What's the earliest example in a movie of a gloating villain having their florid speech undercut by an anachronistic, tone-jolting joke?
You know that thing where a big bad or some miniboss is giving some kind of big speech about how powerful they are and how they're gonna crush our hero(es), but mid-speech (or maybe after it), one of the party says something snarky or weird or anachronistic, and everyone looks at them like wuuuh? and all the tension evaporates from the scene and its all very very funny.
This feels like a post-Shrek phenomena since it needs the villain trope deconstructed or whatever but it wouldn't surprise me if this trope predates it. None of the original Star Wars has this, or any of the Bonds? Maybe? Someone correct me?
I tried looking for this on TVTropes but I didn't have the patience. I think this is different to the "joking around for distraction" trope - the "joke" is purely for the audience.
But lets see if we collectively can find the earliest example of this.
Posted Sep 10, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC