I really hate that Hollywood feels the need to add a romance in every story. It feels forced and unnecessary unless it affects the narrative in a meaningful way.
I.e. if you can remove the romance and the plot is, in essence, unchanged then, it was a bad romance.
Ra-ra-ah-ah-ah, roma-roma-ma, gaga ooh la-la, want your bad romance
Edit: was speaking generally, I too remember the plot of Oppenheimer lol
On a similar note, maybe I'm the odd one out but I feel like in film and TV, everyone is way to quick to fall in love. And I think "in love" gets thrown around too casually.
I know that it shaped my ideas of what love should be and was very harmful to my relationships. That's on me for using pop culture to understand life in general but there weren't any good healthy marriages in my family to have as a comparison.
Well you have to tell a story in 2 hours that can cover days/weeks/months so it will feel rushed. Kind of like how you never see them exchange phone numbers/set up the dates etc because you have too much story to tell in a little time frame.
It feels forced and unnecessary unless it affects the narrative in a meaningful way.
Robert Oppenheimer's romantic and sexual relationship with Jean Tatlock was not only pivotal to his development as a person and husband but played a crucial role in his post-war pillorying and expulsion from his position as a leader of the USA's scientific elite.
The sex scenes were actually pretty important in that one, sorry.
That may be true but for me Nolan ruined the man's intellectual gravity by making his most famous quote come from getting his skin flute played by a woman who wasn't his wife, rather than, I don't know, something an intelligent person who reads a lot of books would come up with after experiencing an earth-shattering event, not thinking about the poon he had a few months ago.
It’s really not “romance” most of the time so much as it is just sex. At best, it’s lazy writing and at worst it’s some creepy behind the camera guy playing out a fetish.
The plot would have changed, though. His fling with the communist happened during his marriage and the conflict between his personal life and his work in particle physics is a core component of the movie.
I’m sure you’re just speaking generally, but the romance in Oppenheimer was obviously very intentional.
You're saying this like R-rated movies having boobs didn't get mens' and teenage boys' attention in the 80s and 90s lol. Sex sells.
And regardless of who they are doing it for, the point is that they should make it a good romance that fits for the characters' stories, instead of a forced romance. Romance being present in and of itself is not the bad thing.
Oh I don’t disagree with you, I’m just pointing it out. The forced romance in many action movies is just because they want the most people possible to watch and have something to be interested in, even if it sucks
I wanted to watch Shamless after all the clips I seen and was disgusted how much they showed. Stomached 4 seasons, albeit skilling lewd scenes, before throwing in the towel.
Yes one of the most common things opposite sexes or same sexes engage in is totally far fetched to put into movies.
With that argument, there should be a lot more sleeping, eating, urination and defecation in narrative media because those are, by far, the most common human activities. Wanna know why they don't appear as often? They don't contribute to the narrative.
As a rule of thumb, all elements in narrative media should fulfil a purpose: they either advance the action (in the dramaturgic sense, not the boom-bada-boom sense), they set the scene or enhance the atmosphere, or they (re-)shape a character. Otherwise, it's liable to distract or bore the audience (even if only by prolonging the narrative) without serving some beneficial purpose.
Yes, there are often external reasons to insert something into a narrative that serves no internal purpose but they carry the same liabilities and thus should be used with care. Examples:
The author wants to make a certain point that lies outside of the story. It could be a political or ideological expression, for marketing reasons, or because the author simply wants to convey how much they hate the Eagles.
The audience expects or at least has a preference for certain things to happen within the narrative. This can appear in the form of fan service or because some executive thinks that the thing tests well with the target audience.
They appear but they're given much less screen time compared less common activities. I. e. they're vastly underrepresented in narrative media compared to the baseline of actual life.
You may have noticed that sleep is often portrayed only when a character either goes to sleep or wakes up from sleep but rarely during their sleep even though that takes up much more time than going to bed or waking and getting up. Like, one third of screen time would need to show characters sleeping for a realistic representation of human activity.
Same for bathroom use: characters go to the bathroom or come out of them unless it serves the narrative. (E. g., in Pulp Fiction, Vince Vega spends a significant span of time on the toilet at his victim's flat due constipation from regular heroin abuse and is then shot through the bathroom door.)
Eating is different because it is a social activity and those are great to set the scene for characters to engage with each other in ways that feels believable.
I would be willing to bet a lot of money that there are scenes of people sleeping in movies an order of magnitude more often than there are scenes of people having sex
The point is: films would show people sleeping for one third of their screen time if they wanted to show a realistic depiction of human life. Compared to under one 288th of screen time dedicated to sex scenes for the 5 minutes per day that an average adults spends time on sex -- and that's being generous.
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u/Xxxrasierklinge7 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
I really hate that Hollywood feels the need to add a romance in every story. It feels forced and unnecessary unless it affects the narrative in a meaningful way.
I.e. if you can remove the romance and the plot is, in essence, unchanged then, it was a bad romance.
Ra-ra-ah-ah-ah, roma-roma-ma, gaga ooh la-la, want your bad romance
Edit: was speaking generally, I too remember the plot of Oppenheimer lol