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Narm / Marvel Cinematic Universe

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    Phase 1 

Captain America: The First Avenger

  • The Hydra salute may make it very hard for some viewers to take them seriously. The silliness of the salute got lampshaded big-time in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. when it was said to make a lackey "look like a West Texas cheerleader at a pep rally."
  • Any of the fight scenes involving Hydra's Disintegrator Rays are unintentionally silly. Not only do they shoot Slow Lasers, anyone they hit instantly turns into a puff of blue smoke. Watching soldiers running forward while occasionally some of them go poof is just surreal. It's also rather obviously a way for the film to show WWII battles with causalities and still have Bloodless Carnage.

    Phase 2 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

  • During the fight with Batroc, Cap dramatically removing his mask looks somewhat comedic thanks to the helmet hair.
  • After an entire movie of proving HYDRA has evolved from Those Wacky Nazis into a realistically terrifying sleeper cell inside S.H.I.E.L.D., The Stinger reveals Thomas Kretschmann hamming it up as Baron von Strucker. His passing resemblance to Colonel Klink makes the dissonance greater.
  • During the climatic battle, Captain America tries to get the Winter Soldier to remember his life as Bucky. The Winter Soldier yells "Shut up!" as if he were a whiny teenager.
  • The Winter Soldier's Theme is a relatively intimidating piece of music... until a kazoo becomes the primary instrument.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

  • "Your politics bore me", a line coming from Thanos, comes across as unintentionally hammy and almost straight out of something you would hear in a Golden Age comic book. Though it's mitigated by the fact that this mirrors the reaction of a lot of the audience towards Ronan. He also refers to Ronan as having the demeanor of "a pouting child", something that would be outright silly if Ronan wasn't indeed pouting like a sullen little boy upon his departure.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

  • Wanda tearing a random gadget out of Ultron's chest that looks just like a heart. With the revelation that this machine has such a vital component stored in the place that an enemy is most likely to attack, it just looks way too melodramatic. Elizabeth Olsen's melodramatic delivery of already cheesy dialogue combined with a shot of gratuitous cleavage make it hard to take her vengeance seriously.
  • While the delivery somewhat saves it, Thanos' line when he claims the Infinity Gauntlet in The Stinger — "Fine, I'll do it myself!" — sounds more like something a petulant teenager would say than an ominous declaration by the Big Bad of the MCU.

    Phase 3 

Captain America: Civil War

  • The shot of Team Cap doing a Tom Cruise-styled run together earned its share of laughs for being unintentionally silly looking. The fact that it ended up being the thumbnail of the first official trailer hurt matters.
  • The shot of everyone running at each other in the airport battle is pretty awesome, but a few points definitely aren't. Scarlet Witch uses her powers to blast herself upwards, but they're gone in the next shot and she looks like she's awkwardly flailing through the air and regretting her decision. Meanwhile, The Vision is just drifting along in a casual airborne pose like he's a balloon on a string. Some people also found the fact that the small number of people fighting (the area looks practically empty) makes it more silly-looking than awesome.
  • Black Widow going against Team Iron Man and helping Steve and Bucky escaping to the Quinjet by shocking Black Panther is less impressive when the film shows the process is essentially her shocking him as he stumbles for a few seconds before shrugging it off, takes a few steps forward, she shocks him, he stumbles then shrugs it off, lather, rinse, repeat.
  • The scene in the hospital in which an upset Tony questions Vision about the Rhodey misfire is meant to be moving and desolating, but it gets a bit ruined when a close-up on Vision's back accidentally highlights his cape's stamped curtain-like pattern.
  • The Russos recalled that while watching the film in a theater, they found the audience laughing at multiple moments that weren't intended to be funny (though this is arguably less the fault of the film than it is the audience being conditioned to Whedon-style comedy beats from the Avengers films). In particular, they noted that Tony one-shotting Sam offhandedly after Rhodey's crash drew a round of laughter from the audience, despite it intending to be dark scene.note 
  • The giant title cards are incredibly jarring and rather than set a dramatic scene, come across as a bit funny.

Doctor Strange (2016)

  • Stephen's car accident starts off properly visceral and terrifying... but some moviegoers found that it went on for so long and that the car seems to fall from such an absurd height that it crossed over from scary to unintentionally hilarious in a Black Comedy sort of way.

Thor: Ragnarok

  • The words "Asgard is not a place, it's a people" are intended to be Arc Words taken seriously, but the words are only said for the first time during Thor's vision while fighting Hela in the final battle, and then stated once every few minutes afterward until the end of the movie, making them seem much more silly and much less profound than they were intended to be.
  • The whole lead up to the Hulk reveal is played straight as a surprising revelation, but since the reveal of the Hulk was shown outright in the trailers it can get gratuitously funny to those who paid attention to the most basic promotional material. If anything, audiences were looking forward to the scene since it became one of the movie’s biggest selling points.
  • Thor's visions of Odin after his death may become a lot harder to take seriously when he's dressed in street clothes rather than Asgardian garb. It also doesn't help the camera starts at a distance and then zooms in really quickly everytime.

Avengers: Infinity War

  • While Zoe Saldaña does a good job overall, she has two dramatic scenes where she makes Gamora look too Wangsty. The scene where Gamora thinks she killed Thanos and grieves maybe too hard over the act, and the scene where Gamora predictably throws the meal Thanos offers her and starts ranting about how much she hates him.
  • Thanos using the Reality Stone to unravel Mantis into a living fleshy ribbon is suitably disturbing, but it clashes with Mantis going *BOING!* and springing into the air like a jack-in-the-box.
  • Early on, Gamora says that if Thanos gets all the stones, he can rewrite reality like that, snapping her fingers to illustrate the point. For the rest of the series, every time someone uses all the stones, they literally snap their fingers in so doing. While the first instance has a certain Narm Charm quality to it, showcasing he's exactly as powerful as Gamora says, it gets kind of silly to see it repeat.

Avengers: Endgame

  • With the trailer again, the phrase "Whatever it takes" is not the most inspiring thing, but it's decent enough for the scenario. However, saying it about a dozen times feels a lot more like a Running Gag, or a video game character who only has one phrase.

    Phase 4 

WandaVision

  • The scene where Wanda brings Westview Vision to life is meant to be dramatic, but some found it hard to take it seriously because of the exaggerated way she bends her body backwards while she's doing it.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

  • While the scene where Walker kills a Flag-Smasher in cold blood in front of a crowd is appropriately nightmarish, the effect is somewhat undercut by this shot. The pose and Walker's wide-open mouth make it look less like he's overcome with vengeful rage and more like he has just encountered a large spider.

Black Widow

  • Dreykov revealing that he can't be harmed by the Black Widows because of his strong pheromones (i.e. they can't hurt him if they can smell him) has been called out as being more silly than it is intimidating. It was also ultimately unneeded given he was already happily indulging in Evil Gloating beforehand, making the need to "trick" him into a false sense of domination feel unneeded. It's also hard not to laugh at the way Natasha thwarts his pheromone defense system by breaking her nose with a forceful Head Desk.
  • Dreykov saying that girls are the only natural resource there's too much of has gotten a few chuckles both due to the questionable logic and the way it makes him sound like a Saturday morning cartoon Straw Misogynist villain.
  • Dreykov's death. The effects of the fire absorbing him are already iffy, but the very cartoonish way his glasses survive the explosion and fly towards the camera makes it almost impossible to take seriously.

What If…? (2021)

  • Many viewers said the universe's determination to kill Christine Palmer just got amusing after a while, especially when Stephen actually does manage to get her safely to the ceremony, only for her to randomly just die for no reason while they're dancing.

Eternals

  • The final battle is full of moments that are less dramatic than was probably intended:
    • Kro's arrival earns many a laugh due to how goofy he looks.
    • Druig taking Sprite out of the fight by hitting her in the head with a rock. This has earned a few chuckles from audiences due to how abrupt it is and immediately following an emotional monologue from Sprite.
    • Sersi running has also gained laughs from the audience as every time we cut to her in the final battle she is still just running towards the volcano with nothing else happening to her.
    • After Tiamut is killed, Ikaris decides to commit suicide by flying at super-speed directly into the sun. It's insanely over-the-top and comes straight out of nowhere.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

  • The reveal that America Chavez's life was ruined because a bee landed on her hand, causing her to freak out and accidentally open a portal that sucked her parents into another universe to their presumed deaths. While the moment itself is quite tragic, the fact that it was caused by a tiny little bug makes it hard to take seriously.
  • America Chavez’s bloodcurdling scream as she attacks Scarlet Witch during the final battle can elicit some unintended chuckles from the audience due to how unnatural it sounds. It almost sounds like a fake war cry she’d give at boot camp.

    Phase 5 

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

  • The first post credits scene shows an assembly of thousands of variants of Kang all bent on conquering the main Earth. It's pretty intimidating... up until the Kangs start hooting and hollering like a rowdy football crowd. It's rather deflating watching these supposedly sophisticated and intelligent warriors all acting like orc Mooks.

Secret Invasion

  • In the finale, G'iah shows off her newfound absorbed strength by transforming her arm into Drax's. Unfortunately, because Drax's arm is such a different size and shape than the rest of G'iah's body, it had to be resized into what is basically a baby arm with Drax's musculature, unintentionally making her look ridiculous.

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