It's commonplace to see people calling out certain "isms" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I sometimes find every definition of what they're doing wrong too broad. Not to mention, seemingly contradictory with what was apparently popular, at one point.
Like, the earlier movies were very quip-heavy as well, and yet they were very popular. It can't just be that the template's become played out, can it? That would create an indiffierent audience reaction, not a bitter one.
And even when folks bring up specifics, such as bathos - a high impact moment being deliberately undermined by humor - I think back to how Thor Ragnarok had so many of those moments, and yet that was perhaps the most beloved MCU entry of them all, at time of release.
I kinda want to see a breakdown on the varying shades of grey on this matter. How can a writing style be egregious in some contexts but not so much in others? Are there any entries in the franchise that are "middle of the road" guilty? I'd like to learn the scent of something that's "sort of" annoyingly Whedonesque, so I can distinguish it from when that writing is more extreme. Positive or negative.
What’s important to remember first and foremost is that if you are going to utilize “quippy” dialogue, make sure it is informed by your characters or “in character” for such a line to be uttered.
To use an example from the MCU, the reason many find endearing Steve Rogers’ “I understood that reference” is because it cannot be simply interchanged with another character; we laugh because we understand why Steve would react in such a manner given the context.
When writing such dialogue, it is worthwhile to ask yourself “does it make sense for my character to be reacting with this, given the scene?”
I think you touched on a big issue.
Leave the quips to the comic relief characters. Tony Stark made sense to quip, same with Rocket, and some others.
It's when every single character has to quip that I get annoyed. It's okay to have some serious characters.
I think to put it more specifically, you have a problem if your “quip” or comic relief dialogue can be interchanged between characters and it’s a wash.
To use another example, the Fortnite joke in Endgame sucks major donkey balls because it’s really self-evident in what it is; it’s a topical gamer “joke”. That’s all. It’s not informed by anything about Thor or his character, and could so easily be delivered by any other character and fall just as flat.
Excuse me, the what?
near the start, korg is playing fortnite and complains about someone to thor, who then proceeds to yell at a kid about how he will come to his house and, i believe, rip off his arms and shove them up his ass.
i may be getting some of this wrong, it's been a few years since i watched it, but that's the general vibe.
The Classic "Comic and Straight man" is a classic for a reason.
When everyone is a comic, it often doesn't work as well.
Though I do think the role can be transient and different characters can be either depending on the situation, especially if one character is clearly in their own element in a certain situation (For example, a Noble and a commoner each being more comfortable and "jokey" with their own people)
If everyone is funny, it does get boring.
If you watch Friends, Chandler is funny because he keeps making silly quips and the other friends are often annoyed. When you watch it, it might seem odd because he's funny so you wonder why they're not just laughing.
But if you have a friend like that, it can just be annoying. Like everything is just a joke and the stupid jokes can just be distracting and annoying sometimes.
Movies do this too.
If the action is tense and the characters start joking, it can ruin the tension.
Everything you outlined here is why Community continues to be my favorite sitcom. Every character is a comic. However, they each play the straight man as the scene depends on it. Pierce may miss a reference, Shirley may not play along, Britta takes something too seriously, etc, etc. The characters naturally bounce off of each other and their individual personality traits influence how they respond. No one is fighting to be the funniest. Serious moment are handled with the right emotional weight.
That makes sense, but does anyone low key dislike it when it's too extreme? like it kind of feels a bit overdone or something? when the protagonist is flat and/or broody all the time and the comic one is always joking and can never be serious. I feel like it gets a little old. Or like the flavorless, male protagonist, plus the male friend who only speaks in quips and the woman who's also flavorless bc she already has either The Love Interest or The Strong Female in place of a personality. why can't she (or any of them really) have more than one personality trait?💀
I love when all the characters have their own brand of funny, that's unique to them. you might have one who's kind of quippy, one who's sort of unintentionally comical, one who has more dry humor ect. Not that they all have to have the same Serious-To-Comedic ratio though, bc it's good to have certain characters be more often serious/comical than others. I didn't mean for this comment to be so long and Idk if it makes any sense, but it's just something I think about. It's also part of why I can't figure out how to go about writing a protagonist with a personality 😅
Well yeah, that was what I meant by it being transient and based on the situation.
Most people are funny. This is true for real life.
Even if they're not always funny, the majority of people like to laugh and make others laugh.
They just need to have different senses of humour. It's no fun if everyone has the same sense of humour and the same jokes and everyone is always making jokes.
Some people have gallows humour and others have more goofy or silly humour, while there are even more types like more refined references. I love the gag of a normally serious character making a joke and it's hilarious to them but nobody else gets it. Or the character that seems to enjoy being the gruff and scary guy, so his "joke" is scaring or making other characters uncomfortable.
One of the best parts about Brooklyn 99 is that the characters all have such different personalities and they're all funny but they are not all funny all the time.
You're right in that there shouldn't be a character that's always funny, but if every character is funny and making the same jokes, it often seriously impacts the tone of the story.
One of the reasons I dislike Marvel films is that they make too many silly jokes that damage the mood of the scene (as others have mentioned around this thread, the "bathos")
I think that this might be why the Guardians of the Galaxy felt so off in Infinity War. Gunn is a quip maximalist, and a lot of them don't land. But the quips still tie into the character. In Infinity War, they just felt different. Much like they did at the beginning of Love and Thunder. Thinking about it, the quipping in Infinity War largely ignored the characters and their growth through the series. Well, that and Gunn can write quips that are still a bit heartfelt.
I suppose I’d need examples to concede on anything for Infinity War. From what I remember, in lieu of it being one of the more “darker” entries in the MCU, Infinity War surprisingly had a large degree of quality jokes and humor, most of which I remember landing for me and being in character throughout.
Endgame, however…oof.
Also, time and place. A lot of what frustrates people about newer MCU dialogue is that the jokes often come right on the heels of more serious moments, thus reducing the emotional impact of those moments.
I think it’s predictability. As eye-roll worthy as those memes are, there is some merit of criticism behind “erm, that just happened” kind of dialogue. It’s the modern version of blue humor. It’s wasting the audience’s time by taking a step back and saying “Did you hear the funny thing we just said? This is us acknowledging the funny thing we said. Laugh because we are funny.” Like a Family Guy bit going on for way too long. If we already get it, it stops being funny.
Good quips, in my opinion, should have multiple layers, whether it’s to serve the theme or character development, or something. Let’s take some lines from The Avengers (2012) itself:
Black Widow: “These guys come from legends, they’re basically gods!”
Captain America: “There’s only one God, ma’am. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that!”
This is a good line, because even if you might not find it funny, it’s still fitting to his character. He’s a super soldier who was frozen since WWII. He’s not JUST quipping for quip’s sake, he’s arguing with her in his own way that makes him distinct (before jumping off a transport carrier).
Here’s another I still think is funny:
Thor: “Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother.”
Black Widow: “He killed 80 people in two days.”
Thor: “…He’s adopted.”
Here the humor comes from the horror of what the main villain has been doing and Thor’s weak defense for it. It might hit home for those dealing with or have dealt with adopted children in some way. It also tells the audience through dark humor, “Holy crap, Loki’s not someone to mess with.”
Some other important things here is that 1) no one in-universe laughs at the comment(s) and 2) they move on quickly when the quip(s) are made.
Bryan Cranston said something in a Hot Ones interview that helps me with writing to this day: If a character laughs or cries at something, you risk taking the power of that emotion away from the audience. If something funny happens that the characters take seriously, the audience will laugh in their place. If something emotional happens that has the characters holding back their tears, the audience will be the ones to cry for them.
If the audience is able to predict what quips a character will say, how will you expect them to laugh in the first place?
I think it's also balancing tone of the movie.
Like Thor: Ragnarok and the Guardians of the Galaxy Movies. All bright and colorful about a bunch of dumbasses with motives that aren't so much saving the world as they are personal objectives. Even in Guardians, them saving the galaxy is because they live in it. Heroes, but not by choice. They're gonna be silly a lot but that's okay.
But then you get the Avengers with their serious tones and it's just like why are you making quips while you're literally beating the shit out of your best friends because of your opinion on the government ?
also love and thunder is a masterclass in how to do it WRONG because like.
Ronan was a fanatic and genuinely terrifying, and the movie didn't shy away from that, with the humor being much less focused around his parts of the movie. He was a real threat.
The Sovereign were a joke while still being a threat, and serve to introduce Ego as purposefully overly kind and jovial before it's revealed he's scary as fuck, with jokes like the 'That's my freaking dad!' feeling very much like a panic response, a "haha what the fuck".
The High Evolutionary was honestly never played for laughs. I think there were a few quips but they were very much 'fuck you' lines and not 'haha i'm gonna be snarky to the deeply unsettling eugenic perfectionist with a god complex"
The Grandmaster was quirky and Hela was monstrous and both were played against each other as themes, the interactions with the former being a fucked up willy wonka esque type and the later being the shakespearean stuff of the old thor.
Love and Thunder is a good example of a bad thing because it takes what is one of the most bone-chilling villains in marvel, casts CHRISTIAN BALE, makes him creepier, and then proceeds to basically never have him have a serious moment with the main character.
I still mourn Gor's portrayal. That was one of Thor's best stories and it was turned into a 3hr long sitcom.
A waste of such a good actor too.
Same thing about Mighty Thor
Literally one of the best Thor stories in the last decade, and they fucked it up.
I don't know if the studio was afraid of producing a more serious, somber story...or if they were afraid of not centering the movie on Hemsworth...but they really dropped the ball
They had an amazing story, and 2 great actors (Natalie Protman and Christian Bale), imagine if they had really told the story, it could have been amazing
Allegedly Waititi, Bale, and some others even were only doing it for a pay check and didn't really care about quality. A real shame with how cool and terrifying Gorr is and how good Ragnarok was, but on the bright side we still have those things so we don't actually need to mourn them.
Huh, I remember liking Love and Thunder but now that I try to think back on it Im realising I actually remember more of Dark World. Guess that's a pretty good sign it was a ghost train ride.
While I loved GOTG:1, I hated GOTG:2.
Part of the reason was that those stupid golden people were just so stupid and unthreatening. Same goes for literally every threat in the film.
I don't think that film ever had any suspense at all (in my opinion) and I think that a lot of the jokes or otherwise "emotional" scenes were prone to a Bathos that ruined the scene, like a cutaway to Baby Groot or something.
I remember that I used to love the first few Marvel Films and thought they were funny and good, but around the time of GOTG2, I realised that the humour really ruined my enjoyment of them, and they felt like they were pandering to those types of fans and I wasn't one of those fans.
That's why I stopped watching them, and even now I can like some of the scenes, but I can also easily point out to times that the humour or "fanservice" has ruined a scene.
Every scene with the Sovereign was like this.
They're so stupid and inept it wasn't even funny, it was just annoying.
I mean I get where you're coming from but I disagree with their being no threat or suspense.
The Sovereign weren't the main bad guys of the movie in the slightest and their inept arrogance served as a foil to Ego's, who could quite literally back it up as he was basically a god. When they discovered what he was doing to his kids, when Peter gets introduced to "The Sea" and used as the battery, when Yondu dies, when the Sovereign catch up after the asteroid field and are the reason the ship crashes and is destroyed, when Yondu gets mutinied and they treat Baby Groot like that... there are definitely moments not played for laughs.
I agree with most of what you said but Ronan bring terrifying is not tracking with my recollection at all.
Think they mean gor
This. People are tying to imitate these dynamics, but are they even worth imitating in the first place? Marvel writing and overly quippy dialogue are the laughing stock of both cinema and literature.
I'd also add to this that in a lot of cases the films present something that's weird or silly to the real world (often something from comic lore), then go out of their way to point out how weird or silly that concept or character is.
It's like they're afraid to take the source material seriously for what it is and they have to deflect with dialogue which bluntly states "yes, we know this is stupid too", rather than embracing it
I'd argue that taking the character seriously is what makes the core of Iron Man and many early entries so strong.
Yeah, I think this is the heart of it. Its not just about bathos in the moment, though I do think they drop into humour at the emotional climax far too often, but when the whole character gets treated as a punchline.
Rocket is a good character despite being one of the most inherently silly in the franchise: he's a hotheaded talking raccoon who's friends with a talking tree and in the lineup of the comedy group, but when he's agonising over his traumatic past we are expected to take him seriously and so it resonates. But when they take Thor's regret and despair and turn it into 'lol he's fat and playing Fortnite now' we pick up on the fact they've undermined what could've been interesting and turned it into a cheap laugh.
Thor is an especially painful one because the way they handled him coming to terms with his trauma (in a scene with a talking cgi rabbit no less!) was genuinely great, and further elevated by Hemsworth's acting. It's interesting to see such a confident and headstrong character so downtrodden and full of doubt which they're barely able to hide.
Couldn't disagree harder here. As someone who's grappled with severe depression, it was infuriating seeing Thor's character arc in Endgame.
Thor never confronts his depression. He runs from it at every possible opportunity.
He never does the work of climbing out of his despair - instead he wallows in it, risking their one shot at restoring half the life in the universe because his anxiety was too great.
And none of that is inherently bad storytelling. It certainly gives a good look at what it's like to be clinically depressed and anxiety-riddled.
But the movie plays it off for laughs constantly. The people around him type-A the shit out of him and rather than show how they're driving him further into that bleak retreat of despair, he's just kind of oblivious to it.
It's only an intervention by his mother, which he would have avoided if he could have, that gets him to start the journey back.
Except there's no journey. She says "you're still a hero" and "eat a salad" and suddenly he can summon Mjolnir again. No exploration of what it means to be worthy
The message is awful: "You don't have to work at resolving your trauma: you're fine just the way you are, just stop being sad and you're a superhero."
And Hemsworth brought nothing to the table acting-wise. It was an opportunity to explore the character at his lowest, and it was like watching an adult Hemsworth on stage at a highschool drama class.
I do blame the writing, severely. "Ha-ha Fat Thor" took the winds out of any dramatic sails the portrayal might have had. And Hemsworth is a ship without a rudder once the Thor formula shifts.
i get it so, they imagine in their head, ok thor gonna be sad, lets make this funny, omg lol lets troll the fat fortnite videogamer loosers thats gonna be funny
instead they should believably show thor sad, and the laughs should come from him being Thor. not thor trolling the viewer and breaking the 4th wall a bit.
There's a scene in the second avengers movie where Hawkeye says something about how none of this should be happening, he has a bow and arrows, it's ridiculous.... Which comes off as hilarious because he's doing just that. "Look, we know this is silly, but it is what it is." And then him muttering about shooting the speedy guy because he has to run after them at normal speeds is just so relatable. So we laugh, while he's just venting about how annoying the whole thing is.
lampshading, ad nauseum.
as a kid sometimes you watch a serious or campy thing, like a villain scaring your hero or whatever, and you're like self-inserting and like "what if i danced, all goofy like, to disco, and the alien superdemon is like confused, i'm so random lol, then the hero gains confidence and wins!"
(cough, yeah that was guardians of the galaxy but whatever)
this sort of undercutting just seems to be something fan fiction is made of. the zany outsider makes fun of the serious thing!
there's something funny about, again let's use marvel since they're so known fro quips, mads the wizard or whatever meeting dr stephen strange and having that awkward language issue regarding the name, because it takes the characters at face value for the moment they're talking.
also, sometimes it feels too... 'i can imagine exactly the sort of person writing this' and it's just lazy. a drawn out 'uhhh is that our plan guys?' is such lazy lampshading you'd find in every student play.
it's cowardly writing.
I can't tell if you're speaking positively about some things or not in your comment, so I just wanted to make it clear, for anyone in doubt, that the Mads and Strange talk is hilarious.
it is! it's one instance of it being done well and from an authentic, characteristic place.
other stuff, less so because it feels like self-insert or scary movie territory!
I read an interview with the actor where he said he decided to play the over-the-top mad wizard character completely straight, and that’s why it worked so well.
“He’s trying to steal a necklace from a wizard” is still one of my favorite lines in all of marvel. I do think there’s sometimes something funny in pointing out the ridiculousness of a situation. Humor is just very subjective.
I’d say the 2022 Batman movie demonstrated this concept pretty well. The idea of a Batman in that setting seems kind of ridiculous with all the gritty realism but the movie just rolls with it and they don’t second guess themselves
AKA lampshading, to borrow TVTropes lingo
I think the term pre-dates TV Tropes, and in any case they call it "lampshade hanging" there. Someone made a TV Tropes page about my novel, so I've spent some time checking the place out.
The first sentence on their site, clarifies “or more informally, ‘lampshading’.”
Lampshading.
"my name is Dr. Otto Octavius"
then they laugh at the name, to maintain the suspension of disbelief that it IS a ridiculous name and in universe they think so too.
Alanah Pearce just had an interview with Tim Cain, creator of Fallout, about the show and she points out that the writers had many opportunities to do explanatory quips but the fact they showed restrain worked way better, she uses the Stimpack scene as one where they could have easily had Lucy say something like, "well, that worked" or anything to point out the absurdity of a syringe shot healing a stabbing wound but they didn't.
She heals herself and move on and the vast majority of the audience got the joke, and it's much better that its teken seriously in-world because it makes it just that much absurd.
just wanted to say, beautiful breakdown!
Man bryan cranston is a master at emotions and portrayal
He's also a good example for this discussion because few people are as good at both comedy and drama as him.
Ikr therse a reason he was winning emmys straight among people like Matthew McConaughey
Just wanted to add that some predictable lines are fine as long as they suit the character. Like Nick Fury saying "Motherf-" when he gets dusted at the end of Infinity Ward. I actually said it at the same time as him and was really satisfying so see I was right that he'd say it 😁 sure, that wasn't really a joke but it's Fury's characteristic line.
A lot of the ones I find funny are when the character isn’t TRYING to be funny or doesn’t realise they are quipping. Your examples seem to have that in common also. They could also only be said by the character that said them, not just for the sake of a laugh. The ones that fall flat are when the character is forcing a joke becasue it’s a marvel movie and it’s been 30 seconds since a character did a funny thing to break the tension. Like have the BALLS to let the tension sit with the viewers, then when it’s finally broken it’s a much bigger (comic) relief for the audience.
Yeah, this is a good tip. It's not just about being funny, it's about relating the joke to the specific character talking.
Right, I would add that even if the joke doesn't land, as long as it's in character and it isn't jarring, then it can still work.
Joss Whedon was a great writer. He also came from 90s sitcoms.
Thoughtful, helpful response.
I think this is the problem. Everyone is quipping in the same way.
Instead of imparting character, it's flattening the character to serve as audience/writer/actor stand in
To add to the "erm, that just happened" joke criticism, they also feel insecure and self-conscious to me, especially the ones about the genre/subject matter. "Isn't this costume silly?" "Wow, (superhero name), that's a weird name!" "What a wacky fantastical situation this is, look how we're lampshading it!" It feels like the Marvel movies have gotten so popular that they think they should be cool instead of into this nerd shit so they constantly try to poke fun at how weird superheroes are, and its just a bit tiring at this point. I get it, colourful costumes, silly names, weird worldbuilding. If it's so embarrassing for you then don't make superhero movies.
It’s largely context dependent.
A good quip is welcome during moments of levity.
A bad quip is often undercutting an otherwise weighty moment. It’s the tonal whiplash that makes it feel cheap. Better to let a serious moment be serious than to shoehorn a “fun” moment into the middle of it.
It's also worth noting that characterization is important, too. Spiderman is known for his moments of levity in dangerous situations, because it's one way that he copes with anxiety, and that actually works -- as long as that's clearly demonstrated.
Yeah I just used Spider-Man as an example in another comment. The key thing is that he’ll joke around mid combat all day, until the villain puts a loved one in real danger. That’s when the tone shifts and he gets serious, and that makes those moments feel weighty.
I'd emphasise "undercutting". People often do turn to humour in dark moments and the right humour can make the moment feel weightier.
For example Tony Stark chewing out Peter in Homecoming (might be better examples, this is what I found): "Don't do anything I would do, and definitely don't do anything I wouldn't do. There's a little gray area in there, and that's where you operate."
That's funny but it carries weight because it's also Tony being deadly serious in a very Tony way. And it flows naturally from character. Tony wants better from Peter, he's well aware he isn't the best role model so he shuts down that line of dissent, hard.
IMO that's a moment where the humour underscores the moment rather than undermining it.
I watched some older James Bond movies recently and one thing I noticed is how much of a difference it made when Bond was making quips in serious moments in order to give off the impression he’s unfazed when actually we know he’s shitting himself and thinks he’s about to die, vs how much worse the Bond movies are when Bond makes quips in serious moments because it’s like he’s aware he’s a fictional character and is aware of his own hype
It’s amazing how much the same character played by the same actor can feel suave and cool in one movie and feel like a massive prick in the next movie
Bond's quips are awesome when they land well.
They are like little one-liners.
And he doesn't go around saying stupid shit like "Oh that's Blofeld being Blofeld" or "that's SO Moneypenny" - they are context dependent, hit in the emotional beat in the moment, often reference a character who is introduced and dispatched and quipped away in the very same scene.
And they aren't a substitute for expository dialogue and world-building, as they are in the MCU.
Classic Moneypenny.
examples pleeeease :) i wanna learn
Not a classic bond movie, but I think one good example is in Casino Royale when Le Chiffre is torturing him. He’s obviously terrified and understands the gravity of the situation but he talks shit to Le Chiffre anyway. It’s almost like a coping mechanism for him. In his eyes he’s already dead, so he may as well go out with his pride intact.
I think this is where MCU writers get it wrong a lot. Their quips kill the stakes whereas these Bond quips upped them and added to his characterisation. The MCU style quips are, a lot of the time, simply in bad taste. Maybe it’s just the timing? They make it seem like the heroes aren’t taking the situation seriously, joking around on the job. They are there to save these people, not stand around bantering between each other while innocent civilians are dying all around them.
Another example is Goldfinger, when Connery's Bond is strapped to the laser table. He's trying to play it cool, but is genuinely scared that he's about to die. https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/r0nmeg/goldfinger_laser_scene_is_one_of_the_few_times/
The specific movie that annoyed the fuck out of me with how Bond seemed to believe his own hype and be aware that he was a fictional character was Diamonds Are Forever
It felt like Connery was playing a caricature of Bond rather than just playing Bond. Can’t remember specific lines that annoyed me off the top of my head because it was basically the whole movie lol
Compare that Bond to Connery in Goldfinger when he bluffs his way out of getting killed by the laser. We know he’s bullshitting but Goldfinger can’t take that risk. It’s not exactly a quippy moment in and of itself but it gives context that Bond’s unflappable exterior is at least partially an act that he uses to make enemies think he has the upper hand even when he doesn’t
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DC tried to do the Marvel house style thing for a while but IMO they're at their strongest when they let each film be its own thing.
I think they realised when Shazam! and Wonder Woman became successful in rapid succession by each playing to their own strengths. And then Aquaman was it's own bonkers style. Then The Suicide Squad and now The Batman each brought their own identity.
DC drops the ball quite a lot, but at least they don't feel as samey as Marvel. Marvel tends to replicate the same strengths and weaknesses across every film.
my favorite trope is when a quip is turned into something serious in the right moment. for example a character's favorite phrase could go from funny and endearing in normal circumstances to a knife twisting gut punch when they die.
"I told you to go left" in Infinity War
THIS
Thor Ragnarok was this for me. A lot of tragic events like their father dying, bonding moments, their planet getting destroyed—always undercut. Not surprised Love and Thunder was received so badly because it did it again but was rather more obvious about it.
I'm glad you said it. I've never understood the hardcore fandom around that movie because I find it so hollow. One of the things helped the MCU to its level of success is that the movies - for big Hollywood studio 4-quadrant entertainment - are rarely empty.
But Ragnarok is empty. It's a fun empty, and still better than the general emptiness that most studio blockbusters deliver, but empty nevertheless. All these big character moments are just met with shrugs and quips. There is so much death and destruction but wheeeeee Hulk gonna smash.
There's no theme or meaning to any of it. Iron Man has a theme. Avengers has a theme. Guardians of the Galaxy has a theme. Whatever meaning a reader might make out of Ragnarok is constantly undercut by the movie's tone and other filmmaker choices.
Exactly! Thor Ragnarok is a perfect example of the MCU learning the exact wrong lesson from the popularity of Guardians of the Galaxy. GotG being a comedy heavy movie worked because the Guardians and everyone else in their movies are established as total goofballs from the outset, so everybody being quipping and throwing in jokes worked well. Plus, when someone actually serious shows up, it's a big deal.
Ragnarok took generally serious if occasionally quippy characters and made them quip and joke nearly nonstop. The only quips and jokes I actually found funny were from Loki, since he was generally pretty well established as a goofball, albeit a villainous one.
Taika Waititi has been very open about the theme. It's reckoning with the consequences of empire: violent, oppressive conquest fucks up not just the victims, but the oppressors (Hela, Valkyrie), and whether one participates (Odin) or merely reaps the later benefits (Thor), one will be targeted by the backlash regardless.
Did the comedic tone undercut this message? Arguably, although it's kind of Waititi's MO. I don't think the jokes undercut the message, and indeed they punched up more than in some MCU films. But there is indisputably a message.
I'm sorry, it's not about that except in the most vague or superficial way, in the way that you can apply broader themes to any plot. You can say it's about the consequences of empire in the same way you can say Transformers is about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. That is to say, all stories touch on themes. But that doesn't mean they actually have them.
Ragnarok doesn't deal with any of the ideas one could paste onto its plot thoughtfully or coherently or creatively or realistically or any adverb you can apply other than "broadly to the point of invisibility." It's no more about "the consequences of empire" than it is about "brotherhood" or "rage" or "commodified violence" or "how secrets can destroy families," or any of the other dozen ideas it stumbles across by virtue of its premise.
Waititi may have wanted a message, but he didn't deliver on those ambitions. You can't have a meaningful movie built around "the consequences of empire" in a film entirely devoid of pathos.