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Have you noticed lately that all Superheroes seem to talk the same? Whether it's Marvel Studios or the DCEU each new iteration in their universe seems to have a very similar tone to how their heroes speak to each other. With quick snappy dialogue, tons of jokes, and seemingly personable characters both Marvel and DC have fallen into a formula that audiences are catching onto.
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What happened to your voice
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What do you mean, what happened to my voice? I heard you got a bridge. I know what a girl sounds like
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We love superheroes. From their meteoric rise to prominence in the 1930s
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to their cultural ubiquity of today, they've become a symbol for moral fortitude
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and the eternal quest to defend the downtrodden. And yet, recently, there's been a palpable homogeneity
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specifically in the way they speak. So, why do all superheroes sound the same
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You mocking me? He's trying to copy it. You're imitating the God-man
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Superman, Batman, Blade, Spider-Man, and the X-Men. Their film adaptations provided the cultural foundation that the House of Ideas built the MCU on
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Despite the wave of successful comic book adaptations that appeared throughout the 2000s
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the first film to really give a superhero a quirky, funny, and sardonic personality was 2008's Iron Man
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The film's credited screenwriters are Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Markham, and Matt Holloway
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However, Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau used the script for Iron Man 1 in a highly unconventional manner
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They used it as something to play off of, not film. Large chunks of the film were completely improvised on the day by the director and star
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Thus, the film has a naturalistic yet hyper-stylized pattern to the dialogue
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And most importantly, it was funny. If you douse me again and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to City College
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This seems like an obvious path to take at this point, considering how it's almost a requirement for the genre
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But in 2008, this was a true deviation, and one that would prove wildly successful for everyone involved
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Michael Keaton, a literal comedian prior to the role, wasn't funny as Batman
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Daredevil? Ghost Rider? Catwoman? None of these films were funny, unless you were laughing at them
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Arguably the greatest innovation that Iron Man and the MCU made to the newly blossoming genre was taking a joke a minute view on the source material How do we get people to fall in love with objectively obscure characters like Moon Knight Make them funny and charming
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She said I needed a suit. The ceremonial armor from Conscious Temple
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not psycho Colonel Sanders. The MCU's movies are basically built off having characters banter
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But this banter-oriented way of making superheroes speak has its roots all the way back in the comic books
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It's hard to overemphasize the effect that Brian Bendis had on the comic book form
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in the early 2000s. He pioneered the decompressed model of telling stories and brought a real human
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lens to the characters who had been stagnant for decades. Starting with his Daredevil, Alias
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Ultimate Spider-Man work, and running through New Avengers and Secret Invasion work
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Bendis took traditional superheroes and made them feel human, primarily due to dialogue
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Bendis' chief creative inspiration was David Mamet. The playwright and screenwriter behind
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Glen Gary Glen Ross and Ronan, is recognized for his ear for dialogue, extensive monologues
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and hyper-specific verbal tics. A always B, B, C closing. Always be closing
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Bendis took these tropes and incorporated them, along with a deep love of crime and genre fiction
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into a way of building superhero stories that hasn't been rivaled in the last 30 years
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He loves long stretches of dialogue where characters are rapid-fire asking each other questions
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He loves quick short bursts back and forth, and specifically, he loves jokes
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His DNA is laced all throughout the Marvel films. To say nothing of the fact that he was a founding member of the Marvel Creative Committee
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which was a closed-door club of comic book writers that Marvel contracted
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to consult on all the film projects to try and make them as accurate as possible
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As the first phase of the Marvel Universe was gaining momentum, the inevitable question was raised
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Who is going to direct the Avengers? Why the hell should I take orders from you? I need men in those buildings
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They wanted someone who had a keen knack for character love of Marvel and an ability to actually adapt a script to the screen And so Marvel hired Joss Whedon Similarly to Bendis Whedon had made a name for himself through
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his strong sense of characterization and emphasis on fast-paced, snappy dialogue, which were typically littered with pop culture references. Primarily known as the creator of
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon had also worked on the Eisner Award-winning Astonishing X-Men run
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A longtime fan of the characters in question, Whedon was responsible for taking what Favreau
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had established with Downey Jr. and pushing it even further. He really played up the man-out-of-time elements of Cap, the snarkiness of Stark, and the general
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humor that would be mined out of bouncing the Avengers off of one another. Needless to say, the Avengers was a smash hit, and Marvel signed Whedon to an exclusive
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contract to write, develop, and consult on all their projects for the next three years
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This run would eventually come to an end with Age of Ultron not performing quite as well
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and Whedon feeling like he was undercut by the studio. Oh, actually, he's the boss
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I just pay for everything and design everything and make everyone look cooler
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Now, by this point, the Marvel machine was a juggernaut, and everyone was trying to get in on the bandwagon
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or rebelling against the status quo that Marvel was establishing. The first wave of the DCEU orchestrated by Zack Snyder
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was directly in opposition to the bright and accessible MCU. It was attempting to be a more grounded and adult take on superheroes
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It was also trying to embrace gravitas over comedic timing. In theory, that could have worked as an alternative, but in execution, it became something else
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What are your superpowers again? I'm rich. Which leads us directly into Justice League
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This proved as the trying ground for the does-one-size-fit-all approach to dialogue and character execution
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Joss Whedon accepted the job of rewriting and refilming large chunks of Justice League
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after Zack Snyder was forced to step away from the picture. And that's how you get moments like this
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Oh something is definitely bleeding Look we don need to rehash it Justice League was not well received However the most important fallout from it was that it made Warners want to steer away
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from the dark and gritty stuff they were doing, aside from one-off projects like Joker or the Batman
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and have a more bombastic all-ages feel to their mainline cinematic universe
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Shazam, Aquaman, and others emphasize a stylistic approach that veers into a more Marvel-adjacent mode
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of telling stories, namely jokes. Your mileage may vary on if Warner's is fully replicating the Marvel magic
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but this issue is something the comics struggle with too. Especially when a new writer gets moved up to an A-list level
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they could put on a bunch of books and they don't have time to develop unique approaches for their takes
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It just becomes the easiest stock solution wins. Every character has the same dialogue style now
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In Bendis' critically acclaimed X-Men run and his new Avengers run, multiple characters use Yiddish words or turns of phrases in contexts that aren't exactly true to
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their character. Fans have pointed out that all of Bendis' characters sound exactly the same
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Everyone is quippy and has bouncing dialogue. Everyone. Wolverine doesn't make jokes
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unless Bendis is writing him, which is the exact same thing that happened in superhero movies
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We used to have the archetype of the stalwart hero and the plucky comic relief, and now we just
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have the sarcastic hero who cracks jokes at the other character's expense
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I think you're overreacting a little bit. You must be so embarrassed! At this point, being a superhero means you have to be funny. Overall, we're reaching such a
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cultural breaking point with superhero media that there's no way around it. The issue at hand is
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that there's literally billions of dollars wrapped up in weaponizing these stories to be hyper
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commercialized, and the most financially successful versions of the characters have all shared a
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common voice, a predilection for lifting dialogue and snappy banter. Only problem is that formula is already old
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So what comes next
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