First of all, I’m female, so there goes the idea that all girls like this sort of crap.
But, whenever you watch movies, you have to deal with some god-awful romancing! I want to see action! Fights! Explosions! I feel like Fred Savage in the Princess Bride…is this a *kissing * movie?
*Time Machine * had a superfluous female thrown in. All the *Indiana * movies, I still forward the stupid girly bits. *Bond * is maybe the only one I can deal with somewhat, because it’s so central to his character. Episodes 4-6 actually handled the Luke/Leia/Han triad pretty well, but the romance between Anakin and Amidala almost had me throwing up. The main redeeming point of that movie is the lovely mass Jedi fight in the end. Come on, it’s Star Wars, let’s see more action!
Romance, if in an action story, should develop subtly instead of overtly. This is one of my biggest pet peeves in stories. This is one of the biggest things I LOVE about Arnold S. flicks - the women are almost never weak-willed, spineless little things. They fight, escape from the bad guy, kick, and scream. Only at the end is there a little romance.
Is anyone else with me? I refuse to watch most romantic comedies exactly because of this.
-Elenia28, who is unbelievably grateful for ‘scene skip’ functions on DVDs.
I for one enjoy a good love story, but HATE the notion that nearly every film should have one regardless of genre. I agree that if you must insert a love story into an action movie it should be short, and subtle…As opposed to dragging cliche ridden scenes that become “skip chapter” material on DVDs.
I’m with you 100%, Elenia28. The one I think did it worst most recently is Mission Impossible 2. Their romance was just so forced that I roll my eyes whenever I see the movie (well, for that and myriad other reasons.) When I see an action movie, I prefer the romance to be either out of the way, or integrated into the story subtley. I hate when I watch an action movie in which you can pick out the couple(s) within the first twenty seconds of being introduced to them. “Oh, look, an equal pairing of men and women. And one of each gender is black. Guess we know who’s hooking up here.” :rolleyes:
(At least the race thing has finally become less obvious through the years. Now if only they would sometimes let men and women just be friends without the assumption that each forms a perfect match with one of the others, I’d be ecstatic.)
That’s pretty much why they have anything in a movie.
Romantic comedies are fine, as long as they’re funny. That’s the usualy flaw of those movies.
I write short stories and many many times I’ve gotten “I liked your story, but you should have thrown in a romance in there” or something to that effect.
I would say it isn’t the love story so much as the execution. A script that is simply action or suspense sometimes can feel very thin and the characters are hard to empathise with. However, quite often, as is alluded to in the OP, the execution is ham handed, hokey or distracting.
Well I trust you have your DVD copies of the Lord of the Rings then.
Legolas and his bow; Gimli and his axe; Aragorn and his sword; Gandalf and his staff; Eowyn and her sword…
The fight around Balin’s tomb; the clash with the Wargs; the seige of Helm’s Deep (10,000 extras!) ; the battle of the Pelennor Fields (200,000 extras :eek: ) …
Yes, there is a background story of romance. But I bet you cry when Arwen mourns over Aragorn’s tomb.
Dude, there’s all of maybe one woman in Lawrence of Arabia and she was in the background of one of the “miltary office” scenes, as I recall. And you can’t tell me that thing didn’t sell. There’s plenty of great and commercially successful movies with no love story (and many that would be better off with a little less of one - some of that shit in LOTR was seriously hokey, folks.) I wish they’d realize you can have strong, interesting female characters without some moony love story to give them a reason to be there. Or that, yeah, you can have a movie with no women, or no men, because that’s not what the movie is about.
Actually, just because there were no women in Lawrence of Arabia doesn’t mean there wasn’t a love story…ahem…
Anyway, for action movies, most of the Star Treks didn’t have active love stories either, although there were flirtations and some old Kirk flames showed up.
And there are some SF movies where a love story adds immeasurably to the depth of the action–I always think of the warm, doomed relationship between Cornelius and Zira in the APES movies.
Same thing with comedy movies. Nobody loves a good screwball romance comedy more than me–Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, My Man Godfrey, etc. But movies that were about something else entirely, like the Marx Bros. ones, always had to have, as Groucho put it, “a goddamn love story with some pretty girl the hero wants to fuck” due to studio formulas.
The most extraneous is the one in Cocoanuts, I think, interjecting some really sappy songs into a perfectly good story about the real estate scam-boom of the '20s. Back before VCRs, my friend and I saw it in a repertory house, and I leaned over when the hero’s first song began, I leaned over to her and whispered “Everybody is going to start laughing when he sings” and they sure did as he sang in the high quavering tenor of the collegiate 1920s man.
first) It adds some conflict and character development
2) It draws in a wider audience demographic
C) It fills in some time, especially a much needed pause between action scenes that isn’t exposition
iv) It gives a better excuse to introduce exposition
…in the often badly reviewed “Another Stakeout”, the love story between Richard Dreyfuss’s character, and Madeline Stowe from the first movie, was handled really, really well…
Stowe went uncredited in the movie, so I assumed we were going to get another "Karate Kid, oh, she’s going out with a football guy :rolleyes: " moment… but Stowe turned up, albeit in less-than-a-cameo-but-absolutely-hilarious form. It was nice to know that the romance continued from movie to movie, and that no convienient “love interest” was just going to turn up… and the reviewers for the movie were all WRONG!!!
The romance in LOTR is well-done. It’s not the most important thing to the story, it’s brief scenes, and it doesn’t interfere if you skip it.
Let me tell you the one that annoyed me the most recently. What was that movie, where he got shot on a boat, and fell off,. They thought he was dead, but in fact he was alive…some sort of product of special training. Then he runs around Europe for a while, randomly killing. Well he meets this little French was she?) girl, and the whole premise of the movie grinds to a halt because he’s gotta drag this stupid little twit along with him, whether she’s needed or not. The movie would have been fine without her.
A recent film free of excess love scenes is Master and Commander. In fact, the film is, I believe, entirely free of women as it takes place in a British warship.
What I found interesting about the lack of romance in M&C is that the Patrick O’Brien books on which it was based contain a significant romance (and sex) plot line. In fact, the romances are what take the books a level above dull sailing stories.
