to have them be funny? In contrast to what Christopher Nolan and DC were doing with Batman, having Iron Man and Captain America wittily bicker was a fresh, surprising way to tell a tale of costumed heroes. This was doubly true when it allowed distinct filmmakers such as Shane Black to apply their distinct sense of humor to massive blockbusters.

Over time, though, the freshness and freedom dissipated, yet the jokes didn’t. Fun became the benchmark, not the lower limit. Now, Marvel movies are littered with moments where jokes dependably undercut moments of threat and emotion because it’s a little more joyous in the moment: Ultron, an A.I. connected to all of human knowledge, forgets what children are during his first menacing monologe; Doctor Strange’s arc-completing caping-up sequence builds to a levitating collar joke; and Thor: Ragnarok removes all stakes from the destruction of Asgard by never being more than a minute away from a gag.

The situation is a little more nuanced than just singular moments. Some films, notably the Iron Man trilogy and Doctor Strange, make being a self-proclaimed comedian part of the character’s start point and the grappling with humor key to their arc: Stephen Strange and Wong’s friendship builds up gags about Adele and Beyoncé to a fitting conclusion, a stark contrast to the Cloak of Levitation beat mentioned above. in But the cases where it’s obtuse, the reasoning is all the more disquieting. In Thor: Ragnarok, Odin’s death was reportedly reshot because it made test audiences “feel too sorry for him”; an emotional moment was replaced because it got in the way of fun.

The use of Marvel comedy is really part of a bigger issue with the company’s approach to movies; the short-term crowd reaction is prized over long-term impact, meaning the focus is on providing a thrilling opening night experience that lasts about as far as the carpark. The result is that a series already lacking in a proper sense of stakes and permanent ramifications -  becomes even more flippant. It’s one thing to have Hydra established as a major threat in Captain America: The Winter Soldier before being undone in the prologue to Avengers: Age of Ultron a year later if the decision powers both movies, it’s another for any moment of character growth to be joined by a yuk. Even grim movies like Captain America: Civil War or Avengers: Infinity War have an above-average joke quotient.

What’s been so curious is that, while Marvel has worked hard to fix persistent criticisms of the MCU homogenized style like its poorly characterized villains - the last couple of years have brought Vulture, Killmonger and Thanos - and consistent lack of stakes - something solved in a snap - there’s been little resistance to evolve beyond the Downey-Whedon-Gunn humor.

Page 2 of 2: How Captain Marvel Tries (& Fails) To Fix The Comedy Issue

In Captain Marvel, Humor Is A Distraction

At first, it looks like Captain Marvel is the antidote to Marvel’s comedy problem, calling out the process in the first five minutes. “Remember, humor is a distraction,” Yon-Rogg instructs Vers during their early training fight, verbalizing many audiences’ issues with MCU Phase 3 especially.

And yet almost immediately, humor comes back into play as a distraction. Repeatedly throughout Captain Marvel, otherwise straight scenes are undercut by their jokes: Talos’ stealth mourning of a fellow Skrull comes right after Nick Fury checks out its privates; the arrival of the Skrulls at Maria Rambeau’s comes accompanied with slurping from a Pulp Fiction cup; the entire third act hinges on a Happy Days lunchbox. On their own, none of these are particularly egregious moments, but the consistency of the breaks mean long-term the sense of threat or connection are scuppered.

So far, so Marvel. But with that prior warning, it appears like something else is going on here; that the studio is also subtly trying to self-justify their comedy, giving it an arc similar to what we got with Stark and Strange but now as an overt theme. Yon-Rogg is eventually revealed to be a villain who’s manipulated Carol for years, with his repeated attempts to restrict her emotions part of his bigger brainwashing plot. By Captain Marvel’s ending, his worldview is supposed to be refuted, and that includes his dismissal of humor as something frivolous. That’s the primary purpose of the Yon-Rogg story, seeing Carol gain the ability to fight back against a male-driven society by rejecting the limitations placed on her. Just as Carol’s emotions - which, in an early sign of Yon-Rogg’s villainy are no more prominent in her actions than her Starforce teammates - are not her weakness, so too is comedy not just a distraction to the movie.

The problem is the melding of the character and the meta. When Vers cracks wise to Agent Fury about the world she’s rediscovering, it mostly works as we’re seeing the humanity inherent to this character slowly shine through (aided by Brie Larson’s performance). But when it’s in the fabric of the movie, there’s no such character reasoning; without a purpose imbued on Talos or Happy Days, it’s purely tonal and falls right back into the usual Marvel trap. There’s a distinct clash between character-driven comedy from Carol and Fury to the more awkwardness of alien interactions, the latter of which feels intended to aid the mystery plot only by distracting from what’s important.

Humor Undoes Captain Marvel’s Big Emotional Victory

Captain Marvel’s use of humor comes to a head with the defeat of the person who initially called it out. After stopping the Kree invaders and scaring away Ronan, Carol returns to a crashed Yon-Rogg who immediately attempts to tip the scales in his favor: feigning the entire mission as something he intended and dismissing her full Binary power that’s halted the march of his military, he demands a simple, physical fight. Barely missing a beat, Carol incapacitates him with a photon blast, declaring that “I have nothing to prove to you.”

The meaning of the scene is pretty obvious. Yon-Rogg is enacting the final stage of his gaslighting, trying to once again assert control over Carol’s freedoms. It’s a potent message, unavoidably making the villain every man who has by their nature of being male assumed moral superiority over a woman. For a movie that has dealt with female empowerment in a forward but not overstated manner, it’s a fitting underscoring of the film’s message. However, once again, the victory is just the counterpoint to a more flippant joke. Yon-Rogg goes full caricature as he spits and shouts his challenge at Carol, she immediately defeats him with a loud blast, then a pause for laughter and/or applause.

Yon-Rogg’s defeat isn’t a moment for levity in-universe and Carol doesn’t deliver a one-liner to show how she’s turned the villain’s words against him. Any humor from the scenario comes from an outside, audience perspective, which works directly against the weight of the moral victory you’re witnessing. The problem isn’t that Yon-Rogg is dispatched without combat - to end with a fight would only damage what the story Captain Marvel’s being telling more - but the approach that was taken to the idea. In having the moment delivered as a joke, that’s what it’s meant to be treated as. Humor is a distraction.

It’s a spiritual successor to Hulk’s “puny God” defeat of Loki in The Avengers, except there it was a subversion of the big villain fight trope in a movie that had spent much of its runtime to having humor feed the characters’ fractured relationships (with the emotional payoff coming later with Tony Stark’s sacrifice into the wormhole). With Yon-Rogg, it’s not a subversion because it is now the trope - it even had a send-up in Thor: Ragnarok - and so the joke isn’t fresh or additive. It would be like Indiana Jones beating the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark (surely the inspiration for “puny God” in the first place) being transplanted from a second-act fight scene to the Nazi-zapping ending.

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Superhero movies being funny is not a bad thing by any stretch. But with the output of Marvel Studios in particular, there feels like a mandate that has, consistently, led to the films falling short of what they can emotionally deliver. Captain Marvel shows just how knowing all this is, and can’t provide a good enough argument otherwise.

Next: Everything You Need To Know About Captain Marvel 2

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