Storytelling is all about context. Context changes everything depending on setting, characters, tone, and every other detail one can think of. In fact, context can even take a single line of dialogue and turn it from being a ridiculously hilarious comment to something darkly sinister and threatening. It all depends on the situation and how the line is delivered. A great example can be seen with a very funny line from Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder.
In the film, Nick Nolte plays a war veteran who lost both his hands during Vietnam. (He really didn't, but that's irrelevant for our purposes.) Nolte portrays this character brilliantly as a very hardened, grizzled man who takes everything too seriously and considers everything a matter of life or death. At one point, he is asked what kind of gun he is carrying. To which he responds, "I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes when it takes a man's life." The way Nolte delivers this line, with such dead earnest, comes off hilariously over the top.
But the line could actually be considered a pretty badass statement given the right context. Consider a western, where a single lone gunman enters a town filled with outlaws. They surround him, their hands hovering over their weapons. The leader of the outlaws notices the gunman has a revolver on his hip and asks him what brand he's carrying. To which the gunman responds, "I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes when it takes a man's life." In that instance the line is delivered with the subtext of a threat when it hadn't before. It's a pretty badass way to tell someone to back off and just goes to show that something absolutely hilarious can be considered pretty menacing given the right context.
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