What Is The 'Marvel One-liner,' And Why Is It So Hated?

Earlier this week, Square Enix posted a trailer for an upcoming video game called Forspoken that caused quite a stir online. In it, the main character Frey Holland, a New Yorker transported to a mystical world, expresses surprise at her newfound superpowers.

"So, let me get this straight. I’m somewhere that’s not what I would call Earth… I’m seeing freaking dragons, and… oh yeah, I’m talking to a cuff! Yeah, okay, that is something I do now. I do magic, kill jacked-up beasts -- I’ll probably fly next."

A beautiful and cruel new land? Twisted monsters? An array of magical abilities? Sentient jewellery!?

Welcome to the world of #Forspoken. pic.twitter.com/46diiLnQ7M

— Forspoken (@Forspoken) August 8, 2022

The trailer spawned a massive meme online as users parodied the dialogue with similarly quippy plot summaries of other video games. Publications everywhere largely deemed the trailer "very bad." If you're out of the loop, you might be confused as to why the trailer sparked such a strong reaction.

It seems mildly funny, or at least seems to not take itself too seriously, and there's nothing obviously offensive about it. What's causing all the fuss?

The issue with the Forspoken trailer is that, for many, it seemed to epitomize the plague of the Marvel One-liner that's been infecting loads of media of late. And what is the Marvel One-liner? We're glad you asked.

What Is The "Marvel One-liner?"

The "Marvel One-liner" can be more accurately understood as the "Joss Whedon one-liner," as to understand the Marvel One-liner, one must first understand Joss Whedon.

joss whedon will pay for what he did to scriptwriting forever https://t.co/O0Jt3Uh108

— cait (@punished_cait) August 10, 2022

Joss Whedon is a writer best known for the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, two well-liked television shows in the '90s and early 2000s. Both concern rather ordinary people in extraordinary situations.

Buffy was more a less a regular-ish teen who also happened to, as the title suggests, slay vampires. Firefly found a motley crew of space pirates living outside of intergalactic law in the distant future, but they basically talked like regular people. A hallmark of these shows was their characters' ability to fire off a quip or a joke in an intense situation. These jokes kept the tone light, providing comfort to the audience even if the characters' lives were in danger (a move Whedon brilliantly subverted in the Firefly movie Serenity, but that's just for us real fans to cry over).

Peppering a superhero story with jokes is, in itself, no great sin. In fact, it proved quite popular — so popular that it seemed every big-budget movie studio wanted the style for their flicks. And in the past decade, the biggest budget movie studio has undoubtedly been Marvel.

Though the world can and has certainly quibbled over the quality of films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in recent years, most agree that they are at the very least, light-hearted popcorn flicks.

Part of what keeps them light-hearted is their characters' ability to – and this may sound familiar – fire off a quip or a joke in an intense situation, providing comfort to the audience even if the characters' lives are in danger. This is particularly evident in 2012's The Avengers, which was, in fact, written by Joss Whedon.

Whedon essentially set the tone for the MCU from that point on, as subsequent Marvel films, even those Whedon didn't touch, took on his quippy style, saturating a large chunk of cinema with plucky superheroes prone to firing off chuckle-worthy one-liners.

Why Do People Hate Marvel One-liners?

Public opinion on Whedon's style of writing has shifted dramatically over the years, as audiences have grown weary of seeing epic moments undercut by a snide remark or a wink to the audience. While this is in part due to oversaturation, it seems there were several moments that may have been breaking points for the general public.

The first was the infamous Whedon cut of 2017's Justice League. As opposed to the jaunty Marvel Cinematic Universe, DC Comics was establishing a similar cinematic universe with a more serious tone, thanks largely to the darker vision of director Zack Snyder. While working on Justice League, Snyder stepped down after the sudden death of his daughter. Warner Brothers brought Whedon in to finish the film, resulting in a clear clash of tones between the darker vision Snyder had for the film and the more humorous, Whedon-esque flourishes that made the final cut.

The film resulted in a large backlash from Snyder fans who wanted to see his vision for the film realized. It didn't help that amidst the push for Snyder's cut of Justice League to be released, allegations about Whedon's abusive onset behavior rocked his public image. Cast members similarly championed seeing Snyder's version of the film released, a clear sign that they were far more proud of what Snyder envisioned than what Whedon finished. At this point, Whedon's social cache had largely tanked, and his signature, quippy writing style began leaving a sour taste in some audience's mouths.

How Is The Marvel One-liner Memed?

Prior to the Forspoken trailer, Whedon's dialogue had been the subject of widespread parody multiple times. In May 2021, a year after the allegations of Whedon's abuse on the Justice League set, gags about his writing style increased thanks to the If It Was Written By Joss Whedon meme, which imagined what would happen if Whedon's tendency to undercut dramatic moments with gags was applied to other films.

In March 2022, TikTok started taking indirect aim at Whedon by poking fun at Marvel movie dialogue in general. This was spearheaded by general approval of Robert Pattinson's take on the caped crusader in The Batman, a film that was significantly darker and less quippy than anything Marvel had put out in recent years.

This trend centered on cliché gags that had wormed their way into Marvel movies. Some of these include a character responding to a remarkable occurrence by going "So… that just happened" or venting about another character who happens to show up behind them during their rant, causing them to go "… he's right behind me, isn't he?"

Later in 2022, it was reported that Marvel's Thor: Love and Thunder actually had a character say, "He's right behind me, isn't he?," cementing that the cliché and Whedon-y style were definitively dead.

The Future of the Marvel One-liner

At this point, it's been proven several times that social media users are simply sick of the quippy Whedon dialogue that's defined the MCU and other media for the past decade. Of course, there are roughly 500 more Marvel movies scheduled to come out over the next several years, so it remains to be seen if the studio will drop the style in response to public opinion, or if we'll be stuck saying "So… that was awkward" every time a Marvel film gets roasted for its dialogue.

For more information about Marvel One-liners, check out our Know Your Meme entry.