What Writers Should Learn From Wonder Woman

Dr. Stange: stop. The two moments we just watched are almost exactly the same aren't they.

They take place at roughly the same time in their respective movies and are about

the same thing: the main character stops struggling with

their dueling identities and embraces their heroic side. So why did I love one

and hate the other? Well because one is honest and emotional, while the other

undercuts its own dramatic purpose with a joke. This is what's called bathos.

First coined by Alexander Pope back in 1727, in an essay called Peri Bathous; Or

The Art Of Sinking In Poetry, it describes moments in poems where the

tone suddenly switches between serious to trivial for comedic effect.

Rocket: Now I'm standing. Y'all happy? We're all standing up now. Bunch a jacka**

The juxtaposition of the two moments creates a laugh, but it destroys whatever drama

the piece was going for. If you take a look at the most popular movies produced

by Hollywood today, particularly with the Marvel movies, I think you'll find that

we have become a culture adrift in bathos. Now like any literary device

there are correct ways to use bathos, and one of them is parody. It's used

constantly in movies like Deadpool and the Lego Batman to great effect, because

there is an expectation in those films that they are going to cut down the

known tropes of superhero movies.

[Uplifting Music]

[Thump]

[Comedic Whistle]

But now we have allegedly serious versions of the genre that are actually,

secretly, parodies. That moment in Doctor Strange is a parody of the moment in

Spider-man whether it meant to be or not. The same way this...

...is later parodied by this...

Drax: look out! What moments like these signal to me is that the creators don't have

confidence in their own stories. They're using the joke to distract from the

film's dramatic shortcomings. [Curtains] The dramatic question at the heart of most

superhero stories is who is this character? Are they selfish or

altruistic? Will they accept the enormous responsibilities that their enormous

power has given them? This moment is the answer to that question. It's supposed to

energize the audience, propelling them into the final action of the climax. If

you're telling an honest story, then at no other point in the movie should a

filmmaker feel more confident that the audience is invested in the drama. Now

you can argue that these jokes are funny, but that's not really what I'm disputing.

The point is that there is a dramatic cost that has to be paid whenever bathos

is used at the wrong time. And these aren't just singular moments but a

pervasive tonal choice. Dramatic kneecapping happens constantly.

Ant-man can't even say his own name without giggling. It sort of works better in the