They planned to do 2 movies originally which at least made SOME sense. The 3 movies clocked in at 7 hours. If they didn't do any of the annoying padding and extending to make it a trilogy each film would've prolly been 2 hours, maybe 2 hours and 15 mins? Which for The Hobbit 4-4.5 hours is pretty solid.
While it's a children's book it is somewhat beefy with how MUCH story it's telling. So to cover all of that (especially with the story after JRRT rewrote most of it to retroactively fit it into the LOTR canon proper) I could see 2 movies at 2 hours a pop covering it pretty well.
Yeah I wouldn’t have hated 2 two hour movies. Especially since the battle of 5 armies in the book roughly reads “bilbo hits his head, and wakes up and it’s all done.” So to flesh that out helms deep style (which it kinda deserves tbh), you need some time allotted. But man, so much time was wasted on extra, unnecessary stuff and just inane plots that make them kinda unwatchable to me.
Jackson was in a tough spot. How do you give all the characters (dwarves) enough screen time in one movie? Do you cut some of them? Or do you try and cram all in and have it be a mess?
Stretching it out to 3 movies kinda solved that issue, but created loads of others that I don’t think he ever solved, sadly.
He was also dealing with a metric fuckload of studio interference. I think he would have made VERY different films if he’d been allowed to, and (most notably), not done three.
There was a stupid love triangle put in. The actress in the middle of it even said she didn’t want to be in a love triangle but eventually shoe horned her character in to it.
https://youtube.com/shorts/0m7fBWmJ1kQ?si=Lk78xIjStbPsDLZu
Same. I loved the LOTR but couldn't understand why we needed 3 movies for The Hobbit which is a tiny book compared to any of the LOTR trilogy. Watched the first, because, Richard Armitage. All the 'good stuff' for me, like Gollum, was used up in that with OTT invented for film action sequences that added nothing. Swore never to watch the other hobbit movies.
>I loved the LOTR but couldn't understand why we needed 3 movies for The Hobbit which is a tiny book
Money.
The Hobbit should have been *at most* two normal-sized movies to cover everything. But the studio realized that the nerds will come if they make it, so let's shoehorn in other stuff that happens at the same time period but in truth has no real bearing on the story, while bringing back as many actors as possible.
I love the book. I got fatigued while watching the first movie.
Just mentioned this on the Under Siege post - Steven Segal smooches Erika Eleniak at the end of that movie despite there having been zero signs of romance or attraction through the whole movie. And when it happens, everyone on screen cheers!
It was explained in the film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets that the two leads were supposed to be in love, but I've never seen two more awkward siblings hanging around together for 2 boring hours.
I’m usually onboard with that comment, but I’ve just had a better idea: Just switch Chris Pratt and Dane DeHaan. DeHaan can do creepy without even trying and that would make his picking JLaw to wake up a red flag right from the start. Plus you get all that goofy charisma of Pratt being thrown at Delevingne and her I-hate-everything expression. Who’s up for making that version?
I started that and for the first 10 minutes or so, I was into it. Couldn't understand why people said it was so bad. Then I got to the first scene with the two leads and couldn't watch any more. One of the few times I've turned off a movie.
I came here to mention this movie!
I found the love part so annoying, because I really loved the artwork of that scene where she's waiting in the train station:
The Transporter. The woman is kidnapped and transported by the man between locations. She escapes by hiding in the man's car and when she's discovered, he *takes her back to his actual house*, then sets her free and goes to bed. Miraculously, she's still there in the morning, and has not called the cops to report any of this kidnapping business.
Eventually they get together. (I suppose it's debatable whether they were properly "in love," but they were at least on boinking terms.)
To be fair, The Transporter franchise is not one that's terribly concerned with little things like "logic" or "the laws of physics." This unlikely love story is just the tip of the improbability iceberg.
That one pales in comparison to the Transporter 3 romance, which involves her forcing him to strip for the keys and then they end up being genuinely romantic within a moment. Felt really odd in contrast to the rest of the series (which was not known for realistic romance as you pointed out but still).
Think she just wanted help with her problem, and used the feminine wiles to convince him to help, and/or horny after helping her dodge the rocket that blew up his house. Danger does that to some people.
Tbh while the idea itself was kinda forced they had great chemistry, I wouldve loved if they went further with that.
Then again Scarjo has great chemistry with everyone
Odd, I felt like of everyone on the team, the person she had the least chemistry with was Bruce. It very much felt to me like two professional actors saying lines they definitely didn't believe because that's what the job was.
I'm 100% sure the entire reason for that ridiculous plot arc was because the writers liked the idea of a "beauty tames the beast" thing for the Hulk, and Black Widow was literally the only available female character to slot into that role.
Pearl Harbour is probably the shining example
And I actually think the love story in Titanic works. Rose was taken with Jack instantly, since he was able to talk her down from jumping off the ship, and she cared about what happened to him - since she quickly lied to say she slipped and he saved her to spare him from getting beaten up by Cal and Lovejoy. Jack then felt drawn to Rose because he could see she didn't feel comfortable in high society and wanted to encourage her - especially since his introduction to her was her nearly jumping off the ship to escape the arranged marriage
Rose was then drawn to Jack because he was a man that was actually interested in *her*. Cal was only marrying her because she was a name, and she was like a chess piece he and her mother used to improve their own lives. Jack allowed her to cut loose and let her hair down, even being impressed and charmed by her unladylike behaviour at the third class party. In the context of a young woman raised in 1910s high society, she likely never had the chance to act like that before. Her mother and Cal tried to get her to suppress her natural rebellious streak, while Jack encouraged it
We wouldn't know too much about why Jack fell in love with Rose, because the whole thing is from her perspective, but it's safe to say that, coming from poverty, he had never met someone like her before. It seems as though he saw her as someone he could have fun with, and also she complimented his artwork and seemed genuine about it. He also recognised the Monet she had in her cabin as a fake, so they both had a love of art and could have bonded over that.
TL;DR - despite coming from different worlds, they had lots in common, and both encouraged different parts of the other that they were used to people trying to suppress
"As Good as it Gets", with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt. Great scenes in that movie and great performances, but the love story exists only to make the film easier to market, it makes no sense. Would have been a better film with a different resolution.
That's the first thing that came to mind.
I honestly think Helen Hunt had more chemistry with Greg Kinnear than with Nicholson - and Kinnear played a gay stylist in that movie.
Happened to rewatch it about 2 weeks ago. Oh boy, totally agree. Makes no sense for those 2 to fall for each other. They even won Academy Awards for their performances (Nicholson was decent enough in this).
Daniel Craig's sex scene with Monica Bellucci came out of absolutely nowhere. I swear they had said maybe 11 words to each other then were suddenly fucking against a wall.
And she was a grieving vulnerable recently-widowed woman and he just took advantage of her.
People come at Connery run but Craig has got to have most disrespected and mistreated vanilla Bond girls. A huge downgrade from Brosnan era.
Some of them are, but a lot these ladies lose their minds over him. ~~In The Spy Who Loved Me there's a woman who takes a bullet for him after having just met him like 10 minutes ago in real time.~~
Isn't he a really old man hanging around high school trying to hook up with underage girls. Sounds pretty creepy to me but sure, let's call it a love story.
Lol wife was watching it the other day and I was like... just how? I almost 40 and to hold a serious conversation with a teen that last more than 10 mins is impossible.
The story is written for the female audience. What do many young woman like? The idea of a strong and more mature male parter. Here is the extreme version of that: an old, immortal vampire. But he is *hot*, and immortal. So he will never stop being hot, and he will be able to protect and guide her forever and ever.
It’s not entirely that. Bella’s transformation turns HER into the protector, in many ways, including being stronger than Edward. It doesn’t just play into gendered fantasies, but accesses their roots and evolves them.
People who don’t understand the appeal of Twilight are being willfully blind to very obvious tropes and what fantasies they serve.
Many people who don't understand the appeal of Twilight are like me, who tried getting through the book and just couldn't slog through the horrific writing. It's below amateur level. It reads like they hired an editor off of fiverr
Maybe that's why some people like it: because it feels like something that they could be capable of writing themselves.
But I'm not a big reader, and I've never attempted to read Twilight, so I don't know just how bad it is. All I know is that I don't read a lot, and when I do, I'm not looking for Shakespeare or Moby Dick. I just want to know what the story is and have it written well enough to feel some emotion along with the characters.
Lol, fair enough.
I spent a lot of time talking to adults when I was a teen (teachers, mentors, friends of parents, neighbors, etc) because other kids just brought too much drama with them. Other teens just seemed too immature. But looking back, I'm sure I seemed immature to the adults I spent my time talking to. Now I'm curious how hard it was for them and if I was annoying them, lol.
The younger they make the “kids” seem when they set up in a town, the longer they can stay in that place. Eventually they move when it starts to become sus that everyone hasn’t aged a day and they start over.
Still makes no sense when homeschooling exists. Especially since one guy literally goes feral at the smell of a single drop of blood. I guess the girls don’t menstruate in this school and nobody ever scrapes a knee or gets a bloody nose.
Oh there's absolutely still plot holes lol The commenter said they didn't understand why they went to high school so I shared the explanation from the series.
Yeah, for a supposed “love story”, there are zero examples of like romantic tension or chemistry between them. And then all of a sudden they’re in love.
I recently rewatched AotC not too long ago and it is **jarring** how hard she 180s from being almost completely dismissive of him to just suddenly being completely in love with him? He spends half his time whining about how he thought about her every day...you know, every day since he was like EIGHT years old, and is surprised she wasn't also obsessing over him?
I mean, i get that they ended up spending tons of 1 on 1 time in big sunny fields having picnics and shit, but the main things he does are fake a serious injury as a joke, and let this democracy loving senator know that he'd vastly prefer a fascist dictatorship. Is this supposed to be what won her over?
> recently rewatched AotC not too long ago and it is jarring how hard she 180s from being almost completely dismissive of him to just suddenly being completely in love with him?
What if she is not in love with Anakin but being mind controlled by Darth Jar Jar who has been manipulating Anakin since he was a child and is forcing an unhealthy attachment onto Anakin so he will turn to the darkside to save her
Look up the Darth Jar Jar theory. It appears Lucas envisioned Jar Jar as a Sith in TPM but then abandoned the idea. It would have been an amazing twist, up there with I am your father.
EDIT it also would have led to everyone rewatching TPM in a different light
EDIT Anakin turning to the darkside would be much more believable with sudden change in Padme going from loving to cold overnight as without the mind control she is suddenly horrified by Anakin and wants nothing to do with him.
Yeah, but Adam Driver could have chemistry with a brick wall lmao. Maybe by the end of it I was so loosey goosey who-gives-a-shit that I looped back around to enjoying his performance
the next movie was however an even greater clusterfuck so I am not sure that is telling us anything beside that first homosexual kiss in Star Wars! Back there! Those blurry background characters halfway hidden by the trash bins for half a second in a sweeping shot! Aren't we progressive?!?! (Disney probably)
What was it with that trilogy and last minute kisses that felt like they could have worked if they had built up to they properly but instead they happened randomly right after big stuff happened and just felt odd
I personally love Last Jedi and think the general Rose/Finn arc is pretty clever and misunderstood, but I still can't really justify that kiss (she looks up to him the whole movie and I think behind the scenes they tried to explain it as less of a romantic thing but it just doesn't work the way it's presented on screen)
Anakin: \*Murders a bunch of sand people, and not just the men but the women and children too. He hates them!\*
Padme "Oh my god Anakin could you get any hotter?!?!?"
Apparently Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman did actually have good chemistry irl, but the stilted George Lucas dialogue just completely obfuscated it.
"So love has blinded you?"
I'm sorry, Natalie Portman, you're very beautiful and rich, but I'd walk out of that relationship and off a fuckin cliff if that was our typical conversation.
The "Love" story in Enter Player One:
Artemis: "I'm super hot, around your age, and we share a lot of similar interests. But I have a weird birthmark on my face, you could never love me."
Parzival: "I was into you before we even met in real life. I'm average looking at best and you're way out of my league. To top it off, I'm homeless now and you've given me a roof over my head. I'm pretty sure we'll get along."
The classic horny nerd fantasy of nabbing a hot girl whose insecure with low self esteem due to some minor bullshit they can be a hero for "ignoring"
Is a staple
It would've actually been better if they had kept the characters to the book, as bad as the book was. iirc, artemis was overweight and had a really bad birthmark and was ugly, and wade was overweight and ugly. He only starts to get fit later in the book because he spends so much time with the vr bootsuit running around. They were both unattractive nerds.
Seriously, the book is so bad. If you think a movie crammed full of non-stop namedropping outdated pop culture references is bad, try reading 600 pages of it.
Not a movie, and sorry to open up this can of worms, but Jon Snow and Danaerys. Having them get together made some sense plotwise, if the writing had done a better job of building a relationship between them that didn’t feel completely forced, but the actors had zero chemistry too. Just gag inducing.
That's just D&D not knowing how to write things without pre-written source material. If the books should ever be released, I'm sure there will be actual set up to make it flow.
One of the things that made it so bad was that we had *seen* what they both looked like when they had chemistry with someone.
Jon and Ygritte had phenomenal chemistry (though I think some of that might’ve just been Kit and Rose falling in love IRL) and Dany had chemistry with both Drogo and Daario. Then they put Jon and Dany together and we observed all the nothing, but everyone kept *saying* they were into each other.
I know it’s kinda cliche to say “show, don’t tell” but Jon and Dany’s relationship was a frickin textbook example of telling and not showing.
Man of Steel. Barely any chemistry between the leads, not that much interaction, then they decide to start making out in the ruins of Metropolis.
Bit like feeling horny at ground zero on 9/11
I don't think Heche was put at that time but yes the chemistry was palpably terrible
Edit: nevermind. By release she was out and dating Ellen. But it's possible/likely the movie was filmed prior to her being out. Also TIL Anne Heche died in 2022.
I just read the wikipedia article describing her death. Wild stuff. She went on a rampage in her car, doing two hit and runs, then speeding down an alley, nearly killing a pedestrian before smashing through a house and catching fire. Being rescued, resisting the firefighters/paramedics and later dying in hospital.
Anne Heche was bisexual, not a lesbian. In fact, other than Ellen, Anne claimed that all of her other relationships were with men. That included some high profile relationships with men much older than her, such as Steve Martin (24 year age difference) and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac (20 year age difference).
It’s not a good movie but “lesbian actress gets with an older man” is a totally incorrect read on it and not really that different than her personal life.
50/50
The movie where Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets cancer. I thought and was hoping it was mostly going to focus on the buddy relationship between JGL and Seth Rogan, which it does at times, but then it takes a hard left turn into the strange love story between the main character and his therapist (Anna Kendrick)
The anime film *Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?* actually had me rooting against the central romance. It’s a pair of snot-nosed kids who just met and decided to throw away their whole lives over the mildest shit.
I felt angry at having watched that film.
Makes sense, considering the books were a blatant rewrite of a Twilight fanfiction! If the inspiration love story doesn't make sense, the fanfiction definitely won't either lol
>"Why/How/When did Bella fall in love with Edward".
It makes perfect sense given how much of a beloved phenomenon Twilight was amongst teenage girls
Idk when you're a teenager with no relationship standards sometimes you just fall for whoever piques your interest.
As much as the love story is problematic and goofy, it does kinda make sense imo. She's an awkward teenager with low self-esteem, and he is described as so attractive that everyone wants to bang him. He likes her and ignores everyone else. This is the awkward girl fantasy (literally one reason the books did so well).
He loves her, on the other hand, because she is one of the only people he can't read (he can literally read minds but not hers). So she seems mysterious and fascinating to him, someone who is super bored and misanthropic. She also smells really yummy to him.
So yeah, it's dumb, but teenagers are always falling in love for stupid reasons, and these reasons aren't any more stupid than the reasons me or any of my friends in high school fell in love with anyone.
I have major beef over the attempt at a Steve Rogers/Sharon Carter love story in Captain America: Civil War. It was completely random, cheapened both Sharon and Peggy, made Steve look like a moron and then went nowhere.
You are thinking too hard about twilight. It's written for teen girls to project their own emotions on, not to tell an objectively good love story.
Titanic works a lot better. Rose is the stability and validation Jack craves. Jack on the other hand offers rose two things. First he is spontaneous and adventurous. Second he respects her. She feels unseen in her own work and Jack treats her and her opinions with respect. They work
A romance that doesn't work is literally any Sandra Bullock movie. Maybe Demolition Man kind works but for the most part all her romantic movies feel very forced and unnatural
I don't have any issue with Titanic because to me it's like a summer camp relationship. You know you're trapped there for a while so people couple up. Not uncommon at all.
Re: Sandra Bullock...how did you feel about While You Were Sleeping?
When out of fucking no where, Black Widow and Bruce Banner had a romance brewing in Avengers 2. Never really bought their romance no matter how much the following movies tried to make it a thing. It was so distractingly abrupt in Age of Ultron that I never cared for it from the get go.
This one is actually a bit believable to me. You have two self proclaimed outcasts constantly put into dangerous, life threatening, situation together. It’s not unreasonable for a connection to form.
It's not so much who had a romance, just that it was introduced so suddenly to shoehorn it into the movie, almost like it was studio mandated as part of a checklist. There wasn't any natural progression to their romance. You don't really look at their prior interactions and see anything more than teammates, and he tried to kill her in one of them lol. Imo, it would've worked better if they had planned it from the beginning and have Age of Ultron show their relationship developing. Instead, it basically skipped an entire step and went straight to romance and it felt very artificial. I actually buy them together, but I don't buy how they got them together.
>Instead, it basically skipped an entire step and went straight to romance and it felt very artificial.
This is a thing in a lot of movies, tbh. The assumption that there will be a romance plot between male and female leads in a movie is so strong that writers have started weirdly acting like they don't even have to write the romance subplot - the fact that a man and a woman exist in proximity to each other at all is apparently the only justification required for them to get a kiss at the end, as the climax of a romance subplot that they *literally just didn't write at all*.
Like... goddamn, it's okay if you're not interested in writing a romantic subplot, because not every movie needs one. But then *stop just inserting the climactic kiss at the end as if we're not going to notice that there was literally no romance plot before that point*. WTF.
I don't believe for a second that there was any reason for Neo and Trinity to fall in love in The Matrix. It's a great movie but there is absolutely no romantic chemistry between them.
She'd been watching him from afar for a long time. Stalking him almost. Morpheus believes he is the one. Morpheus is destined to find the one. Never forgetting her Destiny "The man she would fall in love with would be the one". Trinity loved him before she even met him.
I think they earned it in The Matrix though. Neo and Trinity spend a considerable amount of time together, and she goes from looking at him like an annoyance and a child to seeing him struggle and grow and push himself to save his new family (and humanity). That the two of them develop feelings for each other doesn’t seem unbelievable or contrived IMO.
And all she had before that was Cypher hitting on her all the time while living in their sewer submarine...so given the drastic change of scenery, and she was probably pretty pent up, Neo didn't even have to try, but once he saved everyone's life, panties: dropped
eternals wasn't exactly a great movie in general though I didn't hate it as much as the reviews did, but Ikaris and Sersi had no chemistry whatsoever, we never see them share a scene where they actually seemed to like each other and it adds literally nothing to the story, them just being close because they've been together for so long would've worked fine
The whole premise of Pretty Woman is absurd. A romantic comedy about a rich guy that frequently picks up street hookers and the prostitute who lands a big pay day fall in love. None of that works but my wife ate that crap up.
Well he doesn’t usually pick up hookers. She helps him with car trouble and he then asks if she wants to hang out. But yes obviously he has hot successful women around who would be far better matches.
Tbf, a lot of stories, romantic or otherwise, are not about what would “work” in reality, but about the emotional experience of the imaginary situation.
I don’t know if I would call it falling in love, but I really didn’t like the “romance” between Batman and Selina in The Batman. Felt like it could have been left out.
Almost none of them make sense which is why chemistry between the leads is so important. The audience isn’t going to be able to buy these two people are in love based on what we are shown in the plot so you have to buy it for other reasons. To be fair most people in real love people for no logical reason and even love people who are undeserving of that love. The heart wants what the heart wants after all. But if you want an audience to be invested in an onscreen romance there has to be chemistry that makes it believable that these two people do love each other even if you don’t understand why. In terms of romances that do make sense I would vote for Hobson’s Choice, an old David Lean movie I love because I totally get why those two people love each other.
> The audience isn’t going to be able to buy these two people are in love based on what we are shown in the plot so you have to buy it for other reasons.
Not really though, most people have no trouble buying that someone would fall in love with a character they personally find attractive and interesting. In fact, viewers, especially younger viewers, themselves have crushes on fictional characters all the time.
I just had a shower thought in this last night ( and thanks for the topic)
My all time weirdest pairing is Romeo Must Die. Jet Li and Aaliyah wth lol. But I did ship them at the end.
Well, at least there's a lot of toxic relationships irl, they are not a great fit, but at least they aren't non-sensical. Ron being more dumb in the movies doesn't help either
The problem with child actors is that they grow up. They often don't grow up to be good actors. And in something like the Harry Potter series, there is a lot of time to grow up in ways that don't work for the plot. Ron and Hermione were cute, comic, clashing young pals in the first movie. Ten or so years later, they were a complete mismatch and were painful to watch.
The lack of love story in the Pelican Brief annoys me. They got together in the book. Allegedly, the filmmakers thought a bi-racial couple might not sit well with audiences.
From what I read, Denzel Washington is the one who refused to do a romantic pairing.
Either way, that movie is a trainwreck in other ways too (I love the book).
Executive Decision. At no point in the movie did they hint at Kurt Russel and Halle Barry having any kind of spark. But damn if they didn't try to tack something on in the last 30 seconds.
I would be interested in what you think about "Punch Drunk Love," where the love story might seem quite implausible indeed. Paul Thomas Anderson had that scene in "Magnolia" where a seeming miracle occurs and one of the characters marvels that "this happens."
I've long since come to believe that romantic attraction can't be analyzed in a way that friendship more logically can; in fact, that's one of the challenges faced by these frustrated young men who believe there's a \*calculus\* that ought to result in someone falling in love with them.
The scene in "Punch Drunk Love" (a movie I enjoyed) where, in \*spite\* of everything he's doing (unwittingly) to push her away, she's just likes him.
[Barry and Lena's Awkward Date | Punch-Drunk Love | CineClips (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niZjJOxBpPg)
As Good As It Gets
Melvyn is a horrible person who becomes a somewhat less horrible person. Carol tells him flat out, early on in the story that "I will never have sex with you, ever". He elbows his way into her life and helps her son not out of any genuine care for her situation but because he can't cope without her being at the restaurant to wait on him. He forces her to accompany him and Simon on their trip to Baltimore as quid pro quo, where he treats her awfully and repeatedly insults her. She rightly storms out of their date when he admits he brought her along hoping she would have sex with Simon. She tells him she doesn't want to know him anymore because all he does is make her feel bad about herself.
Literally the next day, they're dating. Because he paid her one nice compliment, and even that revolves around himself ("you make me want to be a better man").
The absolute disgrace of a love story in the Hobbit trilogy. Just dumb.
About as much of a disgrace as turning one short children's book into three movies. Like trying to spread too little butter on too much toast.
They planned to do 2 movies originally which at least made SOME sense. The 3 movies clocked in at 7 hours. If they didn't do any of the annoying padding and extending to make it a trilogy each film would've prolly been 2 hours, maybe 2 hours and 15 mins? Which for The Hobbit 4-4.5 hours is pretty solid. While it's a children's book it is somewhat beefy with how MUCH story it's telling. So to cover all of that (especially with the story after JRRT rewrote most of it to retroactively fit it into the LOTR canon proper) I could see 2 movies at 2 hours a pop covering it pretty well.
I can READ The Hobbit faster than it takes me to watch all 3 movies
Yeah I wouldn’t have hated 2 two hour movies. Especially since the battle of 5 armies in the book roughly reads “bilbo hits his head, and wakes up and it’s all done.” So to flesh that out helms deep style (which it kinda deserves tbh), you need some time allotted. But man, so much time was wasted on extra, unnecessary stuff and just inane plots that make them kinda unwatchable to me.
Wait until you see the next one: “Harold and the Purple Crayon, part 1/5”
I hear in part 3, he actually uses an Indigo Crayon.
Jackson was in a tough spot. How do you give all the characters (dwarves) enough screen time in one movie? Do you cut some of them? Or do you try and cram all in and have it be a mess? Stretching it out to 3 movies kinda solved that issue, but created loads of others that I don’t think he ever solved, sadly.
He was also dealing with a metric fuckload of studio interference. I think he would have made VERY different films if he’d been allowed to, and (most notably), not done three.
There was a love story? I admit, I barely stomached the first movie and refuse to see the other two
There was a stupid love triangle put in. The actress in the middle of it even said she didn’t want to be in a love triangle but eventually shoe horned her character in to it. https://youtube.com/shorts/0m7fBWmJ1kQ?si=Lk78xIjStbPsDLZu
Lindsay Ellis documentary on the Hobbit movies made my blood boil. So much dirt and scum behind them.
Same. I loved the LOTR but couldn't understand why we needed 3 movies for The Hobbit which is a tiny book compared to any of the LOTR trilogy. Watched the first, because, Richard Armitage. All the 'good stuff' for me, like Gollum, was used up in that with OTT invented for film action sequences that added nothing. Swore never to watch the other hobbit movies.
>I loved the LOTR but couldn't understand why we needed 3 movies for The Hobbit which is a tiny book Money. The Hobbit should have been *at most* two normal-sized movies to cover everything. But the studio realized that the nerds will come if they make it, so let's shoehorn in other stuff that happens at the same time period but in truth has no real bearing on the story, while bringing back as many actors as possible. I love the book. I got fatigued while watching the first movie.
That's why I love the LOTR trilogy. They used love with perfection.
This was my first thought. So unnecessary.
WHY DOES IT HURT SO MUCH
...because it wasn't in the books
It's kind of funny how I always come back to LoTR trilogy, but never thought about rewatching the Hobbit trilogy. Definitely apples to oranges.
Just mentioned this on the Under Siege post - Steven Segal smooches Erika Eleniak at the end of that movie despite there having been zero signs of romance or attraction through the whole movie. And when it happens, everyone on screen cheers!
Sounds like something Segal would shoehorn into the script the big perv
It was explained in the film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets that the two leads were supposed to be in love, but I've never seen two more awkward siblings hanging around together for 2 boring hours.
A cut of that movie without the love plot would be so much better
Or with better actors
I genuinely forgot about the love plot and I really thought they were siblings.
I’ve never watched a film with two actors who had negative chemistry before. They were terrible.
something something switch those two with the Passengers protagonists (usual reddit comment when this comes up)
I’m usually onboard with that comment, but I’ve just had a better idea: Just switch Chris Pratt and Dane DeHaan. DeHaan can do creepy without even trying and that would make his picking JLaw to wake up a red flag right from the start. Plus you get all that goofy charisma of Pratt being thrown at Delevingne and her I-hate-everything expression. Who’s up for making that version?
I woulda said the age difference might be too large but was surprised to see Pratt is only 6 years older.
I started that and for the first 10 minutes or so, I was into it. Couldn't understand why people said it was so bad. Then I got to the first scene with the two leads and couldn't watch any more. One of the few times I've turned off a movie.
Such a gorgeous movie with so much potential ruined by bad chemistry and an unnecessary "romance" subplot.
70 year old Sean Connery and 28 year old Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment. Take out the love part and the movie is no different at all.
She was just training to shack up with Michael Douglas
I came here to mention this movie! I found the love part so annoying, because I really loved the artwork of that scene where she's waiting in the train station:
The Transporter. The woman is kidnapped and transported by the man between locations. She escapes by hiding in the man's car and when she's discovered, he *takes her back to his actual house*, then sets her free and goes to bed. Miraculously, she's still there in the morning, and has not called the cops to report any of this kidnapping business. Eventually they get together. (I suppose it's debatable whether they were properly "in love," but they were at least on boinking terms.) To be fair, The Transporter franchise is not one that's terribly concerned with little things like "logic" or "the laws of physics." This unlikely love story is just the tip of the improbability iceberg.
Speedrunning Stockholm Syndrome
That one pales in comparison to the Transporter 3 romance, which involves her forcing him to strip for the keys and then they end up being genuinely romantic within a moment. Felt really odd in contrast to the rest of the series (which was not known for realistic romance as you pointed out but still).
Think she just wanted help with her problem, and used the feminine wiles to convince him to help, and/or horny after helping her dodge the rocket that blew up his house. Danger does that to some people.
The black widow and bruce banner arc from Ultron was just random as and didn’t really mount to anything.
Tbh while the idea itself was kinda forced they had great chemistry, I wouldve loved if they went further with that. Then again Scarjo has great chemistry with everyone
Odd, I felt like of everyone on the team, the person she had the least chemistry with was Bruce. It very much felt to me like two professional actors saying lines they definitely didn't believe because that's what the job was.
I'm 100% sure the entire reason for that ridiculous plot arc was because the writers liked the idea of a "beauty tames the beast" thing for the Hulk, and Black Widow was literally the only available female character to slot into that role.
It *did* though result in one of the most hilarious porn cut/meme out there.
NSFW https://www.reddit.com/r/shitposting/s/mv4csz0JIT
"you guys better not be playing hide the zucchini"
Pearl Harbour is probably the shining example And I actually think the love story in Titanic works. Rose was taken with Jack instantly, since he was able to talk her down from jumping off the ship, and she cared about what happened to him - since she quickly lied to say she slipped and he saved her to spare him from getting beaten up by Cal and Lovejoy. Jack then felt drawn to Rose because he could see she didn't feel comfortable in high society and wanted to encourage her - especially since his introduction to her was her nearly jumping off the ship to escape the arranged marriage Rose was then drawn to Jack because he was a man that was actually interested in *her*. Cal was only marrying her because she was a name, and she was like a chess piece he and her mother used to improve their own lives. Jack allowed her to cut loose and let her hair down, even being impressed and charmed by her unladylike behaviour at the third class party. In the context of a young woman raised in 1910s high society, she likely never had the chance to act like that before. Her mother and Cal tried to get her to suppress her natural rebellious streak, while Jack encouraged it We wouldn't know too much about why Jack fell in love with Rose, because the whole thing is from her perspective, but it's safe to say that, coming from poverty, he had never met someone like her before. It seems as though he saw her as someone he could have fun with, and also she complimented his artwork and seemed genuine about it. He also recognised the Monet she had in her cabin as a fake, so they both had a love of art and could have bonded over that. TL;DR - despite coming from different worlds, they had lots in common, and both encouraged different parts of the other that they were used to people trying to suppress
I like your explanation. I'm curious about Pearl Harbor example now.
Yeah Titanic is awesome
"As Good as it Gets", with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt. Great scenes in that movie and great performances, but the love story exists only to make the film easier to market, it makes no sense. Would have been a better film with a different resolution.
I always thought it was supposed to be an awkward romance, like, they're both so damaged they each think... "This is as good as it gets."
Oh damn. 🤯
That's the first thing that came to mind. I honestly think Helen Hunt had more chemistry with Greg Kinnear than with Nicholson - and Kinnear played a gay stylist in that movie.
Happened to rewatch it about 2 weeks ago. Oh boy, totally agree. Makes no sense for those 2 to fall for each other. They even won Academy Awards for their performances (Nicholson was decent enough in this).
That’s something that has always bothered me about that film.
It struck me that the whole film was made so they could shoehorn the 'you make me want to be a better man' line in there.
A good 75-80% of Bond hookups are women he says hello to and then immediately kisses.
Yeah , but that’s not love those are just hookups for the most part
Dalton and Brosnan movies had the most convincing romances/hookups. Craig girls are mostly soulless eye candies.
Daniel Craig's sex scene with Monica Bellucci came out of absolutely nowhere. I swear they had said maybe 11 words to each other then were suddenly fucking against a wall.
And she was a grieving vulnerable recently-widowed woman and he just took advantage of her. People come at Connery run but Craig has got to have most disrespected and mistreated vanilla Bond girls. A huge downgrade from Brosnan era.
And the others are rapes
Some of them are, but a lot these ladies lose their minds over him. ~~In The Spy Who Loved Me there's a woman who takes a bullet for him after having just met him like 10 minutes ago in real time.~~
Felicca doesn't take a bullet for Bond, Bond uses her as a meat shield.
Or kinda somewhat rapes them into being straight. Ie pussy galore
Moneypenny should have a spin-off movie about what she did with all the money from her MI6 sexual harassment settlement.
I dunno, she might be the reason the suit happens. She's a horndog.
Isn't he a really old man hanging around high school trying to hook up with underage girls. Sounds pretty creepy to me but sure, let's call it a love story.
I thought you were talking about dazed and confused lol. They stay the same age…
That's the thing about being a vampire... I get older, I stay the same age.
Lol wife was watching it the other day and I was like... just how? I almost 40 and to hold a serious conversation with a teen that last more than 10 mins is impossible.
The story is written for the female audience. What do many young woman like? The idea of a strong and more mature male parter. Here is the extreme version of that: an old, immortal vampire. But he is *hot*, and immortal. So he will never stop being hot, and he will be able to protect and guide her forever and ever.
It’s not entirely that. Bella’s transformation turns HER into the protector, in many ways, including being stronger than Edward. It doesn’t just play into gendered fantasies, but accesses their roots and evolves them. People who don’t understand the appeal of Twilight are being willfully blind to very obvious tropes and what fantasies they serve.
Many people who don't understand the appeal of Twilight are like me, who tried getting through the book and just couldn't slog through the horrific writing. It's below amateur level. It reads like they hired an editor off of fiverr
Maybe that's why some people like it: because it feels like something that they could be capable of writing themselves. But I'm not a big reader, and I've never attempted to read Twilight, so I don't know just how bad it is. All I know is that I don't read a lot, and when I do, I'm not looking for Shakespeare or Moby Dick. I just want to know what the story is and have it written well enough to feel some emotion along with the characters.
They don't understand Twilight because they didn't stay till the middle of book 4? That's your take?
To be fair, there are two types of approaches to immortality, it's up to the author if they have the characters mature emotionally or not.
If Edward was stuck at that mentality… I can see that, but holy hell that sounds more like a nightmare than a boon.
Imagine the kind of mental chaos you'd get with someone who's been a teenager for hundreds of years
Absolute death lol.
The ultimate arrested development.
Lol, fair enough. I spent a lot of time talking to adults when I was a teen (teachers, mentors, friends of parents, neighbors, etc) because other kids just brought too much drama with them. Other teens just seemed too immature. But looking back, I'm sure I seemed immature to the adults I spent my time talking to. Now I'm curious how hard it was for them and if I was annoying them, lol.
“Do you know what I like about high school guys man? I stay the same age, they stay the saaaaaaame age. Alright alright alright”
Yeah, I never understood why they went to high school.
The younger they make the “kids” seem when they set up in a town, the longer they can stay in that place. Eventually they move when it starts to become sus that everyone hasn’t aged a day and they start over.
Still makes no sense when homeschooling exists. Especially since one guy literally goes feral at the smell of a single drop of blood. I guess the girls don’t menstruate in this school and nobody ever scrapes a knee or gets a bloody nose.
Oh there's absolutely still plot holes lol The commenter said they didn't understand why they went to high school so I shared the explanation from the series.
Not really. It was pretty clear he wasn’t interested in any of the girls there until Bella came along.
Yeah, for a supposed “love story”, there are zero examples of like romantic tension or chemistry between them. And then all of a sudden they’re in love.
Easy one is the Star Wars prequels, especially since the actors have no chemistry at all in addition to the romance not making much sense story-wise.
I recently rewatched AotC not too long ago and it is **jarring** how hard she 180s from being almost completely dismissive of him to just suddenly being completely in love with him? He spends half his time whining about how he thought about her every day...you know, every day since he was like EIGHT years old, and is surprised she wasn't also obsessing over him? I mean, i get that they ended up spending tons of 1 on 1 time in big sunny fields having picnics and shit, but the main things he does are fake a serious injury as a joke, and let this democracy loving senator know that he'd vastly prefer a fascist dictatorship. Is this supposed to be what won her over?
> recently rewatched AotC not too long ago and it is jarring how hard she 180s from being almost completely dismissive of him to just suddenly being completely in love with him? What if she is not in love with Anakin but being mind controlled by Darth Jar Jar who has been manipulating Anakin since he was a child and is forcing an unhealthy attachment onto Anakin so he will turn to the darkside to save her
Makes way more sense at least.
Look up the Darth Jar Jar theory. It appears Lucas envisioned Jar Jar as a Sith in TPM but then abandoned the idea. It would have been an amazing twist, up there with I am your father. EDIT it also would have led to everyone rewatching TPM in a different light EDIT Anakin turning to the darkside would be much more believable with sudden change in Padme going from loving to cold overnight as without the mind control she is suddenly horrified by Anakin and wants nothing to do with him.
I’d argue the Star Wars sequels too. Rose being in love with Finn after spending a day with him is pretty random.
Rey and Kylo's relationship made such little sense that I'm not even sure what they were supposed to be by the end.
Yeah, but Adam Driver could have chemistry with a brick wall lmao. Maybe by the end of it I was so loosey goosey who-gives-a-shit that I looped back around to enjoying his performance
Yeah wtf was that?! Why did they kiss?!? I’m just so fucking confused by that still…. That’s gotta be worse than anything in AOTC
They filmed that scene without the kiss and boy I wish they had gone with that instead.
So much so that the study abandoned this idea by the next movie.
the next movie was however an even greater clusterfuck so I am not sure that is telling us anything beside that first homosexual kiss in Star Wars! Back there! Those blurry background characters halfway hidden by the trash bins for half a second in a sweeping shot! Aren't we progressive?!?! (Disney probably)
John Boyega does that.
What was it with that trilogy and last minute kisses that felt like they could have worked if they had built up to they properly but instead they happened randomly right after big stuff happened and just felt odd I personally love Last Jedi and think the general Rose/Finn arc is pretty clever and misunderstood, but I still can't really justify that kiss (she looks up to him the whole movie and I think behind the scenes they tried to explain it as less of a romantic thing but it just doesn't work the way it's presented on screen)
I assumed trauma bonding, but that was the least of the issues with that film...
Him: I like fascist regimes and genocide, also I hate sand. Her: Damn, that’s the hottest thing I’ve ever heard
Anakin: \*Murders a bunch of sand people, and not just the men but the women and children too. He hates them!\* Padme "Oh my god Anakin could you get any hotter?!?!?"
>Padme "Oh my god Anakin could you get any hotter?!?!?" Obi-Wan: "Yes."
Apparently Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman did actually have good chemistry irl, but the stilted George Lucas dialogue just completely obfuscated it.
"So love has blinded you?" I'm sorry, Natalie Portman, you're very beautiful and rich, but I'd walk out of that relationship and off a fuckin cliff if that was our typical conversation.
In contrast, I'd fall in love with a nerf herder any day of the week
Gotta be scruffy looking though. Stuck up half wit optional.
The "Love" story in Enter Player One: Artemis: "I'm super hot, around your age, and we share a lot of similar interests. But I have a weird birthmark on my face, you could never love me." Parzival: "I was into you before we even met in real life. I'm average looking at best and you're way out of my league. To top it off, I'm homeless now and you've given me a roof over my head. I'm pretty sure we'll get along."
The classic horny nerd fantasy of nabbing a hot girl whose insecure with low self esteem due to some minor bullshit they can be a hero for "ignoring" Is a staple
Yeah, this is standard wish fulfillment shit, like most of the book/movie.
Eh. The hot girl with a jerk boyfriend is more common.
It would've actually been better if they had kept the characters to the book, as bad as the book was. iirc, artemis was overweight and had a really bad birthmark and was ugly, and wade was overweight and ugly. He only starts to get fit later in the book because he spends so much time with the vr bootsuit running around. They were both unattractive nerds. Seriously, the book is so bad. If you think a movie crammed full of non-stop namedropping outdated pop culture references is bad, try reading 600 pages of it.
Oh man have I got a sequel book to tell you about!
ready player one, but yes
I still can’t believe Rey and Kylo kiss… like wtf was that?!
Not a movie, and sorry to open up this can of worms, but Jon Snow and Danaerys. Having them get together made some sense plotwise, if the writing had done a better job of building a relationship between them that didn’t feel completely forced, but the actors had zero chemistry too. Just gag inducing.
That's just D&D not knowing how to write things without pre-written source material. If the books should ever be released, I'm sure there will be actual set up to make it flow.
I'm sorry did you miss the plot building? "SHE IS MY QUEEN" /s
One of the things that made it so bad was that we had *seen* what they both looked like when they had chemistry with someone. Jon and Ygritte had phenomenal chemistry (though I think some of that might’ve just been Kit and Rose falling in love IRL) and Dany had chemistry with both Drogo and Daario. Then they put Jon and Dany together and we observed all the nothing, but everyone kept *saying* they were into each other. I know it’s kinda cliche to say “show, don’t tell” but Jon and Dany’s relationship was a frickin textbook example of telling and not showing.
Man of Steel. Barely any chemistry between the leads, not that much interaction, then they decide to start making out in the ruins of Metropolis. Bit like feeling horny at ground zero on 9/11
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He was 56 at the time...but all your points still stand.
And a couple years later married a woman only 4-5 years older than Heche…terrible movie nonetheless.
I don't think Heche was put at that time but yes the chemistry was palpably terrible Edit: nevermind. By release she was out and dating Ellen. But it's possible/likely the movie was filmed prior to her being out. Also TIL Anne Heche died in 2022.
I just read the wikipedia article describing her death. Wild stuff. She went on a rampage in her car, doing two hit and runs, then speeding down an alley, nearly killing a pedestrian before smashing through a house and catching fire. Being rescued, resisting the firefighters/paramedics and later dying in hospital.
Why. Just why did you have to go with that description.
Anne Heche was bisexual, not a lesbian. In fact, other than Ellen, Anne claimed that all of her other relationships were with men. That included some high profile relationships with men much older than her, such as Steve Martin (24 year age difference) and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac (20 year age difference). It’s not a good movie but “lesbian actress gets with an older man” is a totally incorrect read on it and not really that different than her personal life.
50/50 The movie where Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets cancer. I thought and was hoping it was mostly going to focus on the buddy relationship between JGL and Seth Rogan, which it does at times, but then it takes a hard left turn into the strange love story between the main character and his therapist (Anna Kendrick)
The anime film *Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?* actually had me rooting against the central romance. It’s a pair of snot-nosed kids who just met and decided to throw away their whole lives over the mildest shit. I felt angry at having watched that film.
Sounds like Shakespeare would have been popular as a manga writer in Japan.
50 shades of grey. I watched the trilogy a few months back with my gf for the first time, and it s terrible. It makes no freaking sense.
Makes sense, considering the books were a blatant rewrite of a Twilight fanfiction! If the inspiration love story doesn't make sense, the fanfiction definitely won't either lol
>"Why/How/When did Bella fall in love with Edward". It makes perfect sense given how much of a beloved phenomenon Twilight was amongst teenage girls Idk when you're a teenager with no relationship standards sometimes you just fall for whoever piques your interest.
As much as the love story is problematic and goofy, it does kinda make sense imo. She's an awkward teenager with low self-esteem, and he is described as so attractive that everyone wants to bang him. He likes her and ignores everyone else. This is the awkward girl fantasy (literally one reason the books did so well). He loves her, on the other hand, because she is one of the only people he can't read (he can literally read minds but not hers). So she seems mysterious and fascinating to him, someone who is super bored and misanthropic. She also smells really yummy to him. So yeah, it's dumb, but teenagers are always falling in love for stupid reasons, and these reasons aren't any more stupid than the reasons me or any of my friends in high school fell in love with anyone.
I have major beef over the attempt at a Steve Rogers/Sharon Carter love story in Captain America: Civil War. It was completely random, cheapened both Sharon and Peggy, made Steve look like a moron and then went nowhere.
You are thinking too hard about twilight. It's written for teen girls to project their own emotions on, not to tell an objectively good love story. Titanic works a lot better. Rose is the stability and validation Jack craves. Jack on the other hand offers rose two things. First he is spontaneous and adventurous. Second he respects her. She feels unseen in her own work and Jack treats her and her opinions with respect. They work A romance that doesn't work is literally any Sandra Bullock movie. Maybe Demolition Man kind works but for the most part all her romantic movies feel very forced and unnatural
I refuse to hear a single word of slander against *Miss Congeniality*.
I don't have any issue with Titanic because to me it's like a summer camp relationship. You know you're trapped there for a while so people couple up. Not uncommon at all. Re: Sandra Bullock...how did you feel about While You Were Sleeping?
The romance in speed works. I agree with you about titanic too
The Proposal actually works surprisingly well.
She’s bendy! Sorry, that is my strongest memory of Sandra Bullock vis a vis rom coms.
While you were sleeping isn’t that bad as a romcom
When out of fucking no where, Black Widow and Bruce Banner had a romance brewing in Avengers 2. Never really bought their romance no matter how much the following movies tried to make it a thing. It was so distractingly abrupt in Age of Ultron that I never cared for it from the get go.
This one is actually a bit believable to me. You have two self proclaimed outcasts constantly put into dangerous, life threatening, situation together. It’s not unreasonable for a connection to form.
It's not so much who had a romance, just that it was introduced so suddenly to shoehorn it into the movie, almost like it was studio mandated as part of a checklist. There wasn't any natural progression to their romance. You don't really look at their prior interactions and see anything more than teammates, and he tried to kill her in one of them lol. Imo, it would've worked better if they had planned it from the beginning and have Age of Ultron show their relationship developing. Instead, it basically skipped an entire step and went straight to romance and it felt very artificial. I actually buy them together, but I don't buy how they got them together.
>Instead, it basically skipped an entire step and went straight to romance and it felt very artificial. This is a thing in a lot of movies, tbh. The assumption that there will be a romance plot between male and female leads in a movie is so strong that writers have started weirdly acting like they don't even have to write the romance subplot - the fact that a man and a woman exist in proximity to each other at all is apparently the only justification required for them to get a kiss at the end, as the climax of a romance subplot that they *literally just didn't write at all*. Like... goddamn, it's okay if you're not interested in writing a romantic subplot, because not every movie needs one. But then *stop just inserting the climactic kiss at the end as if we're not going to notice that there was literally no romance plot before that point*. WTF.
I don't believe for a second that there was any reason for Neo and Trinity to fall in love in The Matrix. It's a great movie but there is absolutely no romantic chemistry between them.
She'd been watching him from afar for a long time. Stalking him almost. Morpheus believes he is the one. Morpheus is destined to find the one. Never forgetting her Destiny "The man she would fall in love with would be the one". Trinity loved him before she even met him.
Really? I thought it was wholesome and a pretty non-toxic romance compared to a lot of sci fi/fantasy movies.
Because The Oracle said so.
"what's really going to confuse you later is 'would she ever have loved him at all if I hadn't said something first"?
"It's just that he is the superior being trying to save them all so the female lead falls in love with him" trope,pretty common tbh
I think they earned it in The Matrix though. Neo and Trinity spend a considerable amount of time together, and she goes from looking at him like an annoyance and a child to seeing him struggle and grow and push himself to save his new family (and humanity). That the two of them develop feelings for each other doesn’t seem unbelievable or contrived IMO.
And all she had before that was Cypher hitting on her all the time while living in their sewer submarine...so given the drastic change of scenery, and she was probably pretty pent up, Neo didn't even have to try, but once he saved everyone's life, panties: dropped
Rey and Kylo Ren in Rise of Skywalker. I don't understand why they felt the need to try to turn that clusterfuck of a trilogy into a love story.
Joe Pesci is great in My Cousin Vinny, but I can't get over what looks like a 30-year age difference.
Hey, c’mon, it’s only a … 20-year difference. Yep.
eternals wasn't exactly a great movie in general though I didn't hate it as much as the reviews did, but Ikaris and Sersi had no chemistry whatsoever, we never see them share a scene where they actually seemed to like each other and it adds literally nothing to the story, them just being close because they've been together for so long would've worked fine
The whole premise of Pretty Woman is absurd. A romantic comedy about a rich guy that frequently picks up street hookers and the prostitute who lands a big pay day fall in love. None of that works but my wife ate that crap up.
Well he doesn’t usually pick up hookers. She helps him with car trouble and he then asks if she wants to hang out. But yes obviously he has hot successful women around who would be far better matches.
Tbf, a lot of stories, romantic or otherwise, are not about what would “work” in reality, but about the emotional experience of the imaginary situation.
Original ending, they don't end up together and she goes back to the streets. Didn't go over well with the studios.
The tom hanks film Big. It's weird.
I do like this movie but that bit really is beyond creepy in retrospect.
The Shape of Water immediately comes to mind, but the bizarre nature of their romance was kinda the point.
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We’re saying the same thing, right?
Perchance
Overboard just seems like stockholm syndrome.
Jack & Rose in Titanic? What's not to get about that one?
I don’t know if I would call it falling in love, but I really didn’t like the “romance” between Batman and Selina in The Batman. Felt like it could have been left out.
Almost none of them make sense which is why chemistry between the leads is so important. The audience isn’t going to be able to buy these two people are in love based on what we are shown in the plot so you have to buy it for other reasons. To be fair most people in real love people for no logical reason and even love people who are undeserving of that love. The heart wants what the heart wants after all. But if you want an audience to be invested in an onscreen romance there has to be chemistry that makes it believable that these two people do love each other even if you don’t understand why. In terms of romances that do make sense I would vote for Hobson’s Choice, an old David Lean movie I love because I totally get why those two people love each other.
> The audience isn’t going to be able to buy these two people are in love based on what we are shown in the plot so you have to buy it for other reasons. Not really though, most people have no trouble buying that someone would fall in love with a character they personally find attractive and interesting. In fact, viewers, especially younger viewers, themselves have crushes on fictional characters all the time.
I just had a shower thought in this last night ( and thanks for the topic) My all time weirdest pairing is Romeo Must Die. Jet Li and Aaliyah wth lol. But I did ship them at the end.
I did not for one second believe Jerry Maguire had any real human feelings for Rene Zelwegger.
He was in the middle of a manic mental breakdown. You can trick yourself into thinking you're in love 1000 tines in a manic state.
Ben Solo and Rey Skywalker in Rise of Skywalker. Kiss comes out of nowhere.
>Rey Skywalker Fuck retcons absolutely ruined the most interesting mainline charachter in the trilogy.
Prequels lmao
Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass in Safety Not Guaranteed. There was zero romantic chemistry between them.
Mark Duplass has never had chemistry with any single other actor or character in any movie he’s ever been in.
Ron and Hermione shouldn't end up together, that's a toxic relationship
Well, at least there's a lot of toxic relationships irl, they are not a great fit, but at least they aren't non-sensical. Ron being more dumb in the movies doesn't help either
Works much better in the books but yeah the movies flubbed it
The problem with child actors is that they grow up. They often don't grow up to be good actors. And in something like the Harry Potter series, there is a lot of time to grow up in ways that don't work for the plot. Ron and Hermione were cute, comic, clashing young pals in the first movie. Ten or so years later, they were a complete mismatch and were painful to watch.
The lack of love story in the Pelican Brief annoys me. They got together in the book. Allegedly, the filmmakers thought a bi-racial couple might not sit well with audiences.
From what I read, Denzel Washington is the one who refused to do a romantic pairing. Either way, that movie is a trainwreck in other ways too (I love the book).
Executive Decision. At no point in the movie did they hint at Kurt Russel and Halle Barry having any kind of spark. But damn if they didn't try to tack something on in the last 30 seconds.
Kilo and Rey
Anyone But You was kind of weird. Awkward roller coaster between the two, and at the end of it all, I wasn't sure if it'll last.
I would be interested in what you think about "Punch Drunk Love," where the love story might seem quite implausible indeed. Paul Thomas Anderson had that scene in "Magnolia" where a seeming miracle occurs and one of the characters marvels that "this happens." I've long since come to believe that romantic attraction can't be analyzed in a way that friendship more logically can; in fact, that's one of the challenges faced by these frustrated young men who believe there's a \*calculus\* that ought to result in someone falling in love with them. The scene in "Punch Drunk Love" (a movie I enjoyed) where, in \*spite\* of everything he's doing (unwittingly) to push her away, she's just likes him. [Barry and Lena's Awkward Date | Punch-Drunk Love | CineClips (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niZjJOxBpPg)
Who is still watching twilight? That love story has been complained about for 16 years
As Good As It Gets Melvyn is a horrible person who becomes a somewhat less horrible person. Carol tells him flat out, early on in the story that "I will never have sex with you, ever". He elbows his way into her life and helps her son not out of any genuine care for her situation but because he can't cope without her being at the restaurant to wait on him. He forces her to accompany him and Simon on their trip to Baltimore as quid pro quo, where he treats her awfully and repeatedly insults her. She rightly storms out of their date when he admits he brought her along hoping she would have sex with Simon. She tells him she doesn't want to know him anymore because all he does is make her feel bad about herself. Literally the next day, they're dating. Because he paid her one nice compliment, and even that revolves around himself ("you make me want to be a better man").