Blockbuster Movie Jokes That Make Zero Sense in Context

4 ‘Wakanda Forever’ Tells Us Evil A.I. Is Only in the Movies

The Joke: In Wakanda Forever, super-inventor Shuri has an A.I. assistant. Her mother, Queen Ramonda, doesn’t quite embrace this idea. “I think that one day, artificial intelligence is going to kill us all,” she says. Shuri laughs off this fear. Her A.I., she tells the Queen, “isn’t like the movies, mother.”

This is funny because the mother’s unwarranted skepticism shows off the generation gap. That’s relevant because, spoiler, in a very short time, Ramonda is about to die horribly. We’ll look back at her every statement as dramatic irony from someone not long for this world. 

Okay, But…: Let’s leave aside how Shuri contrasts their reality with what life is like in movies, when they are, in fact, in a movie. It’s always annoying when characters in movies do this, but writers insist on making them do so, perhaps relishing how much it annoys us. 

Shuri shouldn’t consider homicidal A.I. something from the movies, and Ramonda shouldn’t consider it something from the speculative future. Artificial intelligence already did try to kill everyone on Earth. Its name was Ultron. It was made of vibranium stolen from Wakanda. Ramonda’s late husband, the dead king, went to the United Nations to apologize for Wakanda’s unwitting role in its creation. He was assassinated that day. Ramonda’s son, the other dead king, was present that day as well. It was a whole thing. 

Let’s Tweak It: I suppose Shuri could reply by saying, “My A.I. isn’t Ultron” instead of, “My A.I. isn’t like the movies.” Or she could say, “A.I. already tried that, mother. We’ve learned since then.” Some fans like that sort of referential humor. But that leaves Ramonda either still reasonable in her fears or oblivious in forgetting about the last time A.I. rose up, and that’s not what the movie’s going for. 

Maybe the two shouldn’t be arguing over new tech this way exactly. Wakanda is supposed to be so advanced that elements we see as controversial innovations might seem routine to them. So, we can show off the generation gap by Ramonda saying, “I remember when I was a little girl, we were just satisfied using our parents’ A.I. We didn’t feel the need to keep tinkering with it, like you do.”

Actually, scrap the A.I. Even aside from how we have various real-world reasons to resent A.I., you only need an A.I. assistant in a story if the character is a loner, and their lack of friends is the point. Shuri is surrounded by other scientists in this scene and can talk to one of them, making the scene feel more alive. 

Instead of having these two joke about A.I., make it a joke about the dangers of custom centrifuges. That sounds unwieldy, but I trust they could make this work. 

3 Batman Thinks He Could Do Better Just Giving His Money Away

The Joke: In The Flash, Batman briefly finds himself tied by Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth. So, he suddenly divulges, “I’d do a lot better just giving my money away. If I really want to end crime, I should end poverty.”

The idea that Bruce Wayne’s billions are a better path toward fixing Gotham than Batman’s punches is a fun one to think about. It was fun when we came up with it, many years ago — and by “we,” I mean both audiences in general and Cracked specifically. 

Okay, But…: The idea was even more fun when, years later, we pointed out that it’s actually wrong — and by “we,” I mean both Cracked in general and the writers behind that original video of ours specifically. 

In short: Philanthropy can help a city, which is why Bruce Wayne is a philanthropist. But it turns out his giving away money doesn’t eliminate crime, and that’s why he’s Batman. Billions can only go so far in a city with an eight-figure population, a city’s whose yearly budget’s already in the billions. And even if we reduce poverty, crime remains. Not all criminals are starving.

That’s true in the real world. It’s more true in Gotham, which is plagued by not just crime but supervillains. Would donating money be enough to defeat a nuclear cave troll or an alien and his demon army, which are the threats we saw this Batman face before? Would it stop the rich son of a gangster stealing a virus to commit terrorism, which is the threat Batman thwarted in the very scene where he says this line?

But let’s suppose we do want to say Batman could solve everything just by giving away money. He still can’t be the one to voice this idea, unless you’re going for a total parody. “He’s going about this the wrong way” might be the premise of the story, and it might well be an idea that he wrestles with or deludes himself over. But the script can’t officially declare it a truth which he knows but is lying about. If he knows it for sure and doesn’t adapt, he’s not much of a hero.

Let’s Tweak It: If Batfleck’s last words must be a joke making fun of the character, it doesn’t have to label him as secretly willfully hurting his city. It could be anything. Maybe he’s giving some advice to Barry about how he needs to hone his skills. Then Diana says, “Right, right. And the pecs?”

“Pure vanity,” says Batman. “They serve no purpose in a fight, and there’s virtually no situation when I need to push with my chest while the rest of me is immobile. I do incline presses just to look good.” Camera pans to the lasso around his ankle. 

2 An Important Name Missing From a Book

The Joke: At the end of Game of Thrones, Sam shows up with a written chronicle of the events of the series, which he has named A Song of Ice and Fire. This is a nod to an old fan theory that the real Song of Ice and Fire books were actually all written by Sam — a theory that never made a lick of sense, by the way. Really, every scene in those books is Sam’s version of events? Even the separate lesbian scenes of Cersei and Daenerys ordering servants to pleasure them behind closed doors, which Sam has no way of knowing about?

Tyrion asks about his own role in the book. “I don’t believe you’re mentioned,” says Sam.

Now, someone learning their role in a larger story is too minor to mention — that’s a fine joke. The best version of it surely came in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which reveals that our whole planet merits just a single word of description (later two words) in a cosmic guidebook. 

Okay, But…: The joke only works if they convince us this humbled figure’s role really is minor enough to omit. Tyrion was found guilty of murdering the King of Westeros. Does this book skip over that part of the war? 

Tyrion also murdered other notable people, served as Hand under two monarchs, defended the city against invasion and attacked the city through invasion, married the current Queen of the North — but really, just being found guilty of killing the king should be enough that he can’t possibly escape a mention. “The maester who wrote this is incompetent” could make for a joke, but it’s not the one the writers were going for here. 

Let’s Tweak It: If they want a joke about the story being wider than one character realizes, they could do that. They could give Tyrion’s line in that scene to a character we’ve come to know but who actually doesn’t matter. That character could be Sam’s gal pal Gilly, and when Sam reveals the book didn’t mention her, we cut away and are left to just imagine what sitcom-style awkwardness this launches.

Or if this must be a Tyrion joke, Tyrion could ask about something in the book other than his very existence. “That’s quite the comprehensive history they’ve written,” he might say. “I do hope they found room to document some of my adventures in the city’s houses of ill repute.”

He’s not being serious, but Sam answers as though he is. “We wrote of the carnage, mostly,” he replies. “There was just so much death to report. Eighty thousand people slain in a single day in this city alone. And now an entire continent’s on the brink of starvation. I just want whoever comes next to be able to learn how it happened. I want them to know where we went wrong.”

“Right then,” says Tyrion. “No chapter on the brothels. Understood.” 

1 The Torture in ‘Red Notice’

The Joke: Netflix informs us that 2021’s Red Notice is one of the most-watched films of all-time, and we can trust them on this because Netflix would never lie. 

Red Notice is a caper, and like most capers, it ends by revealing just who was secretly not who we thought they were. This one (spoiler) ends by revealing that The Rock and Gal Gadot were secretly in league the whole time. You might have guessed this because there are mathematically only so many ways this story can end. Though, this reveal does render many previous scenes nonsensical. 

I’m not going to go pick apart a bunch of those scenes, but let’s look at one because the movie itself revisits it post-reveal. Gadot tortures The Rock for information, by electrocuting his balls. Ryan Reynolds, tied up on the other side of a pillar, thinks he is working with The Rock at this time, but he’s still quite happy to let this continue and even encourages it because the two don’t like each other. In the end, the secret partners reveal that Gal didn’t really need to torture the guy. But she still did, and boy did that hurt. It’s funny because The Rock felt a lot of pain. 

Okay, But…: Is that funny, though? If the joke was originally that The Rock suffers because his ostensible partner Ryan Reynolds is letting it happen, does that remain funny when we know the torturer and the victim were on the same side? They act like they’ve added a layer to the joke, but they’ve taken a layer away. 

Need she have tortured him for real? They were doing this behind Reynolds’ back. He couldn’t see exactly what they were doing.  

Let’s Tweak It: In the movie we got, they flash back to the torture scene to show what was really going on — she was torturing him so she’d have the opportunity to pass some key to him. How about we flash back and see a wire is sparking noisily on the ground, but she isn’t torturing him at all. Instead, she’s stroking him. 

She’s using both hands for this, of course, because he is The Rock. We probably can’t get away with filming the act directly, but if the camera shoots him waist-up, everyone will understand what’s going on below. This reveal is about the two of them being lovers, so let’s go ahead and show that.

However, maybe even that tasteful angle is too explicit for this movie, or maybe Reynolds would be able to see this from where he’s standing. So, Gadot really does need to electrocute The Rock’s balls, just like the movie originally told us. But in this flashback, we see his face for the first time. And he’s grinning in ecstasy. He’s loving this, and we can conclude this is something the two of them do regularly. 

Some critics say The Rock has bad chemistry with actresses. This is how we fix that. 

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