It isn't because of Marvel or Disney
Okay, so let me talk about one thing that I kinda brought up yesterday. In discussion of a lot of modern media you will find people complain about a thing that they call "Marvel humor". And most people will instantly understand what is meant by this: The kind of "woah, this happened!" humor. Quippy one-liners that take out tension pretty regularly and that somehow every single character in a piece of media gets. It is associated with Marvel and specifically the MCU, because a lot of people first encountered this in the MCU movies.
And at first glance it makes absolutely sense: It is 2007, the MCU gets going. It becomes a surprise success. Suddenly everyone wants to be the new MCU. And obviously a lot of studios - both in TV, movies and games - start to immitate this kind of humor. It is not there in some DC stuff. In Star Wars. In Rings of Power. In fantasy and scifi video games. And that is all because the MCU is so successful and people are immitating them for it, right?
Because what actually happened is something else.
You know, think of some older reviewers what you want, but MovieBob has actually made several videos on this, noting that this kind of humor had been around in a lot of big media productions since the 80s and 90s. Something however that he does not quite point out is the reason of why this had become so universal.
And that is... Well... The 2008 financial crisis.
I talked about this before, but I never connected it to this humor. So let me explain it.
See, the thing is not technically that this kind of humor has become more prevalent. It always had been prevalent in a specific kind of production: high budget productions. Because this kind of humor is part of a certain kind of ruleset.
And this ruleset exists mostly something that has been worked out over many years as a set that generally has been found to do well with audiences. And it is part of a general bunch of rules in regards to media writing. The entire "Save the Cat" script (aka: a certain set of storybeats), for example, is also part of it.
These rules give you a bigger chance of connecting to audiences. It is not a guarantee, but it tends to work better than if you do not use those rules.
So, why does it feel so much more prevalent these days?
Simple: because budgets have gone up on average. Until 2008 we generally had a lot more mid-budget movies, of which we now have a lot less. These day we either have blockbuster budgets or small budgets, but very little mid-budget things. And this is not just true for movies, but for pretty much every type of media.
And this has to do with 2008. And the financial crisis. You know, when the housing market went bellyup and a lot of people lost a lot of money.
Normal people ever since have been struggling more and more. But the very rich have been struggling in a different way. They have started to shift the way they invest. And investment is a driving force in media. Basically: Until 2008 people were more willing to invest a couple million into a couple smaller projects with less certain outcomes, going for the diversity of it all. Today it is now that the people investing in this kind of stuff tend to go more for few big projects, that feel like they have guaranteed success.
Now, the MCU itself has mostly managed to find a very specific formular that tends to really, really work. Which kinda guarantees Disney investors, especially as the franchise at large makes money then through a diversified portfolio (always remember: Disney makes most of their money through all things tourism, not movies, and not merchandise).
The problem is not the "Marvel humor". It is not even Marvel humor. It is "blockbuster movie humor" that has been around for about 20 years before the MCU got going. The problem is right now that most of the media we get being blockbuster media, and blockbuster media often giving creatives way less creative freedom, as the primary goal of blockbuster media is to recoop its costs.
We love to idealize the creative businesses - but in the end it is mostly just... a business.
The irony is though, that often times the people who cry the loudest over the Marvel Humor, tend to also cry the loudest, if a piece of media does not look great, because it did not have as much budget - which generally tends to show in how the special effects look in movies or the graphic fidelity in games.
And I don't know how to put this other than: you cannot have both things. Either you want media without "marvel humor" or you want media that looks amazing. The way media production is structured right now, having both is like having your cake and eating it too.
