AWESOME
WOMEN FALLING FOR LOSERS
Love
stories are a staple of any genre and have been a mainstay of
literature for as long as people have been writing, or even when
they were still reciting the latest in epic poetry in classical
Greece. But it seems that today in Science Fiction and Fantasy
(SFF) there is a real surplus of what I am going to call
"touching love stories". These are the ones where the two lovers
must conquer some great obstacle in order to be together and
that having conquered that obstacle things turn out perfectly
romantically (which either means everyone dies, a la Romeo
and Juliet, or they live happily ever after, a la Much
Ado About Nothing).There are no two stories in SFF bigger right now than Harry Potter and Twilight. But I'm going to ignore them both. It's just too easy to complain about the monstrous stupidity and offensive sexism (not to mention ludicrous celibacy) of the relationships in Twilight. Similarly, complaining that Hermione falling for Ron is like Nikita falling in love with Nameless Henchman Number 4, or Sarah going for Morgan, is just too obvious. So instead I want to talk about Avatar, Underworld, The Fifth Element and, pushing the boundaries of what counts as genre, Salt.
The
theme in all these movies is that a strong, fabulous,
independent woman falls in love with some type of loser and this
incredibly unlikely love interest is either used to drive the
action or resolve the major conflict. But it's not just that I
object to awesome women falling for losers. We've all seen it
and at some point you either get really bitter or you learn to
live with it (or you use it to your advantage... but I wouldn't
know anything about anything like that). It's that basing a
movie on an unrealistic love story does more to make a movie
feel unrealistic than Ben-Hur wearing a wristwatch. As much as
we all love to see humans flying through space or weaving magic
in castles, there is a base expectation that humans continue to
act relatively consistently with how they act now. This is the
complex counter-factual at the heart of all genre: 'If I was a
starship commander would I have sex with every hot alien I met?'
The answer is 'Hell yes!', and therein lies the inherent
believability of the greatest space sleaze of them all, James T
Kirk. But consider the opposite side of the equation: 'Would I,
as a woman/hot female alien, who is otherwise strong,
independent and has the respect of her people, fall for an
outsider who can bring me only trouble and a strange-looking
human/alien hybrid baby thing?' I don't think the answer is so
unequivocal. Hence, if you expect the audience to buy the fact
that someone with everything to lose from a relationship is
nevertheless going to throw herself, blue booty and all, right
into it, you really have to convince us.
So
let’s look at the motivation for Neytiri (based on the not-blue
Zoe Saldana), the main blue character in
Avatar, falling in love with Jake Sully (Sam
Worthington), poster boy for advocacy group "The disabled can
land hot chicks too, but only if they’re another species" (look
them up). Neytiri knows that Jake is an outsider and allied with
the people who are destroying the rest of her planet. But,
through the magic of the montage, the two spend enough time
together to fall madly in love, mainly because Jake is basically
proficient at being a Na’vi. What about all the Na’vi who are
awesome at being Na’vi? Surely that’s hotter than an outsider
just being OK at it? Of course she falls in love before Jake
tames that really big flying thing and proves to be a great
Na’vi. Are we supposed to assume that she could see within him
all along and knew that he would be great? Is that something we
really believe? Every woman I have ever met who has been
convinced that she sees within her loser boyfriend the prospect
of greatness ends up being sorely disappointed. So does Neytiri
forget he’s one of the humans? Or that the other humans have
been largely banned from the tribe? Maybe I’m just failing to
appreciate the awesome power of the montage. 
The
other major problem is SFF is that with all the effort being put
into the creation of an interesting alternative world, the love
of the central characters is simply taken for granted without
any real explanation. In
Underworld, for example, Selene (Kate Beckinsale), who
has spurned the advances of every other vampire, falls for a
human who has been bitten by a werewolf. Being bitten means that
the human, Michael, will inevitably turn into a werewolf -- the
very creatures that Selene has devoted her life to wiping out.
More than any other vampire, Selene hates the werewolves, but is
willing to risk it all for this human. Sure he turns out to have
the potential to turn into some super-cool vampire/werewolf
hybrid, but Selene’s in love before she knows any of that. So
what are we meant to believe, that deep within a hundreds year
old vampyre there lurks a winsome girl just longing for the
right man to come along? The love story here is jarring, not
because Underworld is a bad movie (as my opponent
hurtfully claims) but rather because it is otherwise a very good
SFF movie. The motivation of every other character is clear, the
motivations of Selene in every other respect are clear. But what
we get at the centre of the movie is a love story which is there
just because love stories are supposed to be there.
Which
brings us to The Fifth Element, a truly classic SFF
movie in which Bruce Willis again proves that among all the 80’s
action heroes, he’s the only one who can step outside his core
genre and pull it off. Again the central love story is one of
opposites attracting. Korben Dallas (Willis) is ex-special ops,
now driving/flying a taxi. One day, through the sort of luck one
would only find on the screen, damsel in distress Leeloo falls
through the roof of his cab. It’s kind of an ‘of all the
taxicabs, in all the cities in all the world…’ moment. From then
on Dallas goes to great lengths to help Leeloo save the world,
his prime motivation being that she’s hot. And let’s be honest.
It’s Milla Jovovich at her best; who wouldn’t fight a
few aliens to tap that? Where it all gets a bit unbelievable is
when Leeloo, having experienced the worst that the universe has
to offer in terms of evil people trying to kill her, and having
learnt all about the atrocities of the 20th century (in the
future, computers only show history up until the turn of the
millennium) Leeloo has to make the choice between letting
humanity rot and saving every rotten one of them. And what is
the defining moment in her choice? It’s that the love of Bruce
Willis is more profound than World Wars and a variety of
genocides. Really? Won’t somebody please make a movie where
humanity is damned, love isn’t enough to overcome evil, and
everyone dies?
And
finally, just a quick word about Salt, a movie I
watched only recently. In it, Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt,
a Russian sleeper agent who is activated and told to kill the
Russian President. Evelyn is married to a German arachnologist
who was an asset she seduced in order to get access to North
Korea. She falls for him and agrees to marry him when he
campaigns for her release from North Korean prison (where she
was being horribly tortured), after both the CIA and KGB leave
her for dead. So, just for a change here is a pretty believable
reason to fall in love with someone. For some reason I haven’t
been able to fathom, though, marrying Krause makes her side with
America rather than Russia. Long before the Russians kill Krause
(at which point her loyalty is assured), Evelyn decides not to
kill the Russian President and disobey her Russian handlers. The
audience is expected to accept that love explains all decisions,
even when it explains none, or at least not why one choice would
be made over another equal one. If anyone has a good answer for
this, please e-mail me. I have now had the opportunity to read the hugely entertaining opposing piece for this month, and I agree completely with Rachel that a good love story can make an average movie into a great one. I have my doubts about whether The Mummy falls into that category, but nonetheless I take her point. For her few examples, though, the weight of unbelievable, poorly conceived, poorly detailed love stories in SFF clearly falls to my side. Sure, love stories can be moving but, as Rachel points out, love stories get put into every genre as a matter of course. And oftentimes, rather than driving the action or drawing the audience in, they’re just stupid.
-- Brad Crammond
Read The Opposing View
LOVE IS A VITAL ELEMENT
by Rachel Day
LOVE IS A VITAL ELEMENT
by Rachel Day
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