31 of the Funniest Burns from the Week of December 18, 2023

Three movies into Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it’s not looking good for Kevin Feige and his throne of baseball caps. Latent misogyny and the strike’s promotional pause held back Nia DaCosta’s female-driven The Marvels. Meanwhile, Ant-Man and the Wasp went to the Quantum Realm just to return with middling reviews and a major Jonathan Majors problem. The only film that saw relative success was the third Guardians of the Galaxy outing, which was also a swansong for director James Gunn, who jumped from Marvel’s sinking ship in favor of a rescue mission at direct competitor DC Studios. 

To say Feige is scrambling to return to the exciting form that Marvel movies once held (and prove Martin Scorsese wrong) would be a massive understatement. One possible option that’s been floated to freshen up the MCU is making the Phase Six release of Thunderbolts R rated. On paper this makes sense, as the film follows a group of antiheroes who would surely toss out an F-bomb or two, but as one Twitter user astutely pointed out, this merely constitutes the “stripping the walls for copper wire” stage of the MCU.

Feige and his recent mishandling of a once-revered studio aren’t the only things catching fire this week, though. Other burn victims include a Swiftie who forgot about the 13th Amendment, Scorsese’s dumbest little guy and someone who asked a question they really probably shouldn’t have.