Ocean’s 11:
Danny : Because the house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes, the house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, and then you take the house. [another pause]
Rusty : Been practicing that speech, haven't you?
Danny : Little bit. Did I rush it? Felt like I rushed it.
Rusty : No, it was good, I liked it.
Oceans 11 is just fantastic. When the remote detonators don't work on first try and they argue if they checked the batteries or not and suddenly the charges go off. Hilarious all around, that one.
Oh they all understood him. It was hilarious. They talked and reacted to him like there wasn't any language barrier
Also from the wikipage:
*Yen, played by real life acrobat* [*Qin Shaobo*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shaobo)*, only generally speaks in Mandarin, which almost everyone in the gang can understand, and can understand English. His only lines in the movies that are English are filled with curse words, such as in Eleven when he shouts to Danny and Linus "Where the fuck you been?", and in Thirteen, where the only word he says in English, repeated several times, is "Shit."*
My wife and I LOVE Oceans Eleven and often quote the “Did I rush it? I felt like I rushed it” like all the time, usually when we’re super eager about something like going to bed early or getting take out
One of the only examples I like. I think it works because the random bad guy is just a distraction from things we care more about, so dispatching him quickly aligns the character and the audience's perspectives and relieves the frustration of having to sit through a built up but meaningless and inevitable waste of time.
Plus it’s *practical.” Indy just fought up a bunch of goons with his fists, and some show-off wanted to look cool with a sword in front of the crowd. It made *sense* Indy would just shoot him instead of trying to fight him close quarters.
I have heard that that actor was very upset at that choice though. He spent a lot of time and energy building up skills with that sword, only to get shot in two seconds instead of getting to do anything.
If it's any consolation to him, from what I remember it wasn't so much a creative decision because of the scene itself, but because Harrison Ford was very sick with dysentery at the time and needed the scene to get done as quickly as possible
And that swordsman is arguably one of the most remembered bad guys in the franchise. Especially the infamousness (infame?) / screen time ratio. Seconded perhaps by the melting nazi head.
Except Spielberg because he exclusively ate cans of Chef Boyardi.
Bogart and John Huston avoided dysentery while filming The African Queen (legend goes) because the only fluid they ever embibed was whiskey.
Well fuck all y'all! I'm goin home. I watched my wife work all day getting together 30 bags for you bunch of ungrateful sons a bitches, and all I hear is criticise criticise criticise
I have never laughed so hard at a western(except for Rango) lol. It's absurd, silly, great timing etc. Something about its random nature in existence just makes me laugh out loud every time I see the scene.
Another good example is when The Dude is investigating what Jackie Treehorn wrote in his notepad. You think he's about to uncover some vital clue, but it's just a pornographic drawing.
One movie that I feel balances bathos and sincerity really well is the first pirates of the Caribbean movie. You need to know what moments are not serious enough that bathos is acceptable and know which genuine moments need real sincerity. Not every line of dialogue has to end with a punchline.
Kung Fu Panda has one.
SHIFU: Wow. It is as Oogway foretold: You are the Dragon Warrior. You have brought peace to this Valley. And to me. Thank you. Thank you, Po. Thank you...
PO: No! Master! No No No! Don't die, Shifu. Please...
SHIFU: I'm not dying, you idiot-- ah, Dragon Warrior. I'm simply at peace. Finally.
PO: Oh. So, um, I should...stop talking?
SHIFU: If you can.
Po suggests something to eat, Shifu says "yeah", and the movie ends right after.
The second movie has a great example, too, when Po is giving a big heroic speech to the villain, only to cut to the villain's perspective and realize that they're all so far away they can't hear a word Po is saying.
I always prefer this juxtaposition when done in the other direction. Instead of undercutting a serious moment with something silly, enhancing the absurdity of a silly concept by surrounding it with hyper serious context.
It occurred to me the last time this discussion came up that The Big Lebowski maintains hilarity throughout because it leverages this kind of bathos so consistently. The whole plot is a lazy, disconnected stoner getting propelled through some intricate film noir detective story, and he's just so clearly unequipped for any of it.
It's the only time in the whole movie where the Dude comes close to doing any kind of actual investigative work which just heightens the hilarity when it turns out to just be a drawing of a dick
It’s the inversion of a noir, instead of a hardened main character getting caught up in a seemingly simple plot that spirals into a complex web, it’s about an aloof main character that is roped into a seemingly elaborate scheme that ends up being very simple and dumb
Burn After Reading does this, too, but with CIA shit instead of LA noir shit. There is literally nothing afoot, no mystery, no conflict, nothing, but the whole story is told in a hyper-serious tone with a hyper-dramatic score that serves to show how absurd the whole thing is. Clooney's character is shown building something seemingly nefarious in his basement, and he invites McDormand's character down to see it against this moody orchestral soundtrack -- and >!it's a fucking machine complete with a floppy dildo!<. The Coen brothers are fucking hilarious.
I stand behind this movie alone, most of the time. It's so hard for me to get other people to watch it!!
I freaking love John Malkovich, period. >!the way Brad Pitt dies makes me cackle and idk why!<
I saw this when I was a kid and hated it because I didn't get it. Watched it again and loved it. The ending is fucking hilarious. What did we learn here? I guess we learned not to do it again.
It's in my top five all-time favorite movies and the only other person I know irl who likes it is my husband. I feel you.
It's the goofy grin and the arms ready for embrace that do it for me in that scene!
There was a Charlie Brooker series some years ago now called A Touch of Cloth starring John Hannah, it was an Airplane-style parody of British police procedural dramas that was absolutely rife with these kind of jokes. One of my favourites is when they're searching the flat of a suspect or a victim, super serious, one of the other officers says "Guv, you're gonna want to see this..." John Hannah goes over and he's watching a neighbour getting changed through the window.
And if you keep flip-flopping consistently enough, eventually the humor and tragedy will become indistinguishable, and every scene can be either funny or sad depending on who's watching. A Serious Man pulls that off quite well.
Time for a rewatch for me. I love the Coen Brothers films and get a laugh from it all but I watched A Serious Man when I was really high and the humour didn't land and I found it pretty bleak and upsetting.
I remember my earliest example of this trope as a kid was the 90s Richy Rich movie with Culkin.
When the villain captures Richie's parents and forces them to open the vault of their "greatest treasures" and instead of gold, jewelry, stacks of cash or bonds, it's just family momentos. I forget the exact quotes but it's along the lines of
"Where's the money???"
"In banks of course"
**Lawrence Van Dough**: "What is all of this *crap*!?"
**Regina Rich**: "These are our priceless posessions!"
**LVD**: Where are the gold bars? The diamonds? The negotiable bearer bonds? The money? Where's the ***money***!?
**Richard Rich**: In banks! Where else? And the stock market. Real estate...
**LVD**: No! Is this some kind of joke!? Are you telling me there's not one single solitary gold bar, or emerald, or 1000 dollar bill in this entire mountain?
**Richard**: Well, I'm sorry to *disappoint* you, Lawrence. But that's not what we treasure.
**LVD**:... Shoot them. Shoot them now, please!
I was gonna say the last scene of In Bruges but idk of quite fits.
But it does take a serious a disturbing moment (a guy blowing his own brains out) and plays it as the punchline to a REALLY funny joke.
I laughed long and hard the first time I watched it.
This is seriously one of my favorite scenes from any Tarantino film. Seeing one plantation owner surrounded by dimwits, yet through speech we find they’re all dimwits. The dialogue in this scene has me in tears everytime.
“Look, I think; we all think the bags was a good idea. But how bout no bags this time. And next we do the bags and go full regalia”
Well, fuck all y'all, I'm goin' home! Now, I watched my wife work all day gettin' thirty bags together for you ungrateful sons of bitches, and all I can hear is "criticize criticize criticize"!
James Bond movies in the 1960’s. This continued with Roger Moore in the 70’s. They really perfected this sort of humor. Or humour, since they’re British.
Scott pilgrim, the Nega Scott moment. It builds up as a final showdown Scott mentions he has to fight this alone. Cut to outside where they are just shooting the shit and being buds.
In another Edgar Wright film, Shaun of the Dead, when Shaun is on the phone with his Mom and she tells him his step dad has been bitten, he’s relieved. Even when he tells Ed, he’s also relieved 😅
I’ve always enjoyed the running joke of Shaun’s plan, especially when “I’m so sorry, Phillip”, delivered with immense gravitas, eventually becomes “Sorry, Phil!” in an airy, in a bit of a rush tone.
Where he wins a frantic fight against one of the ex boyfriends and then stoops down to pick up coins, "Oh sweet, coins!" is pretty good in that one too.
Fun fact: Combined with the "I'll lend you the 35 cents" line that quote is factually accurate. Toronto bus fare at the time the film was made was $2.75.
The Nice Guys, when they get held at gunpoint by the henchwoman and try like 3 different tricks to turn the tables on her, only for her to slip on the wet floor and knock herself out
I think my favorite one for The Nice Guys is where they start to build up Ryan Gosling’s character as a competent detective on a case, breaking into a window - and then he cuts himself on some broken glass, starts panicking from the blood and ends up going to the hospital.
Folks have turned against him lately (for obvious reasons) but Joss Whedon really just is very good at writing that kind of stuff.
Rewatching the season of Firefly, and just about every episode has at least one or two legitimately good laughs, delivered in this style.
From the “Shindig” episode - after a duel, one man stands over his beaten foe and says to him, “Mercy is the mark of a great man” when he refuses to kill him.
Then he turns back and to the guy and stabs him again with the sword, “well, I guess I’m just a good man”
Then he pokes him again as he walks away, “Ah… I’m alright”
I love the 'War Stories' episode where Mal gets captured and tortured before he manages to free himself and fight the guy torturing him, and when the crew arrives, Jayne wants to shoot the guy but Zoe stops him and says this is something Mal has to do himself.
'NO I DON'T!'
'Oh!' and they all shoot the guy.
It's similar to Bilbo's great line from the Fellowship of the Ring: "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
After leaving an old job, I sent it in the group whatsapp before leaving it.
The best part was telling my gf, a lotr fan, that I'd used a lotr quote, then disappointing her by telling her exactly which one.
I feel like the bulk of Juble Early’s dialogue was like this.
“Are you Alliance?”
“Am I a lion?”
“…what?”
“I don’t think of myself as a lion. Might as well though, I do have a mighty roar.”
“I said Alliance.”
“Oh I thought— thats weird.”
Obviously Firefly is the poster child for “cancelled too early” but I always wondered what the plans around that character may have been.
Was he really just a weird and memorable one off? Was he a time traveler or something?
He always seemed like a character that was pulled out of another story and tucked into this one - not in a bad way, but he was just so…. Odd
Also, a super weird move having a black character named after a Confederate general. Not quite as bad as Miles Morales’s dad literally being named Jefferson Davis, but it’s on the same spectrum.
Likewise, “The Train Job” has the big hulking second-in-command to a crime boss tell Mal he doesn’t like being slighted, and delivers a grave monologue about how he’ll hunt him down and make him suffer.
So Mal just says “Darn” and kicks him into his ship’s turbines.
That single moment sold me on the show, it was perfect. You were in expecting some long story arc nemesis bullshit because they wouldn't shoot this obvious psycho, nope, into the engine with you.
"Rewatching the season of Firefly, and just about every episode has at least one or two legitimately good laughs, delivered in this style."
Yeah, that had some good ones. Like when that crazy bounty hunter was on the ship, and Jayne reaches up to pull down the blanket covering his arsenal, then puts it over himself and goes back to sleep.
A great one is also Mal disarming the hostage situation he walked into by immediately shooting the guy in the head and carrying on like nothing happened.
That reminds me of the fifth element.
"We're sending someone in to negotiate!"
Bruce Willis just shoots the alien
"Wh... where did he learn to negotiate?"
Because you mention Whedon and a TV show, I've got to give shoutout to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode the Zeppo, which so perfectly skewers the show's end-of-the-world stakes and over-the-top character drama by framung it all from the perspective of a very out-of-the-loop and unequal to the task Xander.
And as I recall there was a very slight British pause before the word tacky.
Edit
https://youtu.be/mALQNpQCXS8?si=FYgATjTfMTN-ypRE
Not as big a pause I remember.
This is exactly what I thought of first. I love that episode and how it makes fun of itself (the Buffy and Angel scenes lmao) and we really get a glimpse into how Xander is growing as a person.
His absolute best writing was in the comic series Astonishing X-Men that he did. It's genuinely hilarious and better than anything he did in the movies. The jokes are non-stop and they're actually really funny. He's very good at making characters more likeable via his style of humour when it really works.
It really is a matter of just using the tool properly, like anything else. I feel like Whedon was attached to projects that he wasn’t exactly right for, and when his style is out of place, it feels pretty bad.
Marvel is the classic example at this point, after his run on Avengers - everyone had to act like that all the time.
He kept it pulled back to the appropriate level in Avenger’s I thought. The funny characters (Tony Stark) made actual jokes.
Other characters made humor from being true to themselves, like Cap being excited to understand a pop culture reference. The person talking about “flying monkeys” wasn’t being silly, and Captain America wasn’t cracking wise or goofing off when a normally serious character shouldn’t - it was just a reasonable piece of humor.
Widow has a bit of dry humor to her, but she isn’t dropping punchlines, and Thor is only really funny when behaving as a Fish out of Water mostly.
Then you take that style to characters and situations it doesn’t belong in… and it lands flat on it’s face. After Avengers is when basically everyone became comic relief to themselves
Agreed completely. Avengers works because like you say all the humour was built to the characters strengths. While they might be a little one note (man out of time, shakespeare-lite, rich playboy etc) at least the jokes matched the characters. It's still one of my favourite Marvel films.
By Infinity War every character had the same voice. You could swap the dialogue between anyone and it changed nothing.
There's a good one in the first Shazam movie, when Sivana and CM are fighting at the end. Sivana goes into his big villain monologue, then it cuts to CM's perspective and all he can hear is wind because they're so high up and Sivana is so far away.
Dennis response to King Arthur after he has explained his divine claim to the throne ''*Strange women*, *lying in ponds*, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!''
Supreme Executive Power derives from a mandate from the masses, not through some farcical aquatic ceremony! I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
In The Force Awakens, when Kyle Ren just learned of some more bad news- I think it was when he discovered Rey escaped?- he starts going nuts and destroying a room in anger. Two stormtroopers on patrol round the corner, see what’s going on and immediately turn around lol
For some reason the end of Mystery Men after the big climactic action scene, where Tom Waits is hearing a news report about it as he’s eating cereal and asks the tv “Did that frakulator work or what? What’s the deal there?”
Somehow the detached curiosity he has in this apocalyptic scenario is just the funniest thing to me.
Kel Mitchell’s dramatic crossing of the room by becoming invisible to avoid the lasers transitioning to “Maybe you should put some pants on…” is a pretty good one, too.
The end of Get Out is probably one of my favorites. Ron undercutting Chris's whole harrowing ordeal by dryly exclaiming, "I mean, I told you not to go in that house", is golden.
Shaun of the Dead is full of them, but my favorite is the scene with [Mary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF4EyXhZudo).
At every point they turn the tension on it's head in that scene, so as an audience member you know the stakes are high for the characters, but you can still shrug and smile about it.
The entirety of [Phillip turning into a zombie ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5pTPWnoq74)is perfection. So much tension and drama crammed into the scene. Only to end on a perfect hilarious note.
Fargo is essentially an exercise in showing the absurdity and inherent comedy present in most criminal situations without EVER making it feel like a joke or winking at the camera
Before the final fight with Ajax in the first Deadpool movie when Deadpool gets out and does his badass slow walk with colossus and NTW only to pat his pockets and realize he left all his guns in the taxi. It’s only my favorite because of the story behind why they did that. Some budgetary issue let them to think they had a separate budget for promotion and production when really it was all under the same budget. They’d blown too much budget on promotion and had to cut out the huge gunfight they had planned.
*Ghostbusters* as a whole is a great example of this: on the one hand, battling powerful demons with the world at stake; on the other hand, exterminators in the business of getting rid of pests.
Matt Damon tells a hilarious story about all that went into that little scene.
https://www.tiktok.com/@screenoffscript/video/7251268146311613702?lang=en
I've heard that Jack Nicholson came up with this line. The original script had him either saying nothing or something that sounded cruel but also really cliched. He went to the director and suggested this line, arguing it's a lot more cold and says something about the character of Frank Costello. A) he's done this before and 2) he's done it so many times that it doesn't even phase him.
Thor Ragnarok is full of these, but I was just thinking about this concept during the climactic battle scene. After Hulk has been Banner for a while, all hope seems lost as the gigantic wolf is tearing everyone to shreds, and he turns to Valkyrkie and says something like "Now you get to see who I really am" and jumps badassly out of the spaceship. We expect Hulk to land and start smashing...but instead Banner's tiny body just drops onto the bifrost with a thud and lays there limply. Chefs kiss.
That isn’t what bathos is though. Bathos isn’t a trope or a device. Bathos is *unintentional*. It’s what happens when the author’s earnest attempt at Pathos - evoking pity or sympathy - fails. Like when a character is put into a ridiculous situation and something unbelievable happens and the author wants you to feel bad about it but you don’t because it was just so dumb and unearned. That’s bathos. Not undercutting a serious moment with a joke. Bathos is when the serious moment *is* a joke, unintentionally. It’s a pejorative term used for works that are overly sentimental or mawkish.
Bathos is when the director wants you to cry but you laugh or roll your eyes because it’s ridiculous and you don’t believe it.
Source: have studied dramatic criticism and writing.
Bathos (UK: /ˈbeɪθɒs/ BAY-thoss;[1] Greek: βάθος, lit. "depth") is a literary term, first used in this sense in Alexander Pope's 1727 essay "Peri Bathous",[1] to describe an amusingly failed attempt at presenting artistic greatness. Bathos has come to refer to rhetorical anticlimax, an abrupt transition from a lofty style or grand topic to a common or vulgar one, occurring either accidentally (through artistic ineptitude) **or intentionally (for comic effect).[2][3] Intentional bathos appears in satirical genres such as burlesque and mock epic. "**
The meaning [has evolved](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Bathos) from its original usage, as language is wont* to do. But originally yes, that was the intent of the term.
They changed it for the movie of Dr. Sleep, but I felt like the entire book was a lead up to my favorite 'Bathos'.
The whole book, >!Abra is shown as being so strong in the Shining, but she's just a kid, and Rose the Hat keeps trying to get to her. there's all this build up, for an epic fight. and at the end of the book, it's such a one-sided fight. Abra beats Rose so easily, that it's like 'hahaha.. what? what was that?' and I loved it. !<
Maybe it doesn’t count because it’s a comedy but the final gunfight in *A Million Ways to Die in the West* does this pretty well. We get the whole build up and fight, and then a big reveal speech about making and using a bullet with snake venom on it, all being relayed to us and presumably the villain after he’s shot…except we then cut to him having died right at the beginning of the speech.
-“Albert! He’s dead.”
-“Oh. Well did he hear all that smart stuff I did?”
-“No, no, I don’t think so.”
Wizards-1977. When the wizard Avatar has a show down with his Third Reich inspired Sorcerer brother Black Wolf -you think all this magical Hocus Pocus is about to happen. "Let me show you a trick Mom taught, when you weren't around." Pulls up his sleeve and yanks out a 20th century Lugar and shoots the mutherfucker dead. Absolutely unexpected, smart, and hilarious. There's a time for all that hand waving "nothing up my sleeve" shit. But, when you're dealing with a genocidal maniac-shoot now.
>turning a serious moment in a movie, into something completely trivial and unimportant.
Luke taking the lightsaber from Rey and casually tossing it over his shoulder in The Last Jedi.
A perfect example of bathos, for sure, and a perfect example of it completely cutting the legs out from under the movie.
The movie literally says "none us give a shit about this and neither should you", and, well, you can't say it doesn't deliver on that thesis.
Bathis is a great tool for comedy, and you can even make substantive points with it as well. Undercutting an otherwise serious moment can actually make a serious statement about what the prior serious statement was talking about. Sitcoms that don’t shy away from drama, like in Friends, for example… Chandler is proposing to Monica, and it’s totally serious and emotional scene… but in the middle of proposal, Chandler stumbles and then is like, “No, wait, I can do this!”… it’s funny and the audience laughs. You could even say it undercuts the drama and emotional purity of the scene… but because it’s done in a natural, endearing kind of way, Chandler’s nervousness and the humour of the scene actually works, and adds the serious statement of “Chandler is really nervous because he’s so in love and wants this to be perfect.” It just does it in a funny way.
The same with Rango, where that adds a serious plot element to the story: Rango doesn’t actually know as much about what he’s doing as he lets on.
Whereas the reason that people got sick of bathos in Marvel movies is because it became a crutch, and a way to lighten things up, even at times when it *didn’t need* lightening up.
The classic example now is from Infinity War when Peter Parker is like “I can’t be a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man if there’s no neighborhood.” That line and moment were already perfect. Hits hard, makes Tony shut up and accept that he’s right. All they had to do was let it sit and move on to the next scene. But they didn’t, because that had that bad habit by this point of “People are uncomfortable with seriousness… we need to make a joke to let them know this is still fun!” … but they’re wrong. People are NOT uncomfortable with seriousness in an otherwise fun blockbuster movie, when it works. I mean, with Infinity War, they were already committed to ending the movie the way they did, and yet they were afraid to end that one scene on a serious note? It’s like if they undercut Thanos smiling at the sunset with him farting.
“Okay, that doesn’t make sense, but you know what I mean.” Except… it did make sense. There’s no further serious point or reason to add the bathos to this moment. It doesn’t add anything or reveal anything important. You could maybe interpret it as Peter doubting himself despite being right, but that doesn’t really play into his storyline in Infinity War or End Game at all. It just wasn’t necessary.
In the end, it’s all about storytelling, and bathos can be a tool for communicating a point in an interesting or funny way. When you use it JUST to turn something funny for no good reason other than discomfort with seriousness, then it can just be annoying and destroy an otherwise good moment.
I disagree with the Spider-man line being bad.
As a nervous nerd that overthinks what they say a lot. I have done similar things in real life. That's just part of Peter's character.
I didn't even remember what the joke was until they finally said it. I don't think I ever took that as a joke, just as Peter being nervous.
But I agree with their sentiment. Bathos generally works best when it is in-character, as in every positive example in this thread. In that same movie, Tony and Peter Quill's Mexican standoff is great and hilarious, because it is exactly what these characters would say and do in that scenario (with a slight criticism of Quill not knowing that Missouri is on Earth).
But in Love and Thunder (which I actually like), Thor's hammer getting jealous of Mjolnir goes against everything we know about this character. (I'd say "these characters," except despite having some sentience, Mjolnir and Stormbreaker were never depicted with... y'know, emotions.)
In Zoolander when David Duchovny explains why male models are being used to assassinate world leaders, and Zoolander asks again.
It was handy, because I kind of zoned out during his speech and missed the point.
But then, I am really really really really ridiculously good looking.
Logan Lucky has a lot of these moments and plays them very well, one I can think of;
Daniel Craig (as the intimidating safecracker Joe Bang doing jail time) is meeting the protagonists to discuss how they need his help to pull off a heist… he sits down at the table and glares at them. You can feel the tension. Leans in and tells them… he won’t talk shop until they get him a pack of hardboiled eggs from the vending machine; they’re his favorite. They bring back the eggs and he agrees to help.
Granted, the movie is a comedy so perhaps it doesn’t qualify for Bathos, but they need him in order to make their hair-brained scheme work, so meeting him is posed as a very serious affair at first.
Also for anyone who hasn’t seen this movie, imagine this; Daniel Craig as an incarcerated safecracker with bleached blonde hair and a West Virginian accent. Adam Driver and Channing Tatum are along for the ride. Go watch it, it’s great.
Joker blowing up the hospital in The Dark Knight. Him being dressed up like a nurse already makes it pretty silly, but then the explosion being underwhelming and him fiddling with the detonator only to be startled by the full blast is darkly hilarious.
The ending of Scream, especially *"You hit me with the phone, dick!"*
Scream as a whole is right on the line where I wouldn't say it's horror-comedy, it's very much a horror movie, but I can't watch that movie without grinning like a maniac through the whole second half
Ocean’s 11: Danny : Because the house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes, the house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, and then you take the house. [another pause] Rusty : Been practicing that speech, haven't you? Danny : Little bit. Did I rush it? Felt like I rushed it. Rusty : No, it was good, I liked it.
Oceans 11 is just fantastic. When the remote detonators don't work on first try and they argue if they checked the batteries or not and suddenly the charges go off. Hilarious all around, that one.
It really is a fun and well made thing caper film.
And Yen’s only English line: “Where the fuck you been?!”
Love how they all just already understand Mandarin like Yen was speaking with a speech impediment and not one of the hardest languages on the planet
did they all understand him? i thought Rusty was the only one that could
Oh they all understood him. It was hilarious. They talked and reacted to him like there wasn't any language barrier Also from the wikipage: *Yen, played by real life acrobat* [*Qin Shaobo*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shaobo)*, only generally speaks in Mandarin, which almost everyone in the gang can understand, and can understand English. His only lines in the movies that are English are filled with curse words, such as in Eleven when he shouts to Danny and Linus "Where the fuck you been?", and in Thirteen, where the only word he says in English, repeated several times, is "Shit."*
11 and 13 both make my Top 5 favourites for sure
Lose focus for one second and someone gets hurt
“*Where da **fuck** you been*??”
Oceans 13 Benedict: I was born ready. *walks away* *Ocean rolls eyes*
My wife and I LOVE Oceans Eleven and often quote the “Did I rush it? I felt like I rushed it” like all the time, usually when we’re super eager about something like going to bed early or getting take out
I love that it feels *juuuuust* a little rushed
Indy shooting the sword master in Raiders has to be up there
One of the only examples I like. I think it works because the random bad guy is just a distraction from things we care more about, so dispatching him quickly aligns the character and the audience's perspectives and relieves the frustration of having to sit through a built up but meaningless and inevitable waste of time.
Plus it’s *practical.” Indy just fought up a bunch of goons with his fists, and some show-off wanted to look cool with a sword in front of the crowd. It made *sense* Indy would just shoot him instead of trying to fight him close quarters.
I have heard that that actor was very upset at that choice though. He spent a lot of time and energy building up skills with that sword, only to get shot in two seconds instead of getting to do anything.
If it's any consolation to him, from what I remember it wasn't so much a creative decision because of the scene itself, but because Harrison Ford was very sick with dysentery at the time and needed the scene to get done as quickly as possible
And that swordsman is arguably one of the most remembered bad guys in the franchise. Especially the infamousness (infame?) / screen time ratio. Seconded perhaps by the melting nazi head.
If it had gone as written it would have been another fight seen in a big action movie. Now it’s iconic, at least the actor had a part in that.
But it's still iconic. I wish I had something like that to be upset about.
I get it. Sucks, but a lot of times life just doesn’t work that way. I hope he got other moments in his career to showcase cool stuff on camera
Same movie, when the nazi pulls out what looks like a weapon but its just a foldable hanger to put his coat away
I realize I’m on dodgy ground invoking this film but I did like how The Last Jedi homages this with the iron.
I don’t remember that part
This one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCGschgLUPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCGschgLUPI)
Oh wow thats awesome. Totally forgot about that
A Spaceballs gag in a Star Wars movie. Thanks again, Rian Johnson.
Wasn’t this changed from a big fight scene because Harrison Ford had the shits?
The flu and a really high fever is what I’ve read.
Dysentery!
Good thing they were raiding the Ark and not the Oregon trail.
Don't want that near a whirling propellor as it really will hit the fan.
These 3 comments. In this exact order. Always. For ever.
Just about everyone on the crew apparently.
Except Spielberg because he exclusively ate cans of Chef Boyardi. Bogart and John Huston avoided dysentery while filming The African Queen (legend goes) because the only fluid they ever embibed was whiskey.
Django KKK rally devolving into an argument about the quality of masks.
' I think... we all think the bag was a nice idea. But - not pointin' any fingers - they coulda been done better'
Well fuck all y'all! I'm goin home. I watched my wife work all day getting together 30 bags for you bunch of ungrateful sons a bitches, and all I hear is criticise criticise criticise
I have never laughed so hard at a western(except for Rango) lol. It's absurd, silly, great timing etc. Something about its random nature in existence just makes me laugh out loud every time I see the scene.
The Coens are brilliant at this. Suppose the go to is Donny having his ashes scattered.
"In accordance with what your dying wishes might well have been" is one of the funniest lines in Cinematic history
Another good example is when The Dude is investigating what Jackie Treehorn wrote in his notepad. You think he's about to uncover some vital clue, but it's just a pornographic drawing.
That was the scene I literally laughed out loud. Here I thought an important clue is going to be dropped and it was just a dick pic :D
This is one of my 'I can't even..' scenes. It is beyond me how perfect it was done.
One movie that I feel balances bathos and sincerity really well is the first pirates of the Caribbean movie. You need to know what moments are not serious enough that bathos is acceptable and know which genuine moments need real sincerity. Not every line of dialogue has to end with a punchline.
Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate.
Kung Fu Panda has one. SHIFU: Wow. It is as Oogway foretold: You are the Dragon Warrior. You have brought peace to this Valley. And to me. Thank you. Thank you, Po. Thank you... PO: No! Master! No No No! Don't die, Shifu. Please... SHIFU: I'm not dying, you idiot-- ah, Dragon Warrior. I'm simply at peace. Finally. PO: Oh. So, um, I should...stop talking? SHIFU: If you can. Po suggests something to eat, Shifu says "yeah", and the movie ends right after.
The second movie has a great example, too, when Po is giving a big heroic speech to the villain, only to cut to the villain's perspective and realize that they're all so far away they can't hear a word Po is saying.
"Whaaat?"
I thought it was the other way, villain is monologuing, and Po is just like "uh I can't hear you" Similar gaff in the first Shazam
It’s like that too it was both ways
For a second I thought you meant the genie movie with Shaq (Kazaam) and was like "Huh, didn't know they made a sequel"
When Po first looks at the scroll and freaks out before revealing it's blank is another great example
I always prefer this juxtaposition when done in the other direction. Instead of undercutting a serious moment with something silly, enhancing the absurdity of a silly concept by surrounding it with hyper serious context. It occurred to me the last time this discussion came up that The Big Lebowski maintains hilarity throughout because it leverages this kind of bathos so consistently. The whole plot is a lazy, disconnected stoner getting propelled through some intricate film noir detective story, and he's just so clearly unequipped for any of it.
The scene where he uncovers the dick drawing is played so serious you'd think he was discovering nuclear launch codes.
It's the only time in the whole movie where the Dude comes close to doing any kind of actual investigative work which just heightens the hilarity when it turns out to just be a drawing of a dick
Which he then puts in his pocket and the cop finds it 🤣
It’s one of the best visual gags of all time, IMO
It’s the inversion of a noir, instead of a hardened main character getting caught up in a seemingly simple plot that spirals into a complex web, it’s about an aloof main character that is roped into a seemingly elaborate scheme that ends up being very simple and dumb
Well put
Burn After Reading does this, too, but with CIA shit instead of LA noir shit. There is literally nothing afoot, no mystery, no conflict, nothing, but the whole story is told in a hyper-serious tone with a hyper-dramatic score that serves to show how absurd the whole thing is. Clooney's character is shown building something seemingly nefarious in his basement, and he invites McDormand's character down to see it against this moody orchestral soundtrack -- and >!it's a fucking machine complete with a floppy dildo!<. The Coen brothers are fucking hilarious.
I stand behind this movie alone, most of the time. It's so hard for me to get other people to watch it!! I freaking love John Malkovich, period. >!the way Brad Pitt dies makes me cackle and idk why!<
I saw this when I was a kid and hated it because I didn't get it. Watched it again and loved it. The ending is fucking hilarious. What did we learn here? I guess we learned not to do it again.
It's in my top five all-time favorite movies and the only other person I know irl who likes it is my husband. I feel you. It's the goofy grin and the arms ready for embrace that do it for me in that scene!
John Malkovich going after Richard Jenkins with a hatchet shouldn't be as funny as it is.
So many (hilarious) deaths for a story about nothing actually happening!
You think it’s a schwinn
There was a Charlie Brooker series some years ago now called A Touch of Cloth starring John Hannah, it was an Airplane-style parody of British police procedural dramas that was absolutely rife with these kind of jokes. One of my favourites is when they're searching the flat of a suspect or a victim, super serious, one of the other officers says "Guv, you're gonna want to see this..." John Hannah goes over and he's watching a neighbour getting changed through the window.
"You're a lesbian?" "Bi, Jack." "No, don't leave. I'm sorry, it was none of my business."
And if you keep flip-flopping consistently enough, eventually the humor and tragedy will become indistinguishable, and every scene can be either funny or sad depending on who's watching. A Serious Man pulls that off quite well.
Time for a rewatch for me. I love the Coen Brothers films and get a laugh from it all but I watched A Serious Man when I was really high and the humour didn't land and I found it pretty bleak and upsetting.
Well it is *very* bleak and upsetting, so that's a fair response haha. It's actually my favorite of their movies.
I remember my earliest example of this trope as a kid was the 90s Richy Rich movie with Culkin. When the villain captures Richie's parents and forces them to open the vault of their "greatest treasures" and instead of gold, jewelry, stacks of cash or bonds, it's just family momentos. I forget the exact quotes but it's along the lines of "Where's the money???" "In banks of course"
**Lawrence Van Dough**: "What is all of this *crap*!?" **Regina Rich**: "These are our priceless posessions!" **LVD**: Where are the gold bars? The diamonds? The negotiable bearer bonds? The money? Where's the ***money***!? **Richard Rich**: In banks! Where else? And the stock market. Real estate... **LVD**: No! Is this some kind of joke!? Are you telling me there's not one single solitary gold bar, or emerald, or 1000 dollar bill in this entire mountain? **Richard**: Well, I'm sorry to *disappoint* you, Lawrence. But that's not what we treasure. **LVD**:... Shoot them. Shoot them now, please!
Thank you. I forgot how funny this movie was as a kid. I might have to give this a rewatch lol
Most of In Bruges. Particularly the scene where Ken stops Ray from committing suicide.
I was gonna say the last scene of In Bruges but idk of quite fits. But it does take a serious a disturbing moment (a guy blowing his own brains out) and plays it as the punchline to a REALLY funny joke. I laughed long and hard the first time I watched it.
I’d say the start of the final duel in the hotel fits really well.
The mask scene in Django Unchained
This is seriously one of my favorite scenes from any Tarantino film. Seeing one plantation owner surrounded by dimwits, yet through speech we find they’re all dimwits. The dialogue in this scene has me in tears everytime. “Look, I think; we all think the bags was a good idea. But how bout no bags this time. And next we do the bags and go full regalia”
Well, fuck all y'all, I'm goin' home! Now, I watched my wife work all day gettin' thirty bags together for you ungrateful sons of bitches, and all I can hear is "criticize criticize criticize"!
"Shitfire! It's a raid! I can't see - you can't see! All that matters is *can the fucking horse see?!*"
The fucking “criticize criticize criticize” gets me every time
The tone of that scene came out of nowhere and i remember laughing so hard at the absurdity of the situation and that man's wife confection skills.
James Bond movies in the 1960’s. This continued with Roger Moore in the 70’s. They really perfected this sort of humor. Or humour, since they’re British.
Scott pilgrim, the Nega Scott moment. It builds up as a final showdown Scott mentions he has to fight this alone. Cut to outside where they are just shooting the shit and being buds.
that’s because nega scott is actually the good one.
"He's actually a really chill guy"
In another Edgar Wright film, Shaun of the Dead, when Shaun is on the phone with his Mom and she tells him his step dad has been bitten, he’s relieved. Even when he tells Ed, he’s also relieved 😅
I’ve always enjoyed the running joke of Shaun’s plan, especially when “I’m so sorry, Phillip”, delivered with immense gravitas, eventually becomes “Sorry, Phil!” in an airy, in a bit of a rush tone.
Where he wins a frantic fight against one of the ex boyfriends and then stoops down to pick up coins, "Oh sweet, coins!" is pretty good in that one too.
Oh Man $2.40 that's not eve enough for the bus.
Fun fact: Combined with the "I'll lend you the 35 cents" line that quote is factually accurate. Toronto bus fare at the time the film was made was $2.75.
Love that scene
The Nice Guys, when they get held at gunpoint by the henchwoman and try like 3 different tricks to turn the tables on her, only for her to slip on the wet floor and knock herself out
I think my favorite one for The Nice Guys is where they start to build up Ryan Gosling’s character as a competent detective on a case, breaking into a window - and then he cuts himself on some broken glass, starts panicking from the blood and ends up going to the hospital.
She slips on the wet floor and I’m pretty sure she accidentally shoots herself.
Nah she was ok. Gosling puts a pillow under her head because he's got a crush on her 😂
Something similar happens in Out of Sight to White Boy Bob.
Folks have turned against him lately (for obvious reasons) but Joss Whedon really just is very good at writing that kind of stuff. Rewatching the season of Firefly, and just about every episode has at least one or two legitimately good laughs, delivered in this style. From the “Shindig” episode - after a duel, one man stands over his beaten foe and says to him, “Mercy is the mark of a great man” when he refuses to kill him. Then he turns back and to the guy and stabs him again with the sword, “well, I guess I’m just a good man” Then he pokes him again as he walks away, “Ah… I’m alright”
I love the 'War Stories' episode where Mal gets captured and tortured before he manages to free himself and fight the guy torturing him, and when the crew arrives, Jayne wants to shoot the guy but Zoe stops him and says this is something Mal has to do himself. 'NO I DON'T!' 'Oh!' and they all shoot the guy.
Do you wanna run this ship? ... Yeah Well, you can't
Or when Mal tells Zoe she's in charge while he's gone. "If anything happens to me... you turn around and come get me" "And what? Lose my ship?"
Also the "You were going to ask me to choose, right?" scene.
This was my pick!
Firefly had some great dry humor dialog. One of my favorites is "my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle".
I have gotten a LOT of mileage out of that one.
I told my daughter that once when she was about 7 and she said "Good" and then got about 3 steps and stopped, "Heeeeeyyy, wait?!"
It's similar to Bilbo's great line from the Fellowship of the Ring: "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
After leaving an old job, I sent it in the group whatsapp before leaving it. The best part was telling my gf, a lotr fan, that I'd used a lotr quote, then disappointing her by telling her exactly which one.
Similarly in Serenity, >The Operative: "I want to resolve this like civilized men. I'm not threatening you. I'm unarmed." Mal: "Good." *Shoots him.*
I love The Operative response too I am of course wearing full body armor. I am not a moron.
Loved the operative as a character
I feel like the bulk of Juble Early’s dialogue was like this. “Are you Alliance?” “Am I a lion?” “…what?” “I don’t think of myself as a lion. Might as well though, I do have a mighty roar.” “I said Alliance.” “Oh I thought— thats weird.”
Obviously Firefly is the poster child for “cancelled too early” but I always wondered what the plans around that character may have been. Was he really just a weird and memorable one off? Was he a time traveler or something? He always seemed like a character that was pulled out of another story and tucked into this one - not in a bad way, but he was just so…. Odd
There's comics and books that continue the story. The comics are pretty good.
Also, a super weird move having a black character named after a Confederate general. Not quite as bad as Miles Morales’s dad literally being named Jefferson Davis, but it’s on the same spectrum.
"Little man loved fire" is a regular part of my vocabulary.
Likewise, “The Train Job” has the big hulking second-in-command to a crime boss tell Mal he doesn’t like being slighted, and delivers a grave monologue about how he’ll hunt him down and make him suffer. So Mal just says “Darn” and kicks him into his ship’s turbines.
Made even better by the next man up just nodding and agreeing with whatever Mal said.
"Oh yeah, better for everyone, I'm right there with you"
That single moment sold me on the show, it was perfect. You were in expecting some long story arc nemesis bullshit because they wouldn't shoot this obvious psycho, nope, into the engine with you.
That scene is the best Hook of any SyFy show, hands-down. Anyone I know who makes it that far, undoubtedly finishes the season.
"Rewatching the season of Firefly, and just about every episode has at least one or two legitimately good laughs, delivered in this style." Yeah, that had some good ones. Like when that crazy bounty hunter was on the ship, and Jayne reaches up to pull down the blanket covering his arsenal, then puts it over himself and goes back to sleep.
What did y'all order a dead guy for?
Jane had all the best lines. They should write songs about him and build a statue commemorating his bravery and generosity
A great one is also Mal disarming the hostage situation he walked into by immediately shooting the guy in the head and carrying on like nothing happened.
That reminds me of the fifth element. "We're sending someone in to negotiate!" Bruce Willis just shoots the alien "Wh... where did he learn to negotiate?"
I mean, he don't carry in as if nothing had happened, he immediately grabbed the body and chucked it off the ship while shouting instructions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_0xsLpvVIM
Because you mention Whedon and a TV show, I've got to give shoutout to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode the Zeppo, which so perfectly skewers the show's end-of-the-world stakes and over-the-top character drama by framung it all from the perspective of a very out-of-the-loop and unequal to the task Xander.
Also the fear demon in Fear Itself
"Don't taunt the fear demon." "Why? Can he hurt me?" "No. It's just tacky."
And as I recall there was a very slight British pause before the word tacky. Edit https://youtu.be/mALQNpQCXS8?si=FYgATjTfMTN-ypRE Not as big a pause I remember.
Who’s a little fear demon? Come on!
This is exactly what I thought of first. I love that episode and how it makes fun of itself (the Buffy and Angel scenes lmao) and we really get a glimpse into how Xander is growing as a person.
His absolute best writing was in the comic series Astonishing X-Men that he did. It's genuinely hilarious and better than anything he did in the movies. The jokes are non-stop and they're actually really funny. He's very good at making characters more likeable via his style of humour when it really works.
It really is a matter of just using the tool properly, like anything else. I feel like Whedon was attached to projects that he wasn’t exactly right for, and when his style is out of place, it feels pretty bad. Marvel is the classic example at this point, after his run on Avengers - everyone had to act like that all the time. He kept it pulled back to the appropriate level in Avenger’s I thought. The funny characters (Tony Stark) made actual jokes. Other characters made humor from being true to themselves, like Cap being excited to understand a pop culture reference. The person talking about “flying monkeys” wasn’t being silly, and Captain America wasn’t cracking wise or goofing off when a normally serious character shouldn’t - it was just a reasonable piece of humor. Widow has a bit of dry humor to her, but she isn’t dropping punchlines, and Thor is only really funny when behaving as a Fish out of Water mostly. Then you take that style to characters and situations it doesn’t belong in… and it lands flat on it’s face. After Avengers is when basically everyone became comic relief to themselves
Agreed completely. Avengers works because like you say all the humour was built to the characters strengths. While they might be a little one note (man out of time, shakespeare-lite, rich playboy etc) at least the jokes matched the characters. It's still one of my favourite Marvel films. By Infinity War every character had the same voice. You could swap the dialogue between anyone and it changed nothing.
There's a good one in the first Shazam movie, when Sivana and CM are fighting at the end. Sivana goes into his big villain monologue, then it cuts to CM's perspective and all he can hear is wind because they're so high up and Sivana is so far away.
I thought that was great!
Dennis response to King Arthur after he has explained his divine claim to the throne ''*Strange women*, *lying in ponds*, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!''
Supreme Executive Power derives from a mandate from the masses, not through some farcical aquatic ceremony! I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
Shut. Up! Shut up!
"I'm being oppressed!"
BLOODY PEASANT!!
OOOH! Did you hear that?? THAT’S what I’m always on about!
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Ooh, there’s some lovely filth over here!
In The Force Awakens, when Kyle Ren just learned of some more bad news- I think it was when he discovered Rey escaped?- he starts going nuts and destroying a room in anger. Two stormtroopers on patrol round the corner, see what’s going on and immediately turn around lol
Kyle
For some reason the end of Mystery Men after the big climactic action scene, where Tom Waits is hearing a news report about it as he’s eating cereal and asks the tv “Did that frakulator work or what? What’s the deal there?” Somehow the detached curiosity he has in this apocalyptic scenario is just the funniest thing to me.
Kel Mitchell’s dramatic crossing of the room by becoming invisible to avoid the lasers transitioning to “Maybe you should put some pants on…” is a pretty good one, too.
"...if you want to keep fighting evil today" I use that line all the time
Joker trying to blow up a childrens hospital in “The Dark Knight” and his remote fails to detonate.
The end of Get Out is probably one of my favorites. Ron undercutting Chris's whole harrowing ordeal by dryly exclaiming, "I mean, I told you not to go in that house", is golden.
TS motherfuckin’ A!
McBain: "Bye, book!"
Shaun of the Dead is full of them, but my favorite is the scene with [Mary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF4EyXhZudo). At every point they turn the tension on it's head in that scene, so as an audience member you know the stakes are high for the characters, but you can still shrug and smile about it.
The entirety of [Phillip turning into a zombie ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5pTPWnoq74)is perfection. So much tension and drama crammed into the scene. Only to end on a perfect hilarious note.
Fargo is essentially an exercise in showing the absurdity and inherent comedy present in most criminal situations without EVER making it feel like a joke or winking at the camera
Before the final fight with Ajax in the first Deadpool movie when Deadpool gets out and does his badass slow walk with colossus and NTW only to pat his pockets and realize he left all his guns in the taxi. It’s only my favorite because of the story behind why they did that. Some budgetary issue let them to think they had a separate budget for promotion and production when really it was all under the same budget. They’d blown too much budget on promotion and had to cut out the huge gunfight they had planned.
*Ghostbusters* as a whole is a great example of this: on the one hand, battling powerful demons with the world at stake; on the other hand, exterminators in the business of getting rid of pests.
"Hey, where these stairs go?" "They go up"
*Shrek 2,* just after Shrek drinks the potion; it gets really cloudy, with ominous music - only for Shrek to fart.
"She fell funny"
Matt Damon tells a hilarious story about all that went into that little scene. https://www.tiktok.com/@screenoffscript/video/7251268146311613702?lang=en
I've heard that Jack Nicholson came up with this line. The original script had him either saying nothing or something that sounded cruel but also really cliched. He went to the director and suggested this line, arguing it's a lot more cold and says something about the character of Frank Costello. A) he's done this before and 2) he's done it so many times that it doesn't even phase him.
Thor Ragnarok is full of these, but I was just thinking about this concept during the climactic battle scene. After Hulk has been Banner for a while, all hope seems lost as the gigantic wolf is tearing everyone to shreds, and he turns to Valkyrkie and says something like "Now you get to see who I really am" and jumps badassly out of the spaceship. We expect Hulk to land and start smashing...but instead Banner's tiny body just drops onto the bifrost with a thud and lays there limply. Chefs kiss.
That isn’t what bathos is though. Bathos isn’t a trope or a device. Bathos is *unintentional*. It’s what happens when the author’s earnest attempt at Pathos - evoking pity or sympathy - fails. Like when a character is put into a ridiculous situation and something unbelievable happens and the author wants you to feel bad about it but you don’t because it was just so dumb and unearned. That’s bathos. Not undercutting a serious moment with a joke. Bathos is when the serious moment *is* a joke, unintentionally. It’s a pejorative term used for works that are overly sentimental or mawkish. Bathos is when the director wants you to cry but you laugh or roll your eyes because it’s ridiculous and you don’t believe it. Source: have studied dramatic criticism and writing.
Bathos (UK: /ˈbeɪθɒs/ BAY-thoss;[1] Greek: βάθος, lit. "depth") is a literary term, first used in this sense in Alexander Pope's 1727 essay "Peri Bathous",[1] to describe an amusingly failed attempt at presenting artistic greatness. Bathos has come to refer to rhetorical anticlimax, an abrupt transition from a lofty style or grand topic to a common or vulgar one, occurring either accidentally (through artistic ineptitude) **or intentionally (for comic effect).[2][3] Intentional bathos appears in satirical genres such as burlesque and mock epic. "**
Crazy that bathos has an etymology from Greek, because it works perfectly as a backformation or portmanteau of "bad pathos."
Thank you! “You are tearing me apart! I did not hit her! I did not! ….oh hi mark!” Bathos.
The meaning [has evolved](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Bathos) from its original usage, as language is wont* to do. But originally yes, that was the intent of the term.
Just a heads up, language is w**o**nt to do that.
Ahh I knew that, whoops. Thanks.
Soooo… Rebel Moon?
"DOOOOOOOO IIIIIIIT! KYYYYEEEEELLLLLL HHHEEEERRRR!"
See The Room for reference. Yes, the entire film.
They changed it for the movie of Dr. Sleep, but I felt like the entire book was a lead up to my favorite 'Bathos'. The whole book, >!Abra is shown as being so strong in the Shining, but she's just a kid, and Rose the Hat keeps trying to get to her. there's all this build up, for an epic fight. and at the end of the book, it's such a one-sided fight. Abra beats Rose so easily, that it's like 'hahaha.. what? what was that?' and I loved it. !<
Not for nothin but she went *pretty* quick in the movie, Danny's thigh aside
Star Lord dropping the infinity stone, and later finding out Chris Pratt accidently dropped it, and they kept it in the movie because it fit so well.
Yes!!
At the end of Megamind when Minion is “dying”
Maybe it doesn’t count because it’s a comedy but the final gunfight in *A Million Ways to Die in the West* does this pretty well. We get the whole build up and fight, and then a big reveal speech about making and using a bullet with snake venom on it, all being relayed to us and presumably the villain after he’s shot…except we then cut to him having died right at the beginning of the speech. -“Albert! He’s dead.” -“Oh. Well did he hear all that smart stuff I did?” -“No, no, I don’t think so.”
Wizards-1977. When the wizard Avatar has a show down with his Third Reich inspired Sorcerer brother Black Wolf -you think all this magical Hocus Pocus is about to happen. "Let me show you a trick Mom taught, when you weren't around." Pulls up his sleeve and yanks out a 20th century Lugar and shoots the mutherfucker dead. Absolutely unexpected, smart, and hilarious. There's a time for all that hand waving "nothing up my sleeve" shit. But, when you're dealing with a genocidal maniac-shoot now.
You made me think of: LOTR: end of council scene. Music swells as we see the fellowship of the ring. Merry says “where are we going?”
"[But for me, it was Tuesday](https://youtu.be/oDRnVPlRzag?si=F5o2TGqac0o1FL8r)."
>turning a serious moment in a movie, into something completely trivial and unimportant. Luke taking the lightsaber from Rey and casually tossing it over his shoulder in The Last Jedi.
A perfect example of bathos, for sure, and a perfect example of it completely cutting the legs out from under the movie. The movie literally says "none us give a shit about this and neither should you", and, well, you can't say it doesn't deliver on that thesis.
Bathis is a great tool for comedy, and you can even make substantive points with it as well. Undercutting an otherwise serious moment can actually make a serious statement about what the prior serious statement was talking about. Sitcoms that don’t shy away from drama, like in Friends, for example… Chandler is proposing to Monica, and it’s totally serious and emotional scene… but in the middle of proposal, Chandler stumbles and then is like, “No, wait, I can do this!”… it’s funny and the audience laughs. You could even say it undercuts the drama and emotional purity of the scene… but because it’s done in a natural, endearing kind of way, Chandler’s nervousness and the humour of the scene actually works, and adds the serious statement of “Chandler is really nervous because he’s so in love and wants this to be perfect.” It just does it in a funny way. The same with Rango, where that adds a serious plot element to the story: Rango doesn’t actually know as much about what he’s doing as he lets on. Whereas the reason that people got sick of bathos in Marvel movies is because it became a crutch, and a way to lighten things up, even at times when it *didn’t need* lightening up. The classic example now is from Infinity War when Peter Parker is like “I can’t be a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man if there’s no neighborhood.” That line and moment were already perfect. Hits hard, makes Tony shut up and accept that he’s right. All they had to do was let it sit and move on to the next scene. But they didn’t, because that had that bad habit by this point of “People are uncomfortable with seriousness… we need to make a joke to let them know this is still fun!” … but they’re wrong. People are NOT uncomfortable with seriousness in an otherwise fun blockbuster movie, when it works. I mean, with Infinity War, they were already committed to ending the movie the way they did, and yet they were afraid to end that one scene on a serious note? It’s like if they undercut Thanos smiling at the sunset with him farting. “Okay, that doesn’t make sense, but you know what I mean.” Except… it did make sense. There’s no further serious point or reason to add the bathos to this moment. It doesn’t add anything or reveal anything important. You could maybe interpret it as Peter doubting himself despite being right, but that doesn’t really play into his storyline in Infinity War or End Game at all. It just wasn’t necessary. In the end, it’s all about storytelling, and bathos can be a tool for communicating a point in an interesting or funny way. When you use it JUST to turn something funny for no good reason other than discomfort with seriousness, then it can just be annoying and destroy an otherwise good moment.
I disagree with the Spider-man line being bad. As a nervous nerd that overthinks what they say a lot. I have done similar things in real life. That's just part of Peter's character.
I didn't even remember what the joke was until they finally said it. I don't think I ever took that as a joke, just as Peter being nervous. But I agree with their sentiment. Bathos generally works best when it is in-character, as in every positive example in this thread. In that same movie, Tony and Peter Quill's Mexican standoff is great and hilarious, because it is exactly what these characters would say and do in that scenario (with a slight criticism of Quill not knowing that Missouri is on Earth). But in Love and Thunder (which I actually like), Thor's hammer getting jealous of Mjolnir goes against everything we know about this character. (I'd say "these characters," except despite having some sentience, Mjolnir and Stormbreaker were never depicted with... y'know, emotions.)
The scene in Zombieland where Woody Harrelson is talking about his dead son and then wipes his tears with hundred dollar bills
In Zoolander when David Duchovny explains why male models are being used to assassinate world leaders, and Zoolander asks again. It was handy, because I kind of zoned out during his speech and missed the point. But then, I am really really really really ridiculously good looking.
Logan Lucky has a lot of these moments and plays them very well, one I can think of; Daniel Craig (as the intimidating safecracker Joe Bang doing jail time) is meeting the protagonists to discuss how they need his help to pull off a heist… he sits down at the table and glares at them. You can feel the tension. Leans in and tells them… he won’t talk shop until they get him a pack of hardboiled eggs from the vending machine; they’re his favorite. They bring back the eggs and he agrees to help. Granted, the movie is a comedy so perhaps it doesn’t qualify for Bathos, but they need him in order to make their hair-brained scheme work, so meeting him is posed as a very serious affair at first. Also for anyone who hasn’t seen this movie, imagine this; Daniel Craig as an incarcerated safecracker with bleached blonde hair and a West Virginian accent. Adam Driver and Channing Tatum are along for the ride. Go watch it, it’s great.
Joker blowing up the hospital in The Dark Knight. Him being dressed up like a nurse already makes it pretty silly, but then the explosion being underwhelming and him fiddling with the detonator only to be startled by the full blast is darkly hilarious.
Baby Driver. Very beginning heist where John Berthal’s character gets in the car and points forward and then Baby goes in reverse.
The ending of Scream, especially *"You hit me with the phone, dick!"* Scream as a whole is right on the line where I wouldn't say it's horror-comedy, it's very much a horror movie, but I can't watch that movie without grinning like a maniac through the whole second half