We’re now 28 movies and seven TV shows into the MCU and, 14 years on from Iron Man, the superhero franchise continues to dominate popular culture. Much of that is down to tight quality control on scripts that ensure that we never see a complete disaster. But that doesn’t mean the odd cringe-worthy line doesn’t sneak through.
Now fans on r/MarvelStudios are busily debating what “the cheesiest line” in the whole MCU is. The original poster points to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with Maria Rambeux “get out of my universe!” and Strange saying “the Illumiwhati?”
The top-voted reply is “don’t worry, she’s got help” from Avengers: Endgame, which kicks off the all-female hero sequence in the final battle. As a reply points out, this doesn’t even make sense as Captain Marvel just flew through Thanos’ ship – why would she need help?
Also highly rated is the awful moment in Avengers: Age of Ultron when Joss Whedon contrives a reason for Bruce Banner to fall onto Natasha Romanoff’s chest. She utters, “don’t turn green”. Also, from Age of Ultron are lines like “you and Banner better not be playing hide the zucchini” and “I will be reinstating prima nocta” from Tony Stark. None of this has aged well, considering what we’ve heard about Joss Whedon.
Strange’s “please Scooby-Doo this s**t” from No Way Home also gets a shout-out for being a line being criticized as far back as the first trailers, as does Drax’s “I have famously huge turds” from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Peter Parker saying “you ever see this really old movie Aliens?” in Infinity War.
Oh well, at least if these lines are cringe, they’re also memorable…
