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Notes -
Romance
I recently watched the newest Marvel movie, Thunderbolts. Personally, I have seen almost all of them in a movie theatre and a few of the TV shows. The company's slate of movies in the last few years has been pretty bad, which can be seen in the (lack of) discourse and the box office. As some tweet put it, Marvel movies went from ubiquitous and massively talked about to ubiquitous and ignored.
However, I want to talk about the absence of romance, specifically in Thunderbolts but also in the larger MCU.
Thunderbolts is basically a supposedly anti-hero (but really villains, I won't go into the villain-to-antihero pipeline that is currently happening eg Harley Quinn) team in the vein of Avengers, but unconcerned with letting their targets/enemies live. All but one of the characters has been previously introduced in another movie or TV show.
Thunderbolts follows Yelena (White Widow, from the movie Black Widow) as she is dissatisfied with her clandestine spy work for Valentina (an evil mastermind of sorts who heads the CIA and funny enough looks similar to Tulsi Gabbard) who takes one last job to clear her name and start a new life. Before this mission, she seeks some advice from her loser father, Red Guardian (Soviet Captain America), who despite formerly being Soviet star is now just a boomer washout reminiscing his good old days, living in filth, ordering DoorDash and driving limousine as his job. This meeting is unsatisfactory, so she decided to take the job. That would've been a good setup for a Hallmark-style unfulfilling work focus to romance, but no.
There, she meets the rest of the villains, proceed to fight (Valentina wants to get rid of them since they're no-longer-useful loose ends) and sort of team up when they figure out the plan. John Walker (2nd Captain America, government issued, controlled and discarded from Falcon and Winter Soldier), Ghost ( another female villain, basically a life long lab rat from Ant-Man 2) and the mysterious, seemingly normal Bob.
This Bob guy is a depressive successful experiment of Valentina unbeknownst to the main cast until the 3rd act. We get hints of this when the cast interacts with him throughout the movie and they have visions of their worst moments. Yelena remembers her brutal and traumatic training as a child in the Soviet Black Widow programme but John remembers... his divorce. Specifically, the scene is him doomscrolling on his phone in one hand with his baby in the other while his wife shouts at him asking him if he's watching the baby. Almost all the characters disrespect him ("dime store Cap", "Junior Varsity Captain America"). This guy was a 3 medal soldier, media darling, selected as the new Captain America by the US government and got cancelled afterkilling a Flag Smasher member in broad daylight in a city centre with his shield. Mind you, this happened after the leader of the Flag Smashers killed his sidekick like a minute before.
I hoped during the movie that John and Yelena would end up together. They both are sort of former villains trying to change, unhappy with how they are perceived compared what they feel they could/should be. The fallen hero and the ascending villain. Both seeking redemption. But no, that didn't happen. And John having an ex-wife and a child isn't the reason, since Ant-Man is in a similar place in his first movie and still has a romantic relationship with the Wasp. Everytime there could be some flirting between the two, Yelena or some other character either makes fun of him disrespects him in some other way, and he kind of lacks any response or has some really cringe ones. Think "You're a real bad boy, John" said in a flirty manner by Yelena, to which John would respond with "A-Actually I'm a man". Although not an actual line in the movie, it wouldn't seem out of place. Every line or quip he is facing against, he comes off as obtuse and mismatched. Imagine a 27 year old model talking to a college freshman, who also gets clowned and dismissed by almost everyone.
Yelena does have some mommy-dom scenes with Bob (whose alter ego Void, is the villain of the movie), but no romance there either. Bob is depressive and lonely, and John gives him a hard time for a bit, but even there he seems outclassed. When he tells Bob he's Captain America, he laughs and when pressed about his reaction, he says "Cause you're an asshole". Yelena is sort of protective of Bob, in a big sister way, which towards the end I thought might turn romantic (you know, the Femme Fatale and soft guy type of relationship, that is, I guess, not unheard of in fiction) but no. She looks after him and is instrumental in helping him take back control over his body from the Void, but it's more like a found family type of thing.
It's feels weird, not just because it breaks the previous established formula of the hero gets the girl, but these characters are pretty much at their physical peak with extraordinary skills. In the real world, when top athletes are put together during the Olympics, well you can guess what happens.
The characters form a team at the end of the movie, but I don't think romance is going to be explored based off the recent trend.
In Shang-Chi, the namesake character has a girl best friend with whom he gets drunk and has friend activities (working low end jobs, getting drunk, karaoke). At the end, after he saves the world together with his best friend, his grandma hints at a possible relationship/marriage between the 2 which is shut down immediately by both of them.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier also lacks romance, with the discourse around that time being the shipping of the two (male) protagonists, which got shut down fast by Anthony Mackie (Falcon). Speaking of him, I don't think he had any romantic relationships in the few projects he appeared; most recently he starred in Captain America: Brave New World, where he fights the Thunderbolt Ross (as the Red Hulk. See, Ross is the Hulk's antagonist in the Hulk movie. He also hates Bruce Banner (the, um, Hulk) as he doesn't approve of him dating his daughter, Betty. Again, the relationship isn't really explored past the first installment, and the Black Widow sort of takes the role of "woman who calms the Hulk down" from Betty Ross but I don't think they ever really dated or kissed on-screen. There were certainly some more emotional scenes between them, but if I remember correctly, any actual dating, if it happened, is just referred to in dialogue. But Betty comes back to talk to her (previously estranged) father. Anthony Mackie's character has no romantic subplot, nor does it seem he is interested in any.
Usually, these big action blockbusters have a romantic subplot so the wives/girlfriends have something to care about during all the fights and explosions happening all around. Even their big hit in the last few years, Deadpool and Wolverine, lacked any romantic subplot. Ant-Man and Wasp marry, but there is barely any romance. Even their most successful relationship, Ironman and Pepper Potts, is an afterthought. To say nothing of how the Thor franchise handled the main relationship. Diminishing screen time and maybe throwaway lines during the big team-ups.
Keep in mind that in the comics characters, especially protagonists, have a bunch of love interests that they jump between. Here is how Spider-Man was portrayed (accurately) in Marvel Ultimate Alliance at 10:38 (spoilers for a 20 year old game)The team gets sent to Mephisto's Realm (Hell) and Spider-Man quips "Why can't we be sent to an alternate dimension filled with lonely supermodels?" which is entirely on-par with what a young guy would wish.
The current Spider-Man has a relationship with MJ which is basically best friends who occasionally kiss. Here is a list of Spider-Man's love interests (spoilers for the comics).
I know there are counterexamples both in and out of the superhero genre. But given how prominent the genre is to movies, especially action/adventure movies, this to me seems way more than just an accidental occurrence.
I guess my questions are if you think that the romantic interest is the new "parents problem" that young protagonists have (which is why they are disproportionately orphans or estranged or never mentioned) and if so, is this a recent development due to less interest by younger generations in romance/dating/sex?
I actually just wrote a post yesterday touching on some similar points.
One of my theories is that modern relationships and friendships have been so hollowed out that writers just don’t have material from their own lives to work with when it comes to deep romances. It’s something you have to actually live in order to recreate in your characters.
Sadly modern connection has been extremely flattened for a variety of reasons, and it reflects in our art.
Hollywood writers come from hyper-liberal blue tribe backgrounds, yes? I don’t know what courtship norms look like in those bubbles, not really, but if they’re assuming apps and hookups turn into a relationship, there’s some obvious reasons that’s less on the screens- both that it’s harder to introduce and possible ratings issues.
Most of publishing is different sub genres of bdsm werewolf erotica, so I don’t think ‘entertainment industry thinks relationships are a dead end’ is the explanation.
As I said in another comment, it's not that they are dead ends. It is that treating romantic partners as disposable leads to a more shallow exploration of emotional depths you can reach via deep connection in relationships.
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