And how would you explain to fans who wanted to know who Luke’s and Leia’s mother was and what happened to her? Duh. It may not have been well done, but you had to include a romantic subplot in there.
Did you really?
You couldn’t just have Anakin already a teenager or adult when he’s introduced along with a romantic relationship already in place?
Seems cliched and rather the point of the OP that you have to devote any significant amount of film time to developing romance between Anakin and his baby momma.
Worse, that’s almost all she was after the first movie - almost her sole purpose after the first movie was to fall in love with the hero/villain and make appropriate reaction noises when he did or said stuff. Did she actually influence events at all except as Anakin’s foil?
This is such an excellent point, and so hugely important, that I want to go out and tattoo it on every Hollywood producer. I also want to take my daughters to Heart of Dorkness’s movies instead of to the stuff that’s actually out there, where women exist solely to be female, not to be human beings.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that the romance couldn’t have been written better. Yog’s arguing that the romance shouldn’t have been there at all, that the details of how Anakin came to father the man who would ultimately both defeat, and redeem, him have no importance in the story of how he became Darth Vader. I’d argue in favor of changing almost every detail of that relationship from how it was portrayed in the movies, except for the fact that the relationship existed in the first place. That much is pretty much the entire point of doing the prequel trilogy in the first place.
I agree with your overall point, YogSosoth. But there’s one part I really dislike and I think it may be what some others have taken issue with:
Okay, look. This is annoying for a couple reasons. First, Hollywood studios aren’t going to suddenly pay sincere attention to complaints and issues non-industry women have (a lot of women have stood up against this shit and more for years without much progress*; why would you expect a sudden change of heart now?).
Second, there aren’t many women in Hollywood and they’re not listened to, either. The New York Film Academy recently released a study called “Gender Inequality in Film”, using research from San Diego State University (I love this link because they put their findings in an infographic, which makes it easy to get the key points in a super quick skim).
I want to focus on the section titled INDUSTRY INEQUALITY. There are 5 men for every 1 woman working on a film. In the top 250 films of 2012, women were
[ul]
[li] only 9% of directors, [/li]
[li] 15% of writers, [/li]
[li] 17% of executive producers, [/li]
[li] 25% of producers, [/li]
[li] 20% of editors [/li]
[li] and freaking 2% of cinematographers. [/li]
[/ul]
And 61% of those movies employed 0-2 women in these positions.
So you might look at that info and think, “wow, damn. Obviously we** need to get more women interested in filmmaking if we want to change that.” But women are roughly half of film school graduates. A female director wrote about issues women face in Hollywood in Forbes:
So women are fighting an uphill battle to even be able to work in Hollywood. If it’s difficult just to get a job as a woman, do you really think their concerns are going to actually be listened to? And how much good would speaking up do if there is a very real likelihood of career-damaging/ending backlash and blacklisting because you’re being a complaining bitch?
- the linked NYFA study further down shows that H’wood gender inequality hasn’t really improved since 1998 and has actually gotten worse in some areas.
** as a society, or whatever.
But Hollywood producers aren’t the problem - they’ll make absolutely any movie that people are likely to pay money to watch (there really isn’t any other meaningful consideration).
Hollywood spends a lot time, effort & money trying to figure out what people will pay to watch. And one thing they’ve learned is what the OP notes: romance sells movies to women.
So you probably need to work not on producers, but on women.
If Hollywood producers had it all figured out what people actually want to watch, then every movie would be a slam-dunk hit.
I’m with you, YogSosoth. Personally, I’m a guy who prefers female characters to males. To me, the best thing they could have done with Tauriel is just have an off-hand mention of her husband back home, and never mention romance ever again.
Incidentally, I’ll take this opportunity to recommend the fanfic The Heads of One Thousand Goblins: A Love Story again. As Lord of the Rings romances go, this is a good one.
I liked the subplot, and I wouldn’t really describe it as a “love triangle” in the classic sense. Legolas and Kili are both crushing on Tauriel, but she’s completely oblivious to Legolas’ emotions until Thranduil points it out (and tells her he wouldn’t allow them to be a couple anyway), and she appears to be more fascinated by Kili than enamored of him.
Personally, Left Hand of Dorkness’s comment made me imagine one of the dwarves commenting to Bilbo halfway through the story “Ah, Baggins…you do realize that you and Gandalf are the only men here, yes?”
They obviously don’t have it all figured out. But they do have it figured out well enough to make a non-trivial amount of money.
It’s not? How the hell else would one pronounce that name?
Sure, but like evolution, “good enough” can often be quite a ways from “perfect”.
“Smorg”.
“Smowg” (as in “down”).
I knew that for a long time–I think I found it when I was a kid, in one of those endless bits of history or something that Tolkien wrote.
And I agree completely about shoehorning girls/women in as love interests just to avoid the sausage fest. I’d rather just have the sausage than have an insulting or boring female character.
I kinda liked the female character in “Expendables 2.” At least she had some skills and could take care of herself, and wasn’t really in love with anybody.
Haven’t seen “The Hobbit” yet (planning to on Wednesday) but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be a big fan of Tauriel (as a WoW fan, I keep expecting her to be a large female bovine-type warrior). 
I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. Gratuitous romance is annoying, predictable, boring and ruinous of some otherwise good flicks. It’s like they just can’t help themselves. They GOTTA put a love story in the suspense thriller.
“Dear Ecthelion, I never thought this would happen to me…”
Anyway, I have the following problems with the Hobbit movies. First, that there are three of them. Okay, I understand wanting to bring to the screen the actions of the White Council against the Necromancer since that does happen at the same time as the events in The Hobbit. It explains where Gandalf keeps getting off to and sets up LotR. But The Hobbit is a fairly short book and there’s not a ton of material about the actions against Dol Guldur. Second, all the overly-excessive CGI action sequences. In the first one (I haven’t seen the second and might not see it) there were too many long, video game-like action sequences which did nothing but chew up time without doing much to advance the plot. The sequence with the rock giants was way too much, most everything in the goblin caves was way too much, and the sequence with the goblins and the wargs was just stupid. Third, the extra additions. There was Radagast (I had no problems with the character and the role he played, but seriously, a bunny sled and covered in bird shit?) and Azog. It looks to me that it continues to get worse with the new movie.
Seriously, when I’d rather watch the Rankin/Bass adaptation (or just read the book yet again), I think that’s a major failure on Jackson’s part.
Actually, a love story in a suspense thriller makes sense - the same type of tension, really. They work off each other well.
However, throwing in a little romance so there’s an excuse to have a female character just pisses everyone off. They could, I don’t know, create a female character that actually has a point in the plot? Google The Bechdel Test; women have been bitching about this for years. Granted, there is no significant female character in The Hobbit …
You know, they should have made Smog a female. Helen Mirren, of course.
I didn’t mind the rock giants so much, but this scene was for me the biggest failing of the movie. The book’s goblins are like nasty vicious children who sing a gleeful song while preparing the fires that will roast you to death. They’re closer to evil Oompa Loompas* than to Ultimate Fighting Champions–and that’s great. And the dwarves and Bilbo weren’t actually great fighters, so there was a real sense of danger. I liked that a lot.
Jackson made a good decision in finding a way for Bilbo to save the dwarves in that scene. But why couldn’t he have done so through trickery, rather than through failed suicide-by-orc? Less Quake, more Assassin’s Creed, would’ve been great.
To a lesser extent the scene with the trolls suffered from the same effect. The dwarves in the book come across as total buffoons as they’re captured one by one by the trolls, but it’s hilarious. Jac kson’s scene wasn’t funny, it was just roarsmash CGI.
- well, eviller Oompa Loompas.
Not as tall as humans. The gaunt-willowy-cheek-boney thing is for the movies. Tall Gandalf, too.
What else would he go over to the dark side for? Had to be love becoming hate. Not really a bad idea, just really bad execution.
That’s what producers think will make money. And it does.
Male characters with complex motivations and desires seem in somewhat short supply to me. About 50% of all male characters seem to be called “man with blood gushing from neck after being killed by hero”. Then there’s the hero, who’s normally got one-liners where his characterisation should be, and whose motivation is normally saving a woman so he can fuck her. Even in those cases where there’s a good main female character (like Orphan Black or Fringe) any and all henchmen will be male.