I don’t think you can just lump verbal jokes as comedies. Lots of movies used the occasional cheap verbal joke, especially action movies. What changed is reducing the movie making process to a formula based on what talented directors do. Every scene now needs a joke or an action sequence no matter what, maybe an exception for 1-2 scenes to establish a story at the beginning. This completely destroys the ability to build drama, or have sad scenes when appropriate. They also don’t hire directors that would fight them on this either.