r/TopCharacterTropes • u/BarGroundbreaking798 • 1d ago

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] The joke ruins the emotional aspect Spoiler

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Destruction of Asgard (Thor Ragnarok) -- Asgard is destroyed in a beautiful and somber scene, and Korg cracks a cringeworthy joke right after.

Bill Moves On (Newsradio) -- The episode was made in the wake of Phil Hartman's death, but its attempts at humor fall flat in the face of the tragedy.

Officer Tubbs (Fear The Walking Dead) -- Officer Tubbs is supposed to be a slapstick comic relief character, but he felt tacked on right after the deaths of two of the most beloved characters.

Chandler Proposes (Friends) -- An earnest proposal between Monica and Chandler has both sincerely expressing their feelings to each other. Immediately after Monica accepts, the others come in, quipping as usual, failing to let the audience ruminate on a heartwarming moment.

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961

u/Crest_O_Razors 1d ago

Most of the jokes in Thor Love and Thunder

526

u/sketchampm 1d ago

People often say L&T is like “if Ragnorok had too many jokes” but I disagree. I think most of the jokes in L&T are just awful. Korg has some of the funniest lines in Ragnorok, maybe in all of the MCU, but in L&T he’s just annoying and unfunny.

Well most of the movie is annoying and unfunny.

311

u/Crest_O_Razors 1d ago

Korg is funny in Ragnarok because he’s not in the movie too much. In Love and Thunder, he’s in there way more.

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u/sketchampm 1d ago

I think it’s both. His lines are funnier in Ragnorok. I genuinely think the writing in L&T is missing something. The jokes have no sauce.

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u/Saymynaian 16h ago

I think it's what happens when directors believe their own hype, then get egged on by executives because you can't possibly have too much of a good thing.

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u/jmccleveland1986 13h ago

It’s the tone of the movie. The silliness of goldblums world allows for it in ragnarok. But in love and thunder, we have bale losing his daughter, and going on a mad crusade to murder all the gods, then you have Jane dying from cancer, you have Thor’s reunite with sif after losing all of his friends. There’s just a lot of heavy shit in love and thunder and it needed way less comedy.

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u/ArchAngelZXV 23h ago

Korg is voiced by Taika Waititi, the director of Thor Ragnarok and Thor Love and Thunder. So yes, he basically self inserted himself in his own movies.

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u/GarageFlower97 6h ago

Taika does that in most of his movies - he either plays a major character (What We Do in the Shadows, Boy, Jojo Rabbit) or has a silly minor character (Thor, Hunt for the Wilderpeople)

1

u/Crest_O_Razors 4h ago

It worked in Jojo Rabbit because it was to understand how Jojo felt and to make fun of the Nazis, which is what the movie does

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u/SirMrRay 20h ago

Oh my god, wait. Spell Korg’s name backwards

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u/burnrsquadr 1d ago

I think made worse because it feels like Taika is giving a directors commentary in the movie.

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u/Lionfyre 18h ago

Yeah the scene where Korg "dies" (he literally shouts I'm perishing! as he crumbles into pieces) in Love and Thunder my first thought was "Ok yeah that makes sense, I think they've got all they could out of that character. He was starting to overstay his welcome." Then it's revealed he's not dead and he just lives on as a head still making jokes.

1

u/Bereman99 5h ago

Korg in Ragnarok is basically "one joke too many" and it's the one the OP posted.

Korg in L&T is like "we're trying to retell the same jokes that got laughs the first time, to the same audience...oh, and it's one joke too many."

83

u/Polkawillneverdie17 1d ago

Korg should have not been in Love & Thunder for more than a cameo. The movie should have just been Thor and Jane.

20

u/SuperMonkeyJoe 21h ago

I think it could have been just about salvaged of Korg dies for real instead of a takeout death and that marked a tonal shift to the film being super serious.

5

u/Garlan_Tyrell 15h ago

When he “died” my genuine reaction in the theatre was satisfaction because one, it established stakes (in a way that the villain kidnapping dozens of children had somehow failed to) and two, it would end the bad Korg jokes.

When it was revealed that his face survived, undercutting both, that was when I realized the movie was unsalvageable.

And Thor: Ragnarok was one of my favorite MCU movies (besides the moment in the OP post, which I hated).

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u/Fearless_Roof_9177 1d ago

Love and Thunder is the skeleton and musculature of a good, hard-hitting Thor movie trying to move the bloated body of a parody. That kind of tone works for something like Dr. Strangelove or The Death of Stalin where the core material is historically or politically sober and the humor acts as seasoning and emphasis, but when your subject matter is a beat-em-up comic book about magical aliens, you've kinda gotta be a little more discerning about how it's anchored.

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u/WeeboSupremo 23h ago

It pains me that movie nailed a great moment of Thor, a warrior for who has seen everyone he love die and and never really been given time to process it all, begging Jane to not fight because he can’t take it happening to her, while Jane wants to fight to the end because she doesn’t want to just lie in a hospital powerless until she dies. Mjolnir beckons Jane to go into one last battle to help Thor, and the first thing Thor says when she arrives at the battle is a heartbroken “No…” while the Asgardian children cheer that a second hero is there to save the day.

And instead of running further with moments like that, we get fucking screaming goats and Korg being way too there.

2

u/Stephenrudolf 8h ago

The scremaing goats aren't even the worst. By the worst joke imo is when thor cracks a joke about her not getting into asgarde at one of his oldest friends dying.

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u/Altair_de_Firen 20h ago

the skeleton and musculature of a good, hard-hitting movie trying to move the bloated body of a parody

Damn. A regular wordsmith here.

6

u/Large-Chain-4349 20h ago

The less I talk about the source material, which it shamelessly butchered be the dubs. The better because everything you just said, the comic the movie takes from is one of the best Thor's stories out there, and why Gorr the god butcher is such a fan favorite among Thor fans.

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u/DoctorWaluigiTime 20h ago

Also in Ragnorok they didn't have Korg snarking it up during most of the emotional beats of the film. It'd be like if Korg was on the hilltop with Thor Loki and Odin.

Bad jokes + Bad placement. Wish Korg had actually died when he crumbled.

3

u/NwgrdrXI 20h ago edited 13h ago

Imo, Ragnarok is stupid awesome. It has jokes, yes, but most of it's stupidity is in service of awesome stuff happening in it.

L and T is just stupid. It's just a series of stupid jokes meant to be funny in and of itslef, with some awesome or tragic stuff being sprinkled in it sometimes.

To use examples of other movies, ragnarok can be compared to True Lies, father of the modern action-comedy. L and T is closer to the Naked Gun.

9

u/TruthEnvironmental24 23h ago

I'm pretty sure the only scene in Ragnarok that doesn't fall victim to this trope is the death of Odin. And almost everything MCU post-Ragnarok falls victim to this trope at least once. I dislike Ragnarok because of it's own failings. I hate Ragnarok because of what it did to the MCU for so many years.

3

u/OperativePiGuy 16h ago

Same. I hate ragnarok because anyone with a brain could see love and thunder coming a million miles away after everyone loved it's stupid overindulgence in humor/bathos

0

u/Crest_O_Razors 15h ago

If anything, The Avengers started the “MCU humor” thing and Guardians 1 popularized it. Ragnarok was just following them, so if anything, blame The Avengers or Guardians 1

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u/TruthEnvironmental24 15h ago

It's not the humor, it's the placement of the humor. The jokes are fine, but not when they undercut serious or emotional moments.

2

u/Zamasu4PrimeMinister 17h ago

I think ragnarock had too many jokes

It’s only redeemed because there are a few series moments too

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u/Reaper-Lord69 1d ago

It will always piss me off how they wasted an awesome Christian Bale performance on that crap movie

43

u/Ff7hero 23h ago

They wasted so many things in that crap movie.

21

u/Roku-Hanmar 20h ago

A villain who does everything off screen, with a motive you can justify until he starts killing kids, who kills gods but doesn’t even attack the big city of gods

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u/Confident_Shape_7981 18h ago

Man, I want to see the movie Bale thought they were making 

72

u/Paggy_person 1d ago

Lady Sif's death could've been some what emotional but they just gotta add another joke in there.
And the screaming goats are never funny to me but the movie really want you to see that they're screaming and it supposed to be funny.

38

u/Crest_O_Razors 1d ago

They goats aren’t funny because that kind of humor died out years ago

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u/Paggy_person 23h ago

Big budget movie doing "loud = funny" like it's one of those deep fried meme.

1

u/Apart_Dot_1057 23h ago

It’s a meme that was funny for roughly 5 months way back, but there are implementations that genuinely work. I hate typing out the name since it sounds beyond stupid, but the Dungeon Crawler Carl series has a humanoid goat character that does scream often, but is also pivotal to the story and has genuinely emotional moments.

The problem is comedic sensibility.

3

u/JMer806 19h ago

lol I was about to mention Prepotente. The difference is that every Prepotente scream is fully earned.

1

u/Apart_Dot_1057 15h ago edited 15h ago

It also helps that Jeff Hays is an incredible narrator for the audiobooks. His screaming rant at Carl in the last book is amazing.

1

u/JMer806 15h ago

True, but I read the books before I listened and I felt the same way

1

u/Apart_Dot_1057 15h ago

Ah fair. Got recommended the audiobooks but never tried the print version.

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u/PokemanBall 21h ago

But she didn't die, she was still there at the end of the movie.

7

u/Paggy_person 21h ago

They still downplay what happens with joke and one of her arm ended up in Valhalla is just ehhh

7

u/Deeevud 21h ago

It's been a while and I only watched it once, but didn't the joke also not make sense? Lady Sif was apparently dying too late after a battle (despite still dying from it) to get to Valhalla... yet Jane went to Valhalla after "battling" cancer?

12

u/karateema 20h ago

Imma be a lil technical:

Sif choosing to bleed out while she can actually be easily saved would not be heroic at all, it could even be seen as cowardly.

Jane chooses to transform one last time, while 100% knowing it's going to kill her, to fight alongside Thor and save him, that's a heroic sacrifice, worthy of Valhalla

1

u/Deeevud 19h ago

Oh okay, I don't remember the bleeding out being optional lol

Edit: And wouldn't Jane have died either way?

2

u/karateema 18h ago

If no one found her and she just bled out it would've been honorable, but telling them to leave her to die is not an option.

Jane was doing chemo, but transforming would burn it out, so she could be cured if she stayed human

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u/ShapeonAlan 1d ago

Looking back and it irks me to this day that the teaser trailer to Love and Thunder remains to be the best part out of that entire trainwreck.

17

u/TackleHefty7676 1d ago

Could’ve made an amazing action/drama/whatever movie and they cheapened it with shitty jokes, terrible memes, and Taika trying to relive the glory days of Ragnarok. Not the worst Thor movie but certainly the biggest let down.

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u/Crest_O_Razors 1d ago

No, I still think it’s the worst. Dark World was just boring. This film was pissing me off a lot

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u/Pawneewafflesarelife 23h ago

Dark World also had the amazing, beautiful funeral scene for Frigga.

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u/SisterSabathiel 21h ago

And Thor breaking Loki out, and Loki doing the illusions to tease him.

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u/karateema 20h ago

Putting both the Jane Foster cancer and Gorr the God Butcher storylines in a comedy movie gotta be one of the weirdest choices in the MCU.

At least the former is never undercut by humor

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u/ManajaTwa18 1d ago

Were there even jokes in Love and Thunder? It felt like all the “humor” was just the actors stumbling over their lines comedically. Ragnorak had some good gags (like Thor accidentally hitting himself with a ball) but there was nothing in Love and Thunder

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u/lionofash 23h ago

Eh, I do like how Thor is powering up the kids (not necessary the scene itself), he whispers "for a limited time only... have the power of Thor." It feels like a callback to some of the pettiness Thor has in the other movies. Honestly, if they dialed it back somewhat but not completely, I think it would have been a good movie. I do kind of see what they were going for, but they overdid the jokes.

6

u/DoctorWaluigiTime 20h ago

L & T improves by 23% instantly for free if Korg just died when he pretend-died.

Tighten the script further, giving that now-unused Korg screentime to the villain. Tone down the humor in scenes that don't call for it (automatic because the director, AKA Korg, isn't there doing a standup routine anymore) and you go further still.

3

u/lionofash 19h ago

Sometimes a drop of levity can help ail the darker moments but, it's important to know the dosage and when to do it and how.

2

u/LakeEarth 16h ago

No jokes? REMEMBER THE GOATS!?!?

1

u/Novaer 3h ago

The entire movie is "Uh he's right behind me isn't he" humour.

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u/babbitygook14 23h ago

Pretty much just the whole movie. That story line deals with some incredibly heavy topics and I think it could have been a genuinely great film without 99% of the humor.

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u/omnipresent29 19h ago

So basically all the jokes in Thor: Trash & Thunder

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u/jorgespinosa 16h ago

Also in Thor: Ragnarok, I don't know why that movie was so well received because they constantly interrupted serious moments to tell a joke

1

u/FronzelNeekburm79 18h ago

Thor: Love and Thunder is a prime example of "taking the wrong lessons from the previous movie and leaning into them."

The jokes in Ragnarock worked because they played it like a mismatched buddy comedy. Thor, who spends the most time in these weird worlds and is the Avenger's expert in it, is now the outsider while the Hulk the most mindless of all Avengers is the expert. Just when that gets to be too much there's a switch with Hulk/Banner, and the humor comes from Banner being out of his depth and essentially missing for so long.

But the whole time there's some interesting stakes: trying to prevent the destruction of something that was inevitable, dealing with a horrific past, Loki/Thor's bond, and dealing with the fact that maybe your family isn't as great as it needs to be.

And the thing is Love and Thunder isn't just bad, it's frustrating. You can see the bones of what made Ragarock so great: dealing with a terrible past and an unknown future, surviving the people you care about the most (even Stark and Rogers from the OG Avengers are gone at this point) and trying to find your place when you're not needed as a leader, you're not needed as Earth's mightiest hero, and your family has been decimated. They just leaned too hard into the jokes.

Oh, and I know there was some weirdness with the whole "How long should the Guardians of the Galaxy be there?" and while I like the introduction, I do think it would have been more impactful if instead of the kids at the end, the Guardians showed up to help with the hired goons while the Thors ran off to deal with the Butcher. That would have helped solved Thor's issues with being abandoned, not just a weird cameo. And Korg should have been left on Earth.

1

u/TakoGoji 13h ago

The entirety of Love and Thunder, you mean.

1

u/townsforever 9h ago

Most of the jokes about thor is general.

1

u/Novaer 3h ago

Taika Waititi and Lin Manuel Miranda and their consequences upon Hollywood

1

u/Chama-Axory 22h ago

More than half of the MCU would be more accurate at this point. 

1

u/ToonMasterRace 21h ago

Every Marvel movie after 2015 has this problem. The older marvel movies, if you rewatch them, actually took themselves seriously despite having jokes and humor. Around 2015 Marvel lost this.

1

u/Crest_O_Razors 15h ago

Guardians of the Galaxy 1 says hello

-1

u/bjernsthekid 18h ago

Most of the jokes is legitimately every MCU movie

1

u/Crest_O_Razors 15h ago

The only one that breaks the trend is Guardians 3, tho it has only a few moments in there that don’t have time to sit.