Joe Russo, the director of Avengers: Endgame, disclosed the reason MCU movies have so much humor in them. The MCU proved to be the most thriving film franchise of all time by earning $25.6 billion at the worldwide box office. Over the past 14 years, the viewers have become too engrossed in the characters and the world of these heroes. 

The films were one of the finest works of shared cultural moments in the 21st century, as the dialogue was quotable in everyday conversation. One defining feature of the MCU was the franchise’s sense of humor, which developed back in 2008’s Iron Man, due to the film not having a complete script and having to depend on Robert Downey Jr.’s impromptu skills, which director Jon Favreau was well known for because of his comedy background.

The franchise would further be defined in The Avengers as the banter and satire of the story was one of the film’s best parts, and the following MCU films have tried to acquire that. The laughable bits of the MCU have now become just as much of an attraction for audiences as the action scenes.

Russo opened up about why the MCU films had so much light entertainment in them and said that it played a major role in making Marvel a hit. He told the readers that Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige liked to test Marvel Films to know how the audiences were enjoying them. He wanted the fans to have an amazing experience watching it, and to accomplish that, he wanted the movies to have humor. 

Russo in an interview gave the credit for the success of MCU to Kevin as he suggested adding the comical aspects to it. He said that Kevin loved sitting in the test screening and hearing the response. So, the audience laughing meant you could hear the response. It was a way of understanding that in every 2 minutes they were getting enjoyment out of the movie and that was a strong way for him to assess how the movie would perform with an audience. So, Russo believed that humor was very important to Kevin.

The MCU approach of hilarity had become so marketable that it had been copied by other studios and had grown a negative reception among some viewers as “Marvel Humor.” Some people have had an issue with the franchise’s emphasis on humor as they feel that it often makes serious moments obsolete and some found problems in the franchise’s inability to take anything seriously, for instance, when they mocked Doc Ock’s name in Spider-Man: No Way Home. 

Although, contrary to all criticism, MCU has been using the humor to incorporate more lofty themes into their films, ranging from racial politics in Black Panther to reflecting on the devastations of colonialism and its impact on refugees in both Captain Marvel and Thor: Ragnarok, or to highlight the complicated relationship between parents and children in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

However, despite the reaction to Marvel's use of humor, adding comedy into action films is not something Marvel created. In fact, it very much appeared that MCU not only drew from comic books to inform their films but from cinematic influence as well.