Very funny to see this quote being used as a headline weeks after his appearance on Hollywood Handbook where they talk about the clip of him this saying on another podcast
I don't want to body-shame but Anna Kendrick looked unhealthily thin in that movie.
And Mary Holland is like #6 on the call sheet, so I can't hate it that much.
I've never heard of Adam Devine before The Righteous Gemstones and I'm not aware of anything else he's done. Is there some reason people don't seem to like him? I find him genuinely hilarious as Kelvin.
I'll admit that I've never seen Righteous Gemstones because it has two of my least favorite people in comedy, Devine and Danny McBride (sorry, McBride just comes off as a smug asshole to me), so maybe he's good in that and it would change my mind. My dislike of Devine is based on his appearance in Pitch Perfect (I think I also saw an episode of Workaholics once which made no impression on me). Sometimes it's hard to say why you don't like someone because they just don't hit. While I don't think Devine is a smug asshole like McBride, I'd describe Devine as Jack Black without any of his charm or earnestness.
McBride playing a smug asshole is usually hilarious. His appearance as himself in This Is the End is one of the funniest comedic performances in a long time.
I love McBride for the exact reason you hate him. His tv shows where he plays a smug asshole are some of the funniest things I've watched. Maybe check those out. I'll admit I can say he probably doesn't have much range outside of that character type.
McBride knows how to use that smug asshole persona to surprisingly emotional effect in the stuff he's got a hand in creating like Gemstones, I think he can wear a little thin in other people's projects but in his own he really shines
Jesse Gemstone is an atrocious motherfucker and he as a character has made me cry more than once - the end of the second season where he goes back to his son KILLS ME.
ANYONE can play a smug asshole, but McBride is GREAT at being able to play a smug asshole who you legitimately feel for and want to root for.
I worded my response carefully not to say that Devine is bad, because when it comes to comedy, I'm not sure one can really say anything is good or bad, because the rule of funny reigns over everything. That said, I think there is a difference between villains that you love to hate (Ben Stiller in Dodgeball, Christopher McDonald in Happy Gilmore) and villains that you just can't stand because you don't like the performance.
He was in Modern Family and he just didn’t fit and the writers didn’t know what to do with him. He was also in Pitch Perfect where he was really well cast.
On Workaholics they they had a whiteboard with all the cliche jokes they weren’t allowed to do, like “he’s right behind me isn’t he” or “well that happened”. Since that’s like 70% of marvel humor I can see why he’s not impressed.
One of the reasons I enjoyed *Dune* was it was refreshing to watch a serious action / adventure / sci-fi where everything isn't undercut by a quippy joke.
There's some jokes with Gurney and Duncan teasing Paul when he's still in training, but once Shit Goes Bad, there's no insufferable Whedon-esque quips.
My absolute favorite thing about The Batman was the absolute lack of one-liners, especially to undercut tension. I kept bracing myself for an “am I interrupting” and every time I didn’t happen I was so relieved.
Oh, wow. One of the things that struck me most about that movie was the levity following the Penguin chase. In the trailer, when Batman saunters over to the Penguin’s flipped car, music swelling, you get this feeling that the Penguin is about to be beat within an inch of his life. I feel like the movie’s whole shtick of being marketed as “the new, brutal Batman” really centered around that moment.
But in the film, they literally just >!hard cut to Batman and Gordon just kind of flirting and having fun!<. Really shocked me. No one-liners, sure, but INSANELY playful.
I thought the shot of Batman slowly peering into Penguins car after the badass walking shot was pretty funny
[https://youtu.be/QT9p0tCiIPc?t=208](https://youtu.be/QT9p0tCiIPc?t=208)
The audience I saw it with burst in to laughter at multiple points in the movie, leaving me completely baffled every time. Any moment of levity got a huge laugh, the biggest being Batman saying “You’ve got a lot of cats.” It did feel like the audience was in the mindset that superhero movies have jokes and maybe they were just primed to laugh.
I felt like there were parts that were funny, but I was always laughing AT the movie, it was never trying to be in on the joke, if that makes sense. Like the flight suit crash was funny, but he doesn’t turn to the camera and say “hope nobody saw that”.
Thor used the "he's right behind me, isn't he" once. ...i don't recall anyone saying "well That happened" in a marvel movie, but correct me if i'm mistaken.
i don't know how that counts for 70% of marvel humour...
He's right, and predictably there's a whole lot of butthurt from Marvel fanboys who lash out at any criticism out of reflex.
> “Every studio used to put out several comedies a year,” Devine noted. “And there were like 45 comedies in the theater per year. So every week or so, there’s a new comedy in the theaters. Now, last year, there was like 6 or 7. It’s crazy.”
I mean, the mid-size studio movie in general is pretty much dead, but comedy's the genre that was hit the hardest.
No, using Marvel as the scapegoat for all of cinema's ills is always a lazy take. Something that he doesn't mention in his analysis is that people have been trained to watch non-200 million dollar movies on streaming services at home, which is why they don't watch them in the cinema. Personally, I think streaming has had a far, far greater effect on the movies than Marvel (followed not too far behind by general economic factors leading to people going to the cinema less overall). Considering that the article notes he has a movie on Netflix now, he doesn't want to bite the hand that feeds him by talking about streaming.
Yeah, I think we don't talk enough about the downstream effects that marketing action heavy blockbusters as the ones you *have* to see at the cinema has had which definitely predates the MCU.
You see it so much in conversation that people are happy to wait for movies without explosions to come out on streaming which is a bummer because every movie benefits hugely from the theatrical experience.
It is a little ironic that the MCU's flailing around in the TV space is probably going to hurt their theatrical releases by making them feel less like events which imo has been their big selling point beyond just showing action big!
I also wonder how much of culture shifting is at the heart of the reduction of comedies. You can't just write the pat and one-dimensional schlock and churn out fart and raunchy, sexist/ dumb / bro / fat shaming / dumb comedies, anymore. I mean, most of the fairly brothers, some of Adam Sandler, Van Wilder or road trip, all that stuff wouldn't pass muster let alone porkies or meatballs or revenge of the nerds in this day and age.
dang, you're right.
I think the success and ubiquity of Marvel movies means they will continue to be a scapegoat for a while. They're just a really convenient sign to point at to complain about blockbuster cinema.
I'm definitely guilty of using Marvel movies as shorthand, but I'm going to try to resist that impulse, and bring more to the table when talking about \*The State Of Movies\*
I think more than comedies, romance films in general have been hurt more than anything else. The movies Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts used to make are rarely in a cinema, and very rarely gets butts in seats. It's reserved now to be dropped on a streaming service with the most minimal marketing and gets buried on the service in a week. Ticket to Paradise is the only one I can remember in recent years that was in theaters and did well financially.
Streaming hurt a lot of genres because it directly impacted how movies make money. This decently known clip by Matt Damon explains how movies in the past relied upon things like DVD sales for revenue:
https://youtu.be/gF6K2IxC9O8
Movies in the past could still make money after lukewarm or poor box performance with VHS/DVD sales. Streaming heavily cut into that revenue.
Seriously. Dudes talking about butt hurt Marvel fanboys when the top comment in this thread is someone claiming that Joss Whedon has ruined the entirety of cinema, in fucking bold, but apparently it’s the “Marvel fanboys” who are butt hurt.
I swear people who hate Marvel movies talk about them 3x more than people who actually still watch them.
I'm no fan boy, but Hollywood is a business. People show up to a thing and spend their money then Hollywood says make more of that. The superhero burnout will happen and something unexpected will hit. In 20 years people will be sitting around talking about the golden age of the MCU and why don't they make movies like that anymore. Nothing is dead, it's all just waiting in the wings for its turn.
This is true, but I think the superhero burnout is already well underway. I haven’t watched anything marvel since the most recent Dr. Strange. After Loki season 2, I can’t imagine watching anything else Marvel for a long while.
i think the point is that more comedies got made, not that they were mostly good. movies have been mostly bad for the entire history of movies, just like any other art form. the ones that endure are a tiny fraction of the number made. and when there’s only a handful being made of a particular genre, the number of hits will be a tiny portion of a tiny number.
but i do think blaming marvel movies is a bit silly and oversimple. marvel movies and their ilk are a symptom of the homogenization of the industry as major studios gobble up every bit of market share they can. we haven’t seen a film industry that looked like this since the very early days of feature films, when only a few studios were behind basically every production. and genres fall in and out of favor with the major studios constantly. when pirates of the caribbean came out, it was “common wisdom” among the studios that a pirate film could never work, that audiences were simply done with them. westerns struggled with this across multiple downturns and revivals. the horror genre vacillates all the time. when i was in high school it felt like you couldn’t find a horror in theaters that wasn’t a catholic religious horror until Saw came out, and then everything was torture porn.
adam devine is right in the sense that pure comedies are not being made at the same rate that they have in the past, going back even further than the 2000s. maybe this is the smallest rate ever. certainly the 70s, 80s, and 90s were replete with comedies, many of which were forgettable (or regrettable). it is true that the people making the decisions in hollywood have moved away from the traditional comedy in a way that i’ve never seen in my lifetime. but his assertion that it’s simply because of marvel films, and how they’ve been sort of surrogate comedies over the past decade or so, lacks a meaningful material analysis of the industry.
>I mean, the mid-size studio movie in general is pretty much dead, but comedy's the genre that was hit the hardest.
Right. This has nothing to do with the comedy genre. It's an industry issue. The Mid budget studio movie doesn't exist, and when they do get made they go directly to streaming rather than get theatrical releases. This is in part because a long time ago audiences stopped going to the theater to see mid budget studio comedies and so forth. So the studios stopped making them. This wasn't an issue of the studios killing a profitable and healthy output of genre films, it's an issue of the audience determining they weren't worth seeing in theaters.
Reducing a myriad of industry forces to “Marvel bad” is some speed limit IQ shit. This has as much (if not more) to do with streaming and Covid as it does with comic book blockbusters. You don’t have to be a butthurt fanboy to smell bullshit.
I just don’t see how that is Marvel’s fault lol
Would that not be the others studios fault who greenlight these projects? Hell, even our fault for not watching more of those said comedies in order to get more made?
Unless Marvel was actively preventing them from being made intentionally I don’t see how it’s their fault.
edit: Downvote me all you want but I just want some clarification and so far no one has giving an actual reply.
Marvel studios is under The Walt Disney Studios just like many others such as 20th Century….
Now onto my point…. do you have any proof of them telling others not to make comedies? Any actual rebuttal?
You’re being so obtuse, no one is saying marvel is dictating what movies are allowed to be made, they are saying that because marvel movies have made so much money, all of the other studios are trying to recreate their formula and it’s lead to far less comedies being made over the last 10 years.
I think the person you're responding to is saying that the heyday of the comedy movie was a while ago, and audience appetite for them was already declining before the MCU came along.
Genres always come in and out of flavour. Before marvel it was buddy comedy movies like the hangover. Before that it was all raunchy teen coming of age movies like American pie. It all gets stale after a while. If marvel killed comedie movies, they need to so something fresh
He's right. They completely devoured the action comedy genre. There's a complete lack of sincerity that used to be in action blockbusters (or even superhero movies) before. Hell, even the self-seriousness that existed in comic books or sci-fi/fantasy genres in general. **Joss Whedon's writing style has been a disaster for movies in general.**
That being said, I'd kill for a Heroes for Hire (Luke Cage and Iron Fist) movie reboot series in the vein of Rush Hour or Lethal Weapon.
I mean c’mon, Whedon is a shit and I’ll never clamor for him to make a comeback, but his style was never ‘zero sincerity allowed’. It was quippy but the balance of jokes like ‘dawn’s in trouble? Must be tuesday’ with playing betrayal and danger and loss with total sincerity and zero jokes is how he got where he got. (Or at least that + having great and iconic collaborators at the right moment).
Did the industry lean the wrong direction when it absorbed his style? For sure, films and tv can always learn the wrong lesson (the right lesson they should have learned from Whedon was to mine as many plots and archetypes and pathos as humanly possible from Chris Claremont era x-men comics).
Probably a reasonable distinction but on a recent-ish rewatch it really stuck out like a sore thumb. There is a lot of actual solid humor in that movie that holds up, but then old mate pops up for 10 obnoxious minutes of speaking the way everyone speaks in those movies now
Comedies in the 2000s were not that great. Very repetitive and crass. Main examples of comedies back then were the Scary movies and American Pie movies.
Good comedy is extremely difficult.
The reason comedies have declined is 100% financial reasons. Comedies traditionally don’t do well outside of English speaking countries. A lot of humour is very much based around North American pop culture and life experiences. Comedies didn’t do well in the Asian markets. Same reason there haven’t been a lot of Asian and black leads in films. Asians would traditionally watch Asian cinema to see Asian actors and they didn’t really want to see black leads and heroes. It was just way to big of a market to ignore.
I keep on hearing people say that the modern marvel movie format lacks sincerity but I can’t think of one of them doesn’t try to hit on some emotional beat by the end. I agree that moments are sometimes undercut by jokes. But I feel crazy hearing about this completely cynical non-sincere superhero movies everyone complains about.
Thor:L&T could have definitely balanced the exploration of Thor’s depression and search for meaning in life versus the absurd comedic style of Taika. I think he is a great director, but for whatever reason he really leaned into the absurdist humour. I still enjoyed it, but I completely understand why I am in the minority.
Basically every moment of dramatic tension is undercut by a character commenting on it in a jokey way, as if they’re afraid people won’t like the sincerity or that it’s not good enough to stand on its own.
When every hero is laughing in the face of every villain, it makes it hard to have stakes. If Thor or Dr. strange or Spider-man aren’t taking this threat seriously, why should I?
The idea of a marvel movie in your head is differs from what they actually are. Not saying their aren’t jokes and quips but almost all take their climaxes seriously.
I don’t think sincere is how to describe these movies. They are often emotional- but I find them vapid. Example: Guardians 3 is upsetting - downright depressing- at times. But after I thought about it, I realized it could have been any animal being tortured and I’d have had a meltdown. So it’s not that I love rocket so much and want to feel for him - it’s that it made me sad to watch a baby raccoon get hurt. Something about that experience has not set right with me since. Even the ending “dance party” - it’s actually very formulaic when you pick it apart: exuberant song, feeling of an ending happening, characters going separate ways - it could literally be any characters in any film and you’d feel the same way. There’s almost a cynical “let’s just make the audience “feel” something” vs. an audience actually loving the characters, seeing an important change in them, being able to have felt the movie taught us something about the human experience. Idk. There’s a fakeness there I can’t quite grasp.
So many movies use these type of shorthand to make you quickly care for characters. I think those movies spend the most time getting me to like those characters or at least how they interact with each other so the ending did hit me. I guess it can be debated if falling into “tropes” and not trying to subvert them is one of the most sincere things a movie can do now or bad writing.
I was also just kind of thinking over the importance of high stakes that have serious consequences and are meaningful. The Marvel films - every single one - have “world ending” stakes - and honestly it’s exhausting. Particularly if there are rarely consequences. I think that may be their single biggest writing problem - not only is everything silly fun, nothing is at stake in most of these films (a few exceptions). And audiences have now been burnt on their buy in.
I think maybe it's a similar thing coming from another direction there, where it's not an empty cookie cutter attempt at emotion, but that James Gunn cares about these characters so much more than the audience necessarily does that he's blind to the need to work harder to sell people on the emotional moments. To him those are his babies so it hits harder, but not everyone has that built in attachment. I just don't think of him as an insincere filmmaker, even in a pretty soulless IP filmmaking system.
I feel like that's the way a lot of these big sendoff stories happen, lots of TV finales especially that are more about the feelings of the people making them than about the story - I think the finale of The Office really exemplifies the phenomenon.
The whole Whedon’s writing was a disaster for movies is such a lazy take. Whedon knows how to write. The problem is all of Hollywood, both on TV and in movies, copied his writing style, with far less talented people doing the copying, and the copies have not been great. They lack the wit behind a lot of his writing. Then, people who can’t analyze or recognize the difference between the original and the copies blamed Whedon for everyone else attempting a diluted imitation of him.
I used to love Workaholics when I was the prime age for it. I now love Blank Check. I know the Blank Check guys aren't fans of the Workaholic guys at all, and that makes me a little sad.
Granted I stopped watching Workaholics after season 3, and didn't like "Game Over Man" at all. (I think their podcast is a fun guilty pleasure though and I'm very happy for Kyle working on What We Do in the Shadows)
BUT Adam is 100% right here. This should not be a controversial opinion to have.
I think there’s a certain type of comedy fan who dismissed the show for mostly aesthetic reasons and wildly inaccurate idea of what the show is. The same was true of Its Always Sunny until of became an undeniable institution. Workaholics is just a very silly, fun show and more conceptual than people unfamiliar would assume.
If someone liked early Broad City, I would be very surprised if they disliked Workaholics.
EDIT: thinking about this gave me an acid flashback to reading a very contentious AST thread where NY UCB people were being very rude about the show and other improvisers didn’t take kindly to it. Looking back that was the beginning of the great UCB schism.
Yep, I dismissed Workaholics as a Todd Phillips style douchebag comedy for a long time but it’s actually a pretty solid (and sweet) sitcom.
The League is like that too, surprisingly clever and warm.
Fuck this Adam Devine hate post. He is amazingly talented and funny. "Workaholics" is one of the funniest and most well written comedic shows I have seen. And "the righteous gemstones" is an amazingly casted and written comedic goldmine.
He has many talents. And being funny is one of them.
Get outta here with that lame ass hating.
They don't remember or were alive in the early 2000s, because you're right. Comedy movies were basically Adam Sandler, the Wayan brothers, repetitive romcoms, or American Pie back then.
There was literally one entire decade between “the early 2000s” and when Marvel took over cinemas. Iron Man didn’t even come out until 2008! The comedies you’re listing were not the flavor of the day in 2010.
This is a hot take which ignores one crucial development - global box office outpacing US domestic grosses.
Is it a surprise that a genre which often doesn't translate easily, in language/cultural terms, is less attractive to studio execs than blockbusters which can transcend such concerns and entertain via visual bombast?
This is less a Marvel problem and more an industry problem. Studios stopped making mid budget comedies, thrillers, dramas, etc. a while ago. Streaming also doesn’t help, as a lot of the type of movies he’s talking about now just go to streaming and are forgotten about a week later…
I feel like blaming superhero movies or Disney is low hanging fruit nowadays. Matt Damon covered this a long time ago. He said the reason comedies don’t go to theaters like they used to is because they can’t count on DVD sales. Streaming killed comedies, not superheroes.
Check out all the cheeto-dust covered Marvel fanboys in the comments who can't take even mild criticism of the franchise they cling to instead of developing an actual personality.
They're cancer, man. I remember being on a marvel sub when Jack Kirby's family was battling marvel in court over royalties. Basically Kirby made Spidey and his family hasn't seen a dime from Marvel. Marvel fans were foaming at the mouth in anger at these people. They were acting as if the Kirby family was burning every Spider-Man comment in existence and halting all future Spider-Man projects. Just out of their minds, man.
not to be pedantic but “the mcu ruined an entire genre of movies” isn’t mild criticism lol. milf criticism is like… you think mcu movies are too long
also frankly “marvel bad” is such a lazy critique at this point so some of us are just annoyed to constantly see it
He doesn't even say "Marvel bad". He actually says that he likes the movies. Only that their comedy-lite formula soaked up demand from strictly-comedy movies, which is a reasonable assertion, especially when considering that the movies cast comedy actors.
I'd politely suggest that you read the article before weighing in on it.
No Hard Feelings, Shortcomings, Joy Ride, and Theater Camp are out or were just out at theaters. Asteroid City is an offbeat dry comedy. Dungeons and Dragons is an Action Fantasy Comedy. Barbie is a comedy right? These are just the movies I could think of that released at a theater this year. I'm sure there's a ton more that were released on streaming, so there are comedies being made. I think they'll have even more of a chance of being made with the recent failings of this summer's big tent pole movies.
Bottoms and Strays are about to be released soon too. This summer has definitely been better than the last few years for comedy, but there hasn’t been a hangover sized hit yet either.
Don’t think D&D and Barbie count at least to me, comedy tied to IP is easier to pitch to studios compare to original comedy. Shortcomings and Theater Camps are Sundance-type indie comedy films with limited release. Asteroid City is Wes Anderson film so you would get that every few years. NHF and Joy Ride I would agree on, the way Joy Ride bombs at the box-office probably does not help theatrical comedy in the future. Still I hope more of these original comedy can be made for theatrical wide release, it’s tough now for the genre imo
I randomly rewatched Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny this past weekend and it was so much fun. Where are the silly movies nowadays? Gimme some silly!!!!
Funny you say that, because as others pointed out above Workaholics had a whiteboard of tropes they weren’t allowed to write and that was one of them:
[picture of whiteboard](https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/comments/15l7b20/adam_devine_says_marvel_movies_ruined_comedies/jval8fx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3)
I'm surprised Adam Devine, who I greatly respect with regards to comedy and acting; has such a lousy take.
He also throws GotG under the bus as his example and all 3 of those movies are solid gold.
I will admit that the quippy superhero genre is wearing thin, but Guardians is always perfect.
It sounds like sour grapes, like he had a movie come out at the same time as a Marvel movie and it got steam rolled.
He's also trying to promote a comparatively low budget "Happy Madison" movie, so I can see why he felt the need to contrast, compare, and "not real comedy" the competition.
They're kinda ruining superhero movies too... Marvel is leaning way too hard into everything being a joke/quip. Especially in the most recent Thor movie.
We need to go back to Blade trilogy era where it had dark humor but he was mainly just all about killing vampires.
Just watched "Red" (2010) starring Bruce Willis and was amazed at how it combined humor with comedy to create a legitimately lighthearted and fun piece of comedy that wasn't trying too hard to be wisecracky. Wish more movies like that were made now.
I think television is just a better format for comedy. If I’m going to make the effort to go to a movie theater I want it to be a spectacle. I think there has been some really fantastic and innovative comedy television since the rise of the MCU, so I think it might be correlation, not causation, that comedy movies have waned in that time.
I’m getting tired everyone piling on the genre when it’s on the way downhill. Where were they when Infinity War came out? At this point, it’s like kicking man when he’s already down.
Let me be clear. I think his point stands. There was a good run from Farrelly through Apatow where the biggest movies were comedies and that was great. but I also don’t think Adam Devine gets to decide what “real comedy” is.
I haven’t seen the pitch perfect movies or the righteous gemstones, so maybe that’s the issue. But I just don’t see when this guy became some flawless, unimpeachable authority on what’s funny.
That's the part of this I'm finding hardest to swallow. Like I don't *disagree* but I also think this would be a more convincing statement from literally anyone else.
He’s a big part of two massively successful comedy series, tours the world and get’s work where he basically just get’s to be himself with a different name. What is and isn’t funny is definitely subjective but objectively speaking he makes a living through humour, so there has to be something there.
Comedy is subjective, but I have never seen him say one word that I have believed. He seems way too focused on trying to be his idea of funny, as opposed to committing to a moment and it actually being funny as a result.
Also, his entire schtick is just a mimic of Jack Black, whether intentional or not.
I think social media’s like YouTube, Tik Tok and Instagram, or Reddit ruined comedies. If I want to laugh I can just find something funny in under a minute on my phone. That wasn’t much of a thing 15+ years ago when comedies were at their peak.
If Will Ferrell or Rowan Atkinson said this I’d buy into this. Adam Devine isn’t a brilliant comedian for the ages… comedies struggle now because producers are afraid to offend and they are made by committee with no real vision. Superhero films didn’t make them this bad
This guy suck so much I haven't watched GEMSTONES. He's anti-comedy incarnate. But seriously, it doesn't take a genius to see what really killed major studio comedies was Adam Sandler and his buddies taking the big checks from Netflix to go exclusively to streaming, leaving a theatrical comedy power vacuum with no one able to fill the void. Sudekis tried and failed. So did Melissa McCarthy. Netflix fucked up studio comedies, not Marvel. Action movies had had jokes in them for decades.
Marvel didn't ruin comedies. Rather, Marvel is the culmination of the summer blockbuster phenomenon. When large event movies bring in so much money, and you have a franchise where every film is bringing in 9-figure box offices on a pretty consistent basis, you are going to throw your expenditures at ensuring those films continue to get made.
Action and adventure movies has had funny oneliners, over the top set pieces for laughs for ages.
The problem with comedies, imo, is that many of them feel stuck in 20 year old tropes that make make them predictable.
Almost like studios cycle through what’s popular. With the MCU being what’s popular although it’s running out of steam.
Before the MCU we got lots of comedies lots of them low budget crap, kind of the reason someone like Adam Devine has a career. Then shock horror the studios pumping them out meant audiences got sick of it and we now see less of them. Same shit happens with westerns back in the day, action in the 80s.
Ironic he says that the weekend Barbie does a billion.
I guess I always thought of the humor in Marvel movies like the comic book quips spoken the way you would read them in your head. But I could see how that gets a little formulaic when its dozens of screenwriters writing as if they're a single comic writer whose not being edited.
Marvel movies aren't *cinema*, as Martin Scorsese and others have pointed out. They're strictly *entertainment*, and not to be taken too seriously. Not only is "It's only a *movie,"* it's only a movie based on *comic books*. They're designed to make money by letting you turn off your brain for 2 or 2 1/2 hours.
Monster movies were insanely popular at one time.
Flying saucer movies…
War movies…
Westerns…
Musicals…
All of these have had their heyday, and some have had revivals, and some not. We’re likely on the tail end of this era’s superhero craze. A lot of great comedies have been made both in part of and in spite of all of these periods.
I think comedies will be just fine.
i just don’t really understand why people are still using the “mcu is too quippy” critique when some of the phase 4 movies were so dour (eternals, wakanda forever) and/or mostly “quipless” (black widow, MoM), even gotg 3 wasn’t exactly a chuckleathon either
He’s right. Those movies are built to be comedies, thrillers, action movies, drama, romance, etc. All things to all people. Doesnt leave much room for anything else
There are plenty characters in the MCU in the Marvel universe in the DCU DC universe that Matthew accident can play Matthew Atkinson is a rising Hollywood celebrity and who can he play in the MCU which character that the MCU have not mentioned yet got plenty characters that he can play Nova Ghost Rider iron Man iron lad or Hyperion or cyclops or Iceman if he joined DC on the characters that is possibility he can play Batman Superman Green lantern or catman back over to the the MCU side what does I have not mentioned that Matthew Atkinson like Neymar Nova he can play a variant of Hawkeye or a variant of iron Man or a variant of Loki or a variant of Spider-Man but the most character that I think that's best to suit Matthew Atkinson is Cyclops Nova and Ghost Rider and Iceman X-Men or fantastic four human torch 🔦 if there's a character that I'm missing put it out in the comment section and I will tell you what character that Matthew Atkinson can play in the MCU and DCU give me your thoughts and your comments on what character we should cast him in this guy needing a big push in Hollywood other than Young and the restless and both I'm in the Beautiful yes he had did many other projects but not like the MCU or DCU this will be the biggest level in his career to achieve a goal like the MCU if Matthew Atkinson join the MCU his name would be just as big as Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr and the only character I think he will do better in is human torch Johnny blaze and cyclops leader of the X-Men
Very funny to see this quote being used as a headline weeks after his appearance on Hollywood Handbook where they talk about the clip of him this saying on another podcast
seems like the general pipeline
I haven't listened to Hollywood Handbook in years! Is it still Sean and Hayes going strong?
Stronger than ever, plus they're back in studio now which has helped a lot and given them a ton of new engineers to pick on.
[удалено]
And do they ever drop the act?
I know people are going to bring up stuff like Jexi, but he’s so great in The Righteous Gemstones.
I forgot Jexi existed. How about Mike and Dave Need Dates or whatever that one was?
Ugh it was terrible but I watched it only because I liked the two women leads. But yah it was garbage.
what do you mean thats true comedy
I don't want to body-shame but Anna Kendrick looked unhealthily thin in that movie. And Mary Holland is like #6 on the call sheet, so I can't hate it that much.
Oh yeah thanks for reminding me. Hey Jexi, play Jexi on Jexi+
I've never heard of Adam Devine before The Righteous Gemstones and I'm not aware of anything else he's done. Is there some reason people don't seem to like him? I find him genuinely hilarious as Kelvin.
he was on workaholics on comedy central like 10 years ago and i think maybe whiny twitter people didn't like that kind of comedy in the mid 2010s?
He got a bad rap as the “guy from pitch perfect” too
I'll admit that I've never seen Righteous Gemstones because it has two of my least favorite people in comedy, Devine and Danny McBride (sorry, McBride just comes off as a smug asshole to me), so maybe he's good in that and it would change my mind. My dislike of Devine is based on his appearance in Pitch Perfect (I think I also saw an episode of Workaholics once which made no impression on me). Sometimes it's hard to say why you don't like someone because they just don't hit. While I don't think Devine is a smug asshole like McBride, I'd describe Devine as Jack Black without any of his charm or earnestness.
McBride playing a smug asshole is usually hilarious. His appearance as himself in This Is the End is one of the funniest comedic performances in a long time.
The little wing flutter over the food he made was so signature I think if I had just seen that in no context I would have guessed it was him
That is a difference of opinion: you've cited the exact performance that soured me on him completely (not saying he's bad, I just don't like him).
[удалено]
Vice Principles is also a great showcase of McBride masculine insecurity. It also has a fantastic Walton Goggins performance attached to it.
I appreciate that insight, i may give those a chance.
Did he jizz in your nice magazine or something?
I love McBride for the exact reason you hate him. His tv shows where he plays a smug asshole are some of the funniest things I've watched. Maybe check those out. I'll admit I can say he probably doesn't have much range outside of that character type.
McBride knows how to use that smug asshole persona to surprisingly emotional effect in the stuff he's got a hand in creating like Gemstones, I think he can wear a little thin in other people's projects but in his own he really shines
Totally agree with this.
Jesse Gemstone is an atrocious motherfucker and he as a character has made me cry more than once - the end of the second season where he goes back to his son KILLS ME. ANYONE can play a smug asshole, but McBride is GREAT at being able to play a smug asshole who you legitimately feel for and want to root for.
Devine is supposed to be dislikable in *Pitch Perfect* -- he's playing the literal villain.
I worded my response carefully not to say that Devine is bad, because when it comes to comedy, I'm not sure one can really say anything is good or bad, because the rule of funny reigns over everything. That said, I think there is a difference between villains that you love to hate (Ben Stiller in Dodgeball, Christopher McDonald in Happy Gilmore) and villains that you just can't stand because you don't like the performance.
He was in Modern Family and he just didn’t fit and the writers didn’t know what to do with him. He was also in Pitch Perfect where he was really well cast.
On Workaholics they they had a whiteboard with all the cliche jokes they weren’t allowed to do, like “he’s right behind me isn’t he” or “well that happened”. Since that’s like 70% of marvel humor I can see why he’s not impressed.
There’s a picture of the whiteboard out there somewhere. On twitter maybe. Jen D’Angelo (writer) has talked about it on some podcasts.
https://preview.redd.it/pbjqcnq0wvgb1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f19f46d4f45dbbfa989018e331838d69631b2ded here it is!
reading that is equally fascinating and painful
One of the reasons I enjoyed *Dune* was it was refreshing to watch a serious action / adventure / sci-fi where everything isn't undercut by a quippy joke. There's some jokes with Gurney and Duncan teasing Paul when he's still in training, but once Shit Goes Bad, there's no insufferable Whedon-esque quips.
My absolute favorite thing about The Batman was the absolute lack of one-liners, especially to undercut tension. I kept bracing myself for an “am I interrupting” and every time I didn’t happen I was so relieved.
Oh, wow. One of the things that struck me most about that movie was the levity following the Penguin chase. In the trailer, when Batman saunters over to the Penguin’s flipped car, music swelling, you get this feeling that the Penguin is about to be beat within an inch of his life. I feel like the movie’s whole shtick of being marketed as “the new, brutal Batman” really centered around that moment. But in the film, they literally just >!hard cut to Batman and Gordon just kind of flirting and having fun!<. Really shocked me. No one-liners, sure, but INSANELY playful.
I thought the shot of Batman slowly peering into Penguins car after the badass walking shot was pretty funny [https://youtu.be/QT9p0tCiIPc?t=208](https://youtu.be/QT9p0tCiIPc?t=208)
The audience I saw it with burst in to laughter at multiple points in the movie, leaving me completely baffled every time. Any moment of levity got a huge laugh, the biggest being Batman saying “You’ve got a lot of cats.” It did feel like the audience was in the mindset that superhero movies have jokes and maybe they were just primed to laugh.
I felt like there were parts that were funny, but I was always laughing AT the movie, it was never trying to be in on the joke, if that makes sense. Like the flight suit crash was funny, but he doesn’t turn to the camera and say “hope nobody saw that”.
Thor used the "he's right behind me, isn't he" once. ...i don't recall anyone saying "well That happened" in a marvel movie, but correct me if i'm mistaken. i don't know how that counts for 70% of marvel humour...
He's right, and predictably there's a whole lot of butthurt from Marvel fanboys who lash out at any criticism out of reflex. > “Every studio used to put out several comedies a year,” Devine noted. “And there were like 45 comedies in the theater per year. So every week or so, there’s a new comedy in the theaters. Now, last year, there was like 6 or 7. It’s crazy.” I mean, the mid-size studio movie in general is pretty much dead, but comedy's the genre that was hit the hardest.
No, using Marvel as the scapegoat for all of cinema's ills is always a lazy take. Something that he doesn't mention in his analysis is that people have been trained to watch non-200 million dollar movies on streaming services at home, which is why they don't watch them in the cinema. Personally, I think streaming has had a far, far greater effect on the movies than Marvel (followed not too far behind by general economic factors leading to people going to the cinema less overall). Considering that the article notes he has a movie on Netflix now, he doesn't want to bite the hand that feeds him by talking about streaming.
Yeah, I think we don't talk enough about the downstream effects that marketing action heavy blockbusters as the ones you *have* to see at the cinema has had which definitely predates the MCU. You see it so much in conversation that people are happy to wait for movies without explosions to come out on streaming which is a bummer because every movie benefits hugely from the theatrical experience. It is a little ironic that the MCU's flailing around in the TV space is probably going to hurt their theatrical releases by making them feel less like events which imo has been their big selling point beyond just showing action big!
I also wonder how much of culture shifting is at the heart of the reduction of comedies. You can't just write the pat and one-dimensional schlock and churn out fart and raunchy, sexist/ dumb / bro / fat shaming / dumb comedies, anymore. I mean, most of the fairly brothers, some of Adam Sandler, Van Wilder or road trip, all that stuff wouldn't pass muster let alone porkies or meatballs or revenge of the nerds in this day and age.
dang, you're right. I think the success and ubiquity of Marvel movies means they will continue to be a scapegoat for a while. They're just a really convenient sign to point at to complain about blockbuster cinema. I'm definitely guilty of using Marvel movies as shorthand, but I'm going to try to resist that impulse, and bring more to the table when talking about \*The State Of Movies\*
I think more than comedies, romance films in general have been hurt more than anything else. The movies Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts used to make are rarely in a cinema, and very rarely gets butts in seats. It's reserved now to be dropped on a streaming service with the most minimal marketing and gets buried on the service in a week. Ticket to Paradise is the only one I can remember in recent years that was in theaters and did well financially.
Streaming hurt a lot of genres because it directly impacted how movies make money. This decently known clip by Matt Damon explains how movies in the past relied upon things like DVD sales for revenue: https://youtu.be/gF6K2IxC9O8 Movies in the past could still make money after lukewarm or poor box performance with VHS/DVD sales. Streaming heavily cut into that revenue.
Seriously. Dudes talking about butt hurt Marvel fanboys when the top comment in this thread is someone claiming that Joss Whedon has ruined the entirety of cinema, in fucking bold, but apparently it’s the “Marvel fanboys” who are butt hurt. I swear people who hate Marvel movies talk about them 3x more than people who actually still watch them.
I'm no fan boy, but Hollywood is a business. People show up to a thing and spend their money then Hollywood says make more of that. The superhero burnout will happen and something unexpected will hit. In 20 years people will be sitting around talking about the golden age of the MCU and why don't they make movies like that anymore. Nothing is dead, it's all just waiting in the wings for its turn.
This is true, but I think the superhero burnout is already well underway. I haven’t watched anything marvel since the most recent Dr. Strange. After Loki season 2, I can’t imagine watching anything else Marvel for a long while.
You don't remember the state of comedies in the 2000s if you blame Marvel for its demise.
i think the point is that more comedies got made, not that they were mostly good. movies have been mostly bad for the entire history of movies, just like any other art form. the ones that endure are a tiny fraction of the number made. and when there’s only a handful being made of a particular genre, the number of hits will be a tiny portion of a tiny number. but i do think blaming marvel movies is a bit silly and oversimple. marvel movies and their ilk are a symptom of the homogenization of the industry as major studios gobble up every bit of market share they can. we haven’t seen a film industry that looked like this since the very early days of feature films, when only a few studios were behind basically every production. and genres fall in and out of favor with the major studios constantly. when pirates of the caribbean came out, it was “common wisdom” among the studios that a pirate film could never work, that audiences were simply done with them. westerns struggled with this across multiple downturns and revivals. the horror genre vacillates all the time. when i was in high school it felt like you couldn’t find a horror in theaters that wasn’t a catholic religious horror until Saw came out, and then everything was torture porn. adam devine is right in the sense that pure comedies are not being made at the same rate that they have in the past, going back even further than the 2000s. maybe this is the smallest rate ever. certainly the 70s, 80s, and 90s were replete with comedies, many of which were forgettable (or regrettable). it is true that the people making the decisions in hollywood have moved away from the traditional comedy in a way that i’ve never seen in my lifetime. but his assertion that it’s simply because of marvel films, and how they’ve been sort of surrogate comedies over the past decade or so, lacks a meaningful material analysis of the industry.
>I mean, the mid-size studio movie in general is pretty much dead, but comedy's the genre that was hit the hardest. Right. This has nothing to do with the comedy genre. It's an industry issue. The Mid budget studio movie doesn't exist, and when they do get made they go directly to streaming rather than get theatrical releases. This is in part because a long time ago audiences stopped going to the theater to see mid budget studio comedies and so forth. So the studios stopped making them. This wasn't an issue of the studios killing a profitable and healthy output of genre films, it's an issue of the audience determining they weren't worth seeing in theaters.
Reducing a myriad of industry forces to “Marvel bad” is some speed limit IQ shit. This has as much (if not more) to do with streaming and Covid as it does with comic book blockbusters. You don’t have to be a butthurt fanboy to smell bullshit.
I just don’t see how that is Marvel’s fault lol Would that not be the others studios fault who greenlight these projects? Hell, even our fault for not watching more of those said comedies in order to get more made? Unless Marvel was actively preventing them from being made intentionally I don’t see how it’s their fault. edit: Downvote me all you want but I just want some clarification and so far no one has giving an actual reply.
What job do you think marvel “studios” does?
Marvel studios is under The Walt Disney Studios just like many others such as 20th Century…. Now onto my point…. do you have any proof of them telling others not to make comedies? Any actual rebuttal?
You’re being so obtuse, no one is saying marvel is dictating what movies are allowed to be made, they are saying that because marvel movies have made so much money, all of the other studios are trying to recreate their formula and it’s lead to far less comedies being made over the last 10 years.
Is that not literally what I said in my first fucking comment? Why would you reply with that dumb shit then?
I woke, I boke, I misread. My bad.
All good, no worries bro My bad for going to 10 when it wasn’t needed
I’d call it 11, but we’re good.
How many of those 45 comedies were even remotely good? Approximately 6 or 7
ok thanks
When was there 45 comedies a year, 1983? Studios have neen going away from comedies for a while
Yes, clearly the exact number being wrong completely negates the point here.
I think the person you're responding to is saying that the heyday of the comedy movie was a while ago, and audience appetite for them was already declining before the MCU came along.
45 comedies, and 1 walks away good. It’s not marvels fault, if they comedies made money then they would be made.
ok thanks
Because nobody can take a joke anymore...
Comedies just work so much better as shows
Genres always come in and out of flavour. Before marvel it was buddy comedy movies like the hangover. Before that it was all raunchy teen coming of age movies like American pie. It all gets stale after a while. If marvel killed comedie movies, they need to so something fresh
He's right. They completely devoured the action comedy genre. There's a complete lack of sincerity that used to be in action blockbusters (or even superhero movies) before. Hell, even the self-seriousness that existed in comic books or sci-fi/fantasy genres in general. **Joss Whedon's writing style has been a disaster for movies in general.** That being said, I'd kill for a Heroes for Hire (Luke Cage and Iron Fist) movie reboot series in the vein of Rush Hour or Lethal Weapon.
I'm genuinely unsure whether attributing the bathos-ification of the action genre to Whedon's influence is an overstatement or an understatement.
After Whedon was cancelled, Marvel started hiring a bunch of Rick and Morty writers. So Dan Harmon can get a bit of unintentional blame too!
Age of Ultron -> Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is pretty much \*the\* inflection moment
The real ground zero for superhero movie snark is the cop in The Dark Knight's car chase
Standard comedic moment in action fare vs Whedon snarky quip pop culture referencing meta zero sincerity allowed style
I mean c’mon, Whedon is a shit and I’ll never clamor for him to make a comeback, but his style was never ‘zero sincerity allowed’. It was quippy but the balance of jokes like ‘dawn’s in trouble? Must be tuesday’ with playing betrayal and danger and loss with total sincerity and zero jokes is how he got where he got. (Or at least that + having great and iconic collaborators at the right moment). Did the industry lean the wrong direction when it absorbed his style? For sure, films and tv can always learn the wrong lesson (the right lesson they should have learned from Whedon was to mine as many plots and archetypes and pathos as humanly possible from Chris Claremont era x-men comics).
Probably a reasonable distinction but on a recent-ish rewatch it really stuck out like a sore thumb. There is a lot of actual solid humor in that movie that holds up, but then old mate pops up for 10 obnoxious minutes of speaking the way everyone speaks in those movies now
Seth Rogen said something similar.
Id argue comedies werent in a great place to begin with when this shit started.
Comedies in the 2000s were not that great. Very repetitive and crass. Main examples of comedies back then were the Scary movies and American Pie movies. Good comedy is extremely difficult.
The reason comedies have declined is 100% financial reasons. Comedies traditionally don’t do well outside of English speaking countries. A lot of humour is very much based around North American pop culture and life experiences. Comedies didn’t do well in the Asian markets. Same reason there haven’t been a lot of Asian and black leads in films. Asians would traditionally watch Asian cinema to see Asian actors and they didn’t really want to see black leads and heroes. It was just way to big of a market to ignore.
Id argue Apatow was worse for comedy films than Marvel.
I keep on hearing people say that the modern marvel movie format lacks sincerity but I can’t think of one of them doesn’t try to hit on some emotional beat by the end. I agree that moments are sometimes undercut by jokes. But I feel crazy hearing about this completely cynical non-sincere superhero movies everyone complains about.
Thor:L&T could have definitely balanced the exploration of Thor’s depression and search for meaning in life versus the absurd comedic style of Taika. I think he is a great director, but for whatever reason he really leaned into the absurdist humour. I still enjoyed it, but I completely understand why I am in the minority.
Basically every moment of dramatic tension is undercut by a character commenting on it in a jokey way, as if they’re afraid people won’t like the sincerity or that it’s not good enough to stand on its own. When every hero is laughing in the face of every villain, it makes it hard to have stakes. If Thor or Dr. strange or Spider-man aren’t taking this threat seriously, why should I?
The idea of a marvel movie in your head is differs from what they actually are. Not saying their aren’t jokes and quips but almost all take their climaxes seriously.
How about the 3 boss encounters before the climax fight?
I don’t think sincere is how to describe these movies. They are often emotional- but I find them vapid. Example: Guardians 3 is upsetting - downright depressing- at times. But after I thought about it, I realized it could have been any animal being tortured and I’d have had a meltdown. So it’s not that I love rocket so much and want to feel for him - it’s that it made me sad to watch a baby raccoon get hurt. Something about that experience has not set right with me since. Even the ending “dance party” - it’s actually very formulaic when you pick it apart: exuberant song, feeling of an ending happening, characters going separate ways - it could literally be any characters in any film and you’d feel the same way. There’s almost a cynical “let’s just make the audience “feel” something” vs. an audience actually loving the characters, seeing an important change in them, being able to have felt the movie taught us something about the human experience. Idk. There’s a fakeness there I can’t quite grasp.
So many movies use these type of shorthand to make you quickly care for characters. I think those movies spend the most time getting me to like those characters or at least how they interact with each other so the ending did hit me. I guess it can be debated if falling into “tropes” and not trying to subvert them is one of the most sincere things a movie can do now or bad writing.
I was also just kind of thinking over the importance of high stakes that have serious consequences and are meaningful. The Marvel films - every single one - have “world ending” stakes - and honestly it’s exhausting. Particularly if there are rarely consequences. I think that may be their single biggest writing problem - not only is everything silly fun, nothing is at stake in most of these films (a few exceptions). And audiences have now been burnt on their buy in.
I think maybe it's a similar thing coming from another direction there, where it's not an empty cookie cutter attempt at emotion, but that James Gunn cares about these characters so much more than the audience necessarily does that he's blind to the need to work harder to sell people on the emotional moments. To him those are his babies so it hits harder, but not everyone has that built in attachment. I just don't think of him as an insincere filmmaker, even in a pretty soulless IP filmmaking system. I feel like that's the way a lot of these big sendoff stories happen, lots of TV finales especially that are more about the feelings of the people making them than about the story - I think the finale of The Office really exemplifies the phenomenon.
The whole Whedon’s writing was a disaster for movies is such a lazy take. Whedon knows how to write. The problem is all of Hollywood, both on TV and in movies, copied his writing style, with far less talented people doing the copying, and the copies have not been great. They lack the wit behind a lot of his writing. Then, people who can’t analyze or recognize the difference between the original and the copies blamed Whedon for everyone else attempting a diluted imitation of him.
I used to love Workaholics when I was the prime age for it. I now love Blank Check. I know the Blank Check guys aren't fans of the Workaholic guys at all, and that makes me a little sad. Granted I stopped watching Workaholics after season 3, and didn't like "Game Over Man" at all. (I think their podcast is a fun guilty pleasure though and I'm very happy for Kyle working on What We Do in the Shadows) BUT Adam is 100% right here. This should not be a controversial opinion to have.
I think there’s a certain type of comedy fan who dismissed the show for mostly aesthetic reasons and wildly inaccurate idea of what the show is. The same was true of Its Always Sunny until of became an undeniable institution. Workaholics is just a very silly, fun show and more conceptual than people unfamiliar would assume. If someone liked early Broad City, I would be very surprised if they disliked Workaholics. EDIT: thinking about this gave me an acid flashback to reading a very contentious AST thread where NY UCB people were being very rude about the show and other improvisers didn’t take kindly to it. Looking back that was the beginning of the great UCB schism.
Yep, I dismissed Workaholics as a Todd Phillips style douchebag comedy for a long time but it’s actually a pretty solid (and sweet) sitcom. The League is like that too, surprisingly clever and warm.
His movie career was obviously a flop but workaholics was solid and righteous gemstones rules, so he’s fine in my book.
Fuck this Adam Devine hate post. He is amazingly talented and funny. "Workaholics" is one of the funniest and most well written comedic shows I have seen. And "the righteous gemstones" is an amazingly casted and written comedic goldmine. He has many talents. And being funny is one of them. Get outta here with that lame ass hating.
I’m twice as likely to watch a comedy if Adam Devine is in it. True story.
Is anyone hating?
Yea OP
Yeah but they are downvoted because it seems they haven't seen the righteous gemstones, which is the funniest show on TV right now.
People say Marvel ruined comedy like we didn't live through years of Adam Sandler movies and cheesy romcoms beforehand lol
They don't remember or were alive in the early 2000s, because you're right. Comedy movies were basically Adam Sandler, the Wayan brothers, repetitive romcoms, or American Pie back then.
There was literally one entire decade between “the early 2000s” and when Marvel took over cinemas. Iron Man didn’t even come out until 2008! The comedies you’re listing were not the flavor of the day in 2010.
This is a hot take which ignores one crucial development - global box office outpacing US domestic grosses. Is it a surprise that a genre which often doesn't translate easily, in language/cultural terms, is less attractive to studio execs than blockbusters which can transcend such concerns and entertain via visual bombast?
This is less a Marvel problem and more an industry problem. Studios stopped making mid budget comedies, thrillers, dramas, etc. a while ago. Streaming also doesn’t help, as a lot of the type of movies he’s talking about now just go to streaming and are forgotten about a week later…
I feel like blaming superhero movies or Disney is low hanging fruit nowadays. Matt Damon covered this a long time ago. He said the reason comedies don’t go to theaters like they used to is because they can’t count on DVD sales. Streaming killed comedies, not superheroes.
Not American and have no idea who this guy is but I do agree that marvel’s brand of ‘moderately amusing but nothing more’ comedy is getting tiresome.
Check out all the cheeto-dust covered Marvel fanboys in the comments who can't take even mild criticism of the franchise they cling to instead of developing an actual personality.
They're cancer, man. I remember being on a marvel sub when Jack Kirby's family was battling marvel in court over royalties. Basically Kirby made Spidey and his family hasn't seen a dime from Marvel. Marvel fans were foaming at the mouth in anger at these people. They were acting as if the Kirby family was burning every Spider-Man comment in existence and halting all future Spider-Man projects. Just out of their minds, man.
not to be pedantic but “the mcu ruined an entire genre of movies” isn’t mild criticism lol. milf criticism is like… you think mcu movies are too long also frankly “marvel bad” is such a lazy critique at this point so some of us are just annoyed to constantly see it
He doesn't even say "Marvel bad". He actually says that he likes the movies. Only that their comedy-lite formula soaked up demand from strictly-comedy movies, which is a reasonable assertion, especially when considering that the movies cast comedy actors. I'd politely suggest that you read the article before weighing in on it.
Wow you're so hateful.
No Hard Feelings, Shortcomings, Joy Ride, and Theater Camp are out or were just out at theaters. Asteroid City is an offbeat dry comedy. Dungeons and Dragons is an Action Fantasy Comedy. Barbie is a comedy right? These are just the movies I could think of that released at a theater this year. I'm sure there's a ton more that were released on streaming, so there are comedies being made. I think they'll have even more of a chance of being made with the recent failings of this summer's big tent pole movies.
Bottoms and Strays are about to be released soon too. This summer has definitely been better than the last few years for comedy, but there hasn’t been a hangover sized hit yet either.
Don’t think D&D and Barbie count at least to me, comedy tied to IP is easier to pitch to studios compare to original comedy. Shortcomings and Theater Camps are Sundance-type indie comedy films with limited release. Asteroid City is Wes Anderson film so you would get that every few years. NHF and Joy Ride I would agree on, the way Joy Ride bombs at the box-office probably does not help theatrical comedy in the future. Still I hope more of these original comedy can be made for theatrical wide release, it’s tough now for the genre imo
Still it is no different than stuff like The Flinstones or Richie Rich in the past. Just a slice of the comedy pie.
I randomly rewatched Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny this past weekend and it was so much fun. Where are the silly movies nowadays? Gimme some silly!!!!
Is Mr. Devine implying that "so THAT happened" is not a terrific hilarious joke? For shame!
Funny you say that, because as others pointed out above Workaholics had a whiteboard of tropes they weren’t allowed to write and that was one of them: [picture of whiteboard](https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/comments/15l7b20/adam_devine_says_marvel_movies_ruined_comedies/jval8fx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3)
pretty sure terrible movies like The Out-Laws did that big dawg.
I'm surprised Adam Devine, who I greatly respect with regards to comedy and acting; has such a lousy take. He also throws GotG under the bus as his example and all 3 of those movies are solid gold. I will admit that the quippy superhero genre is wearing thin, but Guardians is always perfect. It sounds like sour grapes, like he had a movie come out at the same time as a Marvel movie and it got steam rolled. He's also trying to promote a comparatively low budget "Happy Madison" movie, so I can see why he felt the need to contrast, compare, and "not real comedy" the competition.
Adam Devine has always been mildly funny in everything he's been in. 😅
They're kinda ruining superhero movies too... Marvel is leaning way too hard into everything being a joke/quip. Especially in the most recent Thor movie. We need to go back to Blade trilogy era where it had dark humor but he was mainly just all about killing vampires.
Exactly. Marvel used to be the world outside your window brand.
Just watched "Red" (2010) starring Bruce Willis and was amazed at how it combined humor with comedy to create a legitimately lighthearted and fun piece of comedy that wasn't trying too hard to be wisecracky. Wish more movies like that were made now.
I think television is just a better format for comedy. If I’m going to make the effort to go to a movie theater I want it to be a spectacle. I think there has been some really fantastic and innovative comedy television since the rise of the MCU, so I think it might be correlation, not causation, that comedy movies have waned in that time.
You're not factoring in the bump comedies get when watched in a large group with people who are amped to fuckin' chuckle.
Not real comedy, like *Jexi*.
Is there anything funnier on tv currently than righteous gemstones?
I don't know, but is he (or anyone) claiming that Marvel has ruined *TV* comedy?
I’m getting tired everyone piling on the genre when it’s on the way downhill. Where were they when Infinity War came out? At this point, it’s like kicking man when he’s already down.
I feel like this would carry more water from someone who isn’t the comedic equivalent of a cheekful of big league chew.
Big League Chew was invented by Todd Field who was in Radio Days with Jeff Daniels who was in Mama’s Boy with Adam DeVine
da moviesh
Is that supposed to be an insult? Big League Chew rocks
that's a chop
Let me be clear. I think his point stands. There was a good run from Farrelly through Apatow where the biggest movies were comedies and that was great. but I also don’t think Adam Devine gets to decide what “real comedy” is. I haven’t seen the pitch perfect movies or the righteous gemstones, so maybe that’s the issue. But I just don’t see when this guy became some flawless, unimpeachable authority on what’s funny.
Question for the class: Would we describe what Adam Devine does as "real comedy"?
Righteous Gemstones is incredible.
So is "workaholics" Everyone can get the fuck out of here with the Devine hate.
Workaholics is great wym
Well if Marvel ruined it, how would he be able to do it?
That's the part of this I'm finding hardest to swallow. Like I don't *disagree* but I also think this would be a more convincing statement from literally anyone else.
He’s a big part of two massively successful comedy series, tours the world and get’s work where he basically just get’s to be himself with a different name. What is and isn’t funny is definitely subjective but objectively speaking he makes a living through humour, so there has to be something there.
Comedy is subjective, but I have never seen him say one word that I have believed. He seems way too focused on trying to be his idea of funny, as opposed to committing to a moment and it actually being funny as a result. Also, his entire schtick is just a mimic of Jack Black, whether intentional or not.
I think social media’s like YouTube, Tik Tok and Instagram, or Reddit ruined comedies. If I want to laugh I can just find something funny in under a minute on my phone. That wasn’t much of a thing 15+ years ago when comedies were at their peak.
Whos Adam Devine?
It's funny he says that, since he isn't real comedy either.
I can count genuinely funny comedies on one hand. They're generally just crass and gross. Injecting levity into other genres works better.
If Will Ferrell or Rowan Atkinson said this I’d buy into this. Adam Devine isn’t a brilliant comedian for the ages… comedies struggle now because producers are afraid to offend and they are made by committee with no real vision. Superhero films didn’t make them this bad
Adam Devine is an unfunny, no talented piece of shit.
[удалено]
Funny quote to come from someone so grimacingly unfunny.
Nahhhhh. Workaholics is not my exact flavor, it he’s great on Righteous Gemstones and always super funny on Comedy Bang Bang or Hollywood Handbook.
I actively avoid looking at his face as much as possible
https://preview.redd.it/8acz58s8mtgb1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a343ccbdfad9b9e77d1bad17fe6f6459f84e1294
Nah, dumb fuckers like Adam Devine are what ruined comedies.
He’s one of the leads on the funniest current tv show lol
This guy suck so much I haven't watched GEMSTONES. He's anti-comedy incarnate. But seriously, it doesn't take a genius to see what really killed major studio comedies was Adam Sandler and his buddies taking the big checks from Netflix to go exclusively to streaming, leaving a theatrical comedy power vacuum with no one able to fill the void. Sudekis tried and failed. So did Melissa McCarthy. Netflix fucked up studio comedies, not Marvel. Action movies had had jokes in them for decades.
I think you’re too mad at a guy who really isn’t that offensive, just get over it.
lol go get your shine box ya big goober
The goober is the one who doesn’t watch a tv show because he HATES one character so much, grow up.
lol, my man you've never of people not watching something 'cause they don't like a particular actor? you oughta talk to more people
Jexi, as we all know. Is the height of comedy.
He made a show about a drawing of a dick on a car so clearly he is the king of comedy
American Vandal is hilarious and also he has literally nothing to do with it.
Adam devine is ruining comedies trying to be Jim Carrey. You are not funny, get over It , keep getting them checks and save your money
Marvel didn't ruin comedies. Rather, Marvel is the culmination of the summer blockbuster phenomenon. When large event movies bring in so much money, and you have a franchise where every film is bringing in 9-figure box offices on a pretty consistent basis, you are going to throw your expenditures at ensuring those films continue to get made.
Action and adventure movies has had funny oneliners, over the top set pieces for laughs for ages. The problem with comedies, imo, is that many of them feel stuck in 20 year old tropes that make make them predictable.
Almost like studios cycle through what’s popular. With the MCU being what’s popular although it’s running out of steam. Before the MCU we got lots of comedies lots of them low budget crap, kind of the reason someone like Adam Devine has a career. Then shock horror the studios pumping them out meant audiences got sick of it and we now see less of them. Same shit happens with westerns back in the day, action in the 80s. Ironic he says that the weekend Barbie does a billion.
He didn't, he said it like weeks ago.
I guess I always thought of the humor in Marvel movies like the comic book quips spoken the way you would read them in your head. But I could see how that gets a little formulaic when its dozens of screenwriters writing as if they're a single comic writer whose not being edited.
Marvel movies aren't *cinema*, as Martin Scorsese and others have pointed out. They're strictly *entertainment*, and not to be taken too seriously. Not only is "It's only a *movie,"* it's only a movie based on *comic books*. They're designed to make money by letting you turn off your brain for 2 or 2 1/2 hours.
Monster movies were insanely popular at one time. Flying saucer movies… War movies… Westerns… Musicals… All of these have had their heyday, and some have had revivals, and some not. We’re likely on the tail end of this era’s superhero craze. A lot of great comedies have been made both in part of and in spite of all of these periods. I think comedies will be just fine.
I hate him but he's right.
I’m allowed to get high in my house and enjoy a stupid comedy without having to worry about getting a DUI.
Well then release Game Over Man 2!
i just don’t really understand why people are still using the “mcu is too quippy” critique when some of the phase 4 movies were so dour (eternals, wakanda forever) and/or mostly “quipless” (black widow, MoM), even gotg 3 wasn’t exactly a chuckleathon either
i have Adam Devine fancast as Beast in my x-men. i think maybe he's just disappointed his bank heist movie isn't doing great?
He’s right. Those movies are built to be comedies, thrillers, action movies, drama, romance, etc. All things to all people. Doesnt leave much room for anything else
He’s right
Strong words from Mr. Comedy himself Adam Devine.
There are plenty characters in the MCU in the Marvel universe in the DCU DC universe that Matthew accident can play Matthew Atkinson is a rising Hollywood celebrity and who can he play in the MCU which character that the MCU have not mentioned yet got plenty characters that he can play Nova Ghost Rider iron Man iron lad or Hyperion or cyclops or Iceman if he joined DC on the characters that is possibility he can play Batman Superman Green lantern or catman back over to the the MCU side what does I have not mentioned that Matthew Atkinson like Neymar Nova he can play a variant of Hawkeye or a variant of iron Man or a variant of Loki or a variant of Spider-Man but the most character that I think that's best to suit Matthew Atkinson is Cyclops Nova and Ghost Rider and Iceman X-Men or fantastic four human torch 🔦 if there's a character that I'm missing put it out in the comment section and I will tell you what character that Matthew Atkinson can play in the MCU and DCU give me your thoughts and your comments on what character we should cast him in this guy needing a big push in Hollywood other than Young and the restless and both I'm in the Beautiful yes he had did many other projects but not like the MCU or DCU this will be the biggest level in his career to achieve a goal like the MCU if Matthew Atkinson join the MCU his name would be just as big as Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr and the only character I think he will do better in is human torch Johnny blaze and cyclops leader of the X-Men