Not everything needs to be an action comedy

This might just be a personal thing, but why does every Marvel movie need so much humor? It’s gotten to the point where the tension is constantly undercut by jokes, making it feel like the characters aren’t taking anything seriously. They make it seem like they know everything will work out. This also weakens the antagonists, reducing them to mere obstacles in the protagonist’s personal drama.

One of the biggest victims of this is Thor: Love and Thunder. It’s so silly that when Thor and his crew are on screen, it feels like Christian Bale is acting in a completely different film. Nothing ever feels dangerous; at best, it plays like a Scooby-Doo episode with superpowers. Even Deadpool & Wolverine, a movie I enjoyed, leaned too heavily into jokes. Compared to the first two Deadpool films, the humor here often overtakes the heart and personal stakes Wade once carried.

This overreliance on humor and the tendency to make every Marvel movie an action-comedy flattens the superhero genre. Not only has it become formulaic—it’s become a punchline. In the recent film Friendship, a character mentions going to see “the new Marvel” and everyone immediately gets the joke. That’s a bad sign. Marvel’s slump isn’t just about box office—it’s about perception. People are tuning out.

Marvel keeps promoting new movies or shows by claiming they’re tapping into other genres, but most of the time, they’re just more MCU fare with jokes at timed intervals. It feels like they’ve abandoned genre experimentation. Phase Two gave us real variety: The Winter Soldier worked as a political thriller, Ant-Man was a heist comedy, and Iron Man 3—a movie I don’t even like—at least felt like a Shane Black buddy action flick.

Marvel used to be the “cool” alternative to DC. Now it’s the “quirky” one. It’s time to dial back the humor—not to go dark, but to be sharp, confident, and cool again.