Hey movie producers, stop ruining my movies! Women, do something about this shit!!

The BBQ Pit
1

Over the weekend I saw The Hobbit, and while most of the movie was alright and certainly better than the first, there is a HUGE fucking shithole of a subplot in the middle of it that, if I weren’t such a forgiving person, would have completely ruined the movie for me.

Hobbit spoilers:

Not only did they add a completely new character Tauriel into it, but she was specifically there as a romantic subplot to Legolas, and as this articlestates, they went back to add the asinine love triangle between her, Legolas, and Kili, one of the 13 dwarves!

For a long time we’ve all known that the Hollywood excuse was that women won’t come to see a movie without some kind of romance, so that’s why we have romantic comedies and Jennifer Aniston’s post-Friends career. But I don’t mind that, I simply don’t watch romantic comedies. However, I take great umbrage when they start shoehorning in romance into movies that don’t fucking need it. No matter how little, there MUST be some kind of girl that at least one of the main male characters has a thing for. It could be unrequited, it could be just flirting and nothing more, or one kiss and a handful of sexual tension but it is there and fucking ruining movies!

The Matrix was a great little philosophical mindbender at first until they went with the “power of love saves all” shit. James Bond apparently has to fall totally in love with a woman in every movie and forget about her in the next one (or rather, you can say a woman falls for him every time). The recent A-Team remake had an especially idiotic one. Fucking Batman, a movie about a guy in a batsuit chasing similarly dressed namesake villains has this. Remember this is about a guy who’s so obsessed with crime that he dresses like a fucking bat, how much fucks do you think he really gives to settling down with a wife and kids? Pearl Harbor had the old shitfaced cliche of a love triangle in the middle of god damn World War fucking 2! And of course one of the worst parts of the new Star Wars trilogy is the asinine love story between Anakin and Padme. Neither were convincing and the whole thing severely weakens Vader as a whole to see him as a whiny teenage. TVtropes has a whole list of what they call the Romantic Plot Tumor. Its a meddlesome, infuriating, and stupid plot point because it can be totally removed without harming the movie

Now I’m not saying that romance in a non-romance-centric film is always bad. Its fine if that’s the purpose of the movie. True Lies was great because it was ABOUT a husband and a wife so of course there will be romance. Shrek was great because it was ABOUT rescuing a princess so of course love would come into it. I’m only upset when I hear of executive meddling like in the Hobbit above or when a perfectly serviceable movie is inundated with a pointless romantic subplot. If they remade the original Predator, they’d probably have the Arnold-equivalent fall in love with that female prisoner. As if an alien hunter fighting against a group of mercenary badasses weren’t enough already

And I think women need to especially stand up against this kind of shit. Not only does it ruin movies, it demeans them by showing that they are only there as characters in relation to a male character. Its like someone tried to take the Bechdel Test and trick women into thinking they’re represented equally well in films when in fact they are simply there as eye candy or the help along the development of the male character. Tomb Raider was a forgetful film, but while the game was sexualized, it at least starred a strong woman that didn’t need a man to kick ass. But apparently they felt Angelina Jolie had a guy they needed her to be fighting for (because apparently being rich, hot, athletic, adventurous, and smart weren’t good enough motivation to solve mysteries unless you had to do it to save some guy).

I wouldn’t be making this post except for the confession of how the producers ruined the Hobbit. Most of this shit is often speculated on but people don’t just come out and admit it. And I love the book, it was my first fantasy novel. To think that these clueless shiteating donkey rapers could take a look at the work of Professor Tolkien, with 60 some years of history and say to themselves “we can do better!” by making up characters and destroying the inherent relationship of dwarves and elves because “he’s tall for a dwarf”??? That makes me want to firebomb their houses. Romantic subplots have ruined countless films and will do so with countless more until people, women especially, stand up and tell film producers not to treat them like children who only have attention spans for one thing. Send angry letter, mail them dirty tampons, whatever it takes, but god damn it fucking stop them from inserting romance where it doesn’t fucking belong!

2

I haven’t seen the latest Hobbit movie yet but probably will. Purists have been bitching forever because of all the additions made to a rather short book. Some of us will just go along with Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth adventure for the fun of it–even if it isn’t as good as LOTR.

I haven’t seen anybody else blaming the “ruin” of the movie solely on the fact it’s no longer a sausage fest. There’s being a Tolkien purist–and being a misogynist.

I’ll continue to support entertainment I like & will avoid your instructions… As a protest, why don’t you send in a well-aged jock strap?

3

I read an interview with Evangeline Lily. She said she agreed to the part as long as she wasn’t in a love triangle. After a couple years of shooting they did some re-writes and she was in a love triangle, but it was too late to do anything at that point.

And after a moments search here it is.

That said, I still liked the movie. Although I always thought it was pronounced “Smog” not whatever it is they keep saying.

4

I’ll be the first one to say that while Jackson changed parts of LOTR, I am generally happy with that version of the film. I’m fine with expanding Arwen’s part and getting rid of Glorfindel. I’m fine with giving Eowyn some more lines to set up her killing of the Witch King. Those made sense and flowed from the natural progression of adapting the story. The Tauriel subplot in The Hobbit, however, fits exactly the definition of a Romantic Plot Tumor because its unnecessary and doesn’t add anything at all to the movie.

5

Does she take her clothes off? If not, then I agree she doesn’t add anything to the movie.

6

Wow. Bridget Burke, I think you need to re-evaluate your interpretation of the OP. I don’t know how you can read the OP and accuse YogSosoth of suggesting that the mere presence of a female character ruined the movie, or that he is a misogynist.

I haven’t seen the movie yet (going tonight), but in general I agree wholeheartedly with the OP. It seems that very few people can write a script for roles with younger women that doesn’t involve some big love drama. And, often, said love drama is often irrelevant to the storytelling at hand, feeling either like a pandering towards female audience members, or an unskilled attempt at incorporating women into a story by writers who lack the creativity to see female characters as serving any primary role but that of a romantic interest.

7

Hell, my complaint about The Hobbit is the fact that they felt it appropriate to make a trilogy out of it in the first place.

Just you wait, though. Dollars to donuts, they’ll decide to make the last movie a two-parter.

8

How did they manage to make Evageline Lily look tall? Aren’t Elves tall?

9

In her defense, I did think about how this would come off practically. These roles for women do not exist except as romantic fodder. I don’t want the end result to be less female roles, but I do want to push for better female roles. If, in the short term, this means less work for actresses, then that’s an unfortunate side effect but over the long term, I think it would better than to have pointless female roles of this type and have more difficult-to-write, meatier roles for actresses.

In many cases where the romance is forced, however, I do expect and have no problems with no such female roles at all. Just as I wouldn’t like a forced male role in something like Sex and the City or Bridesmaids, we don’t need bad gender roles, we need good gender roles

10

Well, but they do exist. There are plenty of meaty, well-written roles out there; it’s just that they always get cast as men. But if we take romance out of the equation, there’s often no reason why a given role couldn’t be played by a woman. As Geena Davis points out, it’s a very simple process: just cast women instead of men. The canonical example, of course, is Sigourney Weaver in Alien, in a role originally written for a man. And more recently, there’s Sandra Bullock in Gravity, which I believe was actually written as a woman. But it’s far too rare to see women cast in roles like these where gender is irrelevant.

Now, I’ll grant that with such well-known and -loved source material like Tolkien, you can’t just decide that, say, Gimli should be female (although considering dwarf women, you wouldn’t necessarily have been able to tell in that case). But if they had just added Tauriel without the romantic entanglements like they promised, then I think the OP might have at very least felt that her role didn’t detract from the story, or even enhanced it.

Ladies! They’re not just for romance anymore!

11

It’s not “your” movie.

12

In the book, no. In the films, yes. Ish. Same for wizards.

John Rhys Davies who played Gimli in the lord of the rings films is well over six feet tall.

As for female roles, the pointless love interest is on the big checklist Hollywood uses to make it’s movies. I like to see films where women play “male roles”. Haywire. Salt. Suchlike. But then you get complaints that they aren’t “real” female characters. Perhaps some of the dwarves are female. Female dwarves have beards and are indistinguishable from male dwarves to non-dwarves.

13

That would have been totally goddamn awesome. If Jackson had made half a dozen of the dwarves be women without making any other changes, I would have jumped for joy. Heck, make a couple of them a couple for all I care, a husband-and-wife team among the dwarves, but a team that (like Wash and Zoe in Firefly) focuses on the mission instead of on angsty triangles. That would have added something to Tolkien that he really kinda needed. [edit: holy crap, blindboyard and I agree on something!]

But to think that this is the problem with the movie–not the stupid videogame sequences, not the everything’s-up-to-11 action, not the slapstick lowbrow humor, but the introduction of a female character–seems ridiculous to me. I have no problem with changing Tolkien, but ferchrissakes change it in a way that makes it memorable and interesting, not in a way that makes it more of the same Bruckheimery slambang we’ve seen a bajillion times before.

While I’m ranting, I felt the same about most of the Harry Potter movies. In the last one, they made two interesting changes. First, they decided to film Lovegood’s folk tale in some sort of weird shadow-puppet CGI, and it was freakin AWESOME, one of the best things about the movie. Totally different from everything else we’ve seen in a blockbuster, and that’s what I want!

The final showdown with Voldemort is, in the book, a showdown at high noon, hands twitching above the wands, the townsfolk watching with bated breath and the hero and the villain explain how their different philosophies have brought them to this point. It’s so obviously based on a movie trope from Westerns, there’s no doubt that it’d be cinematically amazing. But no, it would have been different from the sort of showdown we’re accustomed to in blockbusters, so they changed it to a whizbang ooh-look-at-our-3D zips snoozer that’s just like every other one of those in every other movie.

Cowards, I tell you. Cowards!

14

I love that every example you gave is a terrible example. The movies you listed either included a romantic subplot as part of the source material (James Bond, Star Wars prequels, Batman), included the romance parts from practically the first frame (Matrix, A-Team), or was an actual romance and the war stuff was the tacked on part (Pearl Harbor).

15

They have to fill three movies’ running time somehow. I’m reminded of one reviewer of the first movie saying, “I fell asleep, and when I woke up the dwarves were assembling IKEA furniture.”

16

Wow, I’ve never seen my thoughts on the last moved summed up so well!

17

I was mostly joking, but are Elves not tall in the books?

18

I dunno–I had exactly the opposite problem. I thought the first hour or so was delightful, but when the whizbangery started, my attention wandered off. Jackson has lost any sense of restraint that once might have had, and the Hobbit is a story that needs to be told by someone with a professorial sense of humor.

19

I totally disagree.

I’m no James Bond expert and I’ve never read any novels, so I’ll grant that maybe they included the likes of Christmas Jones because she was part of the source material, but the way it was done was idiotic. Bad casting, bad plot, bad dialogue does not enhance the movie. If the source material was weak, then it was its fault.

For Star Wars, the romance was totally not part of the source material. The only real love subplot was Han Solo and Leia, neither of which were in the prequels. Lucas could have gone literally anywhere with Vader but instead he chose to create a romantic reason for Anakin going over to the Dark Side.

With the Batman films, they were reboots and not untended as one-to-one remakes of any specific comics (I think). Even if there were a Rachel in one of the comics, the reason why I’m against that subplot was that it added little to the films. Sure, if they had done it better, I would disagree and support it, but the point was that it felt tacked on and utterly irrelevant. I would rather have a great Batman movie rather than a good Batman movie with romance. I thought Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman was much better in that she wasn’t there just to be a love interest for Batman but there was a reason for her acting the way she did. That Catwoman isn’t defined by the men in her life but her desire for revenge. Did Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman really need to be there other than to lure Batman into a trap and get in a lucky shot at the end? They could have changed the whole thing to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character and not missed a beat.

Like Heart of Dorkness said, I’m totally for casting traditionally male roles or even just any non-gender specific role with an actress. Women in movies fall into gender narrow stereotypes because filmmakers make them that way. They see “being female” as an character rather than having a female be a fully fleshed out character with gender-neutral desires. Any random character in a movie will be male, and a character will only be female when the character needs to be female (usually because she needs to fall in love with a man and/or be rescued by one). The result is that we see male characters with complex motivations and desires, but a female character will automatically be “the girl” and will do typically girl things. As a result, meaty roles for actresses will forever be dwarfed by male roles and movies will continue to be populated by one-dimensional female characters who serve no other purpose than to be female and that’s what producers think women want!

20

I see what you did there.