Live-Action Films / Strangled By The Red String

12 to the Moon: Sigrid and Selim's attraction pretty much comes out of nowhere.
Massimo and Laura's romance in 365 Days isn't well developed. Massimo became fixated on Laura after seeing her once, at a distance, five years ago and then decides the best way to win her over is to kidnap her. Despite Massimo's claims he loves her, he doesn't respect her wishes and is very aggressive towards her. Laura spends half the film being antagonistic towards Massimo, understandably seeing as he kidnapped her, then suddenly decides she wants to have sex with him after he saves her from drowning (which was technically his fault). After a few months at most, they decide to get married and the film portrays this as them being truly in love, even though their onscreen relationship is mostly based around sex rather an emotional connection.
Peter and Gwen in The Amazing Spider-Man start off not knowing each other personally and yet hook up in their second scene of extended interaction together, and stay a couple for the rest of the movie. This is fixed in the sequel, though, and thank goodness, as otherwise the inevitable result of their relationship wouldn't have been as effective.
American Mary: Mary shows either contempt or indifference towards Billy's advances, until she roughs up and nearly stabs one of the sex workers at his club for giving him head. Seeing as she hasn't shown any indication that she's interested in him so far and their "romance" is incredibly brief and pointless, the whole thing is rather jarring.
Adam Sandler movies are very fond of this trope. For example, Billy Madison, where Veronica quite clearly finds Billy to be both obnoxious and a burden on her as a teacher. But then, during a field trip, she has a random Mood Dissonance and is madly in love with him for the rest of the movie. All it took was Billy faking his own pants incident to rescue another student from being shamed by his classmates. Nevermind that, just a few scenes back, Billy himself shamed another classmate by mocking him for struggling with a reading assignment. Played for Laughs during Billy Madison's Pair the Spares sequence, as only one of the pairings had any form of buildup in the movie itself, while the final one is between Chris Farley's bus driver and the hallucinatory penguin.
Bend It Like Beckham: Neither Jess nor Jules have serious chemistry with Joe (it's much stronger between the two of them, in fact), and their Love Triangle with him in the third act is particularly awkward and unconvincing.
Deckard and Rachel Blade Runner is this when you take into account the fact that they have only known each other a few days, he has made a career out of killing her kind and that the consent from her side during their sex scene is rather dubious. Despite this they are shown running off together in the end and the sequel portrays her as The Lost Lenore that Deckard has never quite been able to get over.
BrainDead: Paquita suddenly falls in love with Lionel for no reason except for a symbol.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) has this between Dracula and Mina. Despite how they don't know each other at all and Mina is engaged with the main character Jonathan, Mina continues to pine over Dracula, continues calling Dracula "My Prince" even after she gets married and seemes to try to foil the heroes' plan to destroy him at times. Hypnotize the Captive is heavily implied to be involved since Dracula had already started biting her, and thus could easily have her under his spell. On Dracula's end, this is because Mina happened to look like Dracula's old love who committed suicide. Or is it that Mina was a reincarnation of said love? This wouldn't make sense since the reason that Dracula became the Dracula is that he renounced God at the thought that his beloved will go to hell for committing suicide. But then the ending showed that Dracula and his old love went to heaven. ARRRGHHH!!!!
Carnival Magic: Ellen and David. While they have known each other a while, they end up kissing only a few minutes after they finally have some alone time and talk to each other, and then end up engaged shortly after that. And then there's the fact that she's underage and, while his age is a bit ambiguous, he's most likely an adult.
Chaos Walking (2021) adds a romance between Todd and Viola^note but it isn't too convincing as a plot point. We're expected to believe that Todd is so enamoured with Viola he's willing to turn his back on everything he ever knew, put her before his parents and repeatedly risk his own life to help her...even though based on the timespan of the movie, he's only known her for a few days, tops. Based on this, Viola's scant characterization and the general focus of Todd's thoughts about her, his fixation on her appears to largely hinge around finding her "pretty" and the novelty of her being the first woman he's ever encountered, as opposed to anything deeper. Viola also doesn't seem to reciprocate his feelings; though she begins to warm up to Todd near the ending, she mostly appears to be sticking with him out of necessity and finds his attraction to her annoying more than anything. While this is a pretty realistic reaction considering Viola's circumstances and how little they know each other, it doesn't help to sell the romantic subplot as convincing.
A Cinderella Story: Despite the film trying to depict Sam and Austin as soulmates, Austin completely rejected her for being unpopular and never seemed to care about her well-being to begin with, giving the impression that the writers only had them end up together because of plot convenience.
Clash of the Titans (2010): The alternate ending from the Blu-Ray is closer to the original in that Perseus and Andromeda fall in love... even though they barely share screentime together due to Andromeda being Demoted to Extra, Perseus is a Darker and Edgier hero than the "motivated by love" original, and the rest of the movie builds up a different love interest in Io. This is due to Executive Meddling finding Io as a better love interest, cutting most of Andromeda's scenes and re-editing Io from a platonic figure to a romantic one.
Closer does this with its pairings, thanks to multiple times skips that don't fill in the blanks. Dan decides he's in love with Anna after one kiss. Anna gives Dan the brush-off...but the next scene has them confessing to their respective partners that they've been having an affair for over a year. Anna reassures Dan of her love for him despite having slept with Larry...the next scene reveals that she went back to Larry. Alice rebuffs Larry...but Larry is later seen taunting Dan about having slept with her. Dan is depressed over Anna leaving him...the next scene is of him and Alice in bed, having reconciled and all we get to explain this is a brief flashback of him tracking her down at the strip club. It gets jarring.
Conan the Barbarian (1982): Pay close attention to all of Conan and Valeria's scenes together after they first meet. He doesn't say one line to her! She does talk much more to him, and he kind of emotes non-verbally when needed (which, given it is Arnold we talk about, is a feat), but their relationship is still a bit awkward due to Conan's perpetual sullenness.
Enchanted: The Pair the Spares is worse than other examples because it's a Broken Aesop. After mocking Love at First Sight for the whole movie, Nancy runs off with Edward to the animated world the same night that she meets him. It seems that true love does come as fast as fairy tales suggest it does, after all — if you live in a Disney movie. It's more understandable if you see a deleted scene that paints Nancy as a jaded romanticist who's given up on meeting Prince Charming but it's still jarring. Notice that the live action Giselle and Robert appear to spend weeks or even months together building their relationship and her career, while animated Nancy and Edward are getting married before her cell phone has completely run out of charge.
F the Prom: Right near the end of the film, Felicity confronts Kane about how horrible he's been and how she wishes he were still the same sweet boy she used to date. Out of nowhere, she then reveals she still has feelings for him...and even though he's been nothing but a jackass to her the whole film, Kane reciprocates and they get back together. This is also overlooking the fact that Kane has not only been a jerk to Felicity the whole film, but he was a jerk to her friends too and had recently cheated on his last girlfriend.
Faust: Love of the Damned: There's little reason for Jade to be in love with Jaspers since she was his psychologist for the brief time he was in a mental institution and had little interaction with him outside of that. It's better explained in the source material, where Jaspers was stated to be Jade's lover even before he donned the costume.
Flash Gordon (1980): Flash and Dale hardly knew each other when they left Earth, yet the minute they landed on Mongo they shifted from boyfriend/girlfriend to marriage plans in the span of one movie!
Forbidden Planet: Altaira goes from hating the Captain to deep, unbreakable love for him for no reason whatsoever. Of course, when Captain Adams tells Morbius she's joined herself to him "body and soul," he's probably overstating it to bait a reaction from Morbius — and he certainly gets one.
Four Weddings and a Funeral. Charles and Carrie sleep together after the first wedding. The next time they see each other is at the second wedding, three months later, when they have sex again, despite her now being engaged. Several more months go by before their next encounter, probably the first thing close to a proper date that they've had, even though he's helping her choose a wedding dress — and this is when he declares his love for her. There's zero interaction between them at the third wedding (hers), a brief one at the funeral, and when she shows up at the fourth wedding (his), despite there having been sufficient time for him to get over her (ten months), he ditches his fianceé at the altar. That's a total of FIVE times he's ever laid eyes on this woman, but it's enough for him to decide that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her.
The Harry Potter films, mainly due to their being Compressed Adaptations, definitely lean towards the asphyxiatory side of things in regards to Harry and Ginny. The two barely interact, sharing the screen for about seven minutes combined in the last three movies. In the fifth book, Ginny being able to speak to Harry was a big deal; in the fifth movie, Bonnie Wright barely has any lines. Whenever they are on screen together, they barely talk, instead just sharing a kiss and an awkward look before Harry rushes off to do something and Ginny sits down to be irrelevant to the plot. Although they do give the two a couple of lovely moments together — notably, Ginny comforting Harry at Dumbledore's funeral — even the shippers often complain about this regarding the films.
In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, when Nuala runs into Abe, she assumes he's an enemy pursuer. Abe uses his Touch Telepathy on her to prove he's not, which makes them fall madly in love. Whatever deep feelings and experiences might have been shared between them during this split-second telepathic connection, the audience doesn't get to see any of it. They share one more interaction when Nuala warns Abe that the Big Bad is approaching, before said Big Bad takes her hostage and demands the last piece of the crown that controls the Golden Army for her release. Abe decides to give the villain who wants to Kill All Humans the keys to a Doomsday Device rather than risk this all-important love... even though the villain is Nuala's twin brother and the two share all injuries so he can't actually harm her without harming himself, even if he wanted to.
High School Musical: In a badly-made excuse to stop the rumors that the character is gay, Ryan was paired up with Kelsi in Senior Year. They are good together, if you ignore the fact Kelsi was paired with Jason in the first two and the insane amount of (intentional) flirting between Ryan and Chad in 2.
How I Live Now: In the film Edmond and Daisy's relationship just happens, and all of a sudden Edmond is just the one, period.
In the film adaptation of I Am Number Four, it's explained that the alien race works like this, with your first love being for life. Number Four falls in love with Sarah within two days and apparently permanently. There's a long scene of overly-flowery declarations of love delivered in a manner that would make Padmé and Anakin cringe. It's telling about this trope in general: apparently, the creators considered the way romance works in movies to be so nonsensical that it needed to be handwaved with Bizarre Alien Biology... yet so obligatory that saying "no, they can have the first date at the end of this movie and be the love of each other's lives by movie three" wasn't an option.
On top of Immortals', ahem, inaccuracies, we have the "relationship" between Theseus and the oracle. Summary? Oracle predicts Theseus's actions. She fawns over him pointlessly. They do it. End.
Indochine: Camille falls in love with a French Navy officer right after he shoots a runaway prisoner right in front of her. No tension or buildup whatsoever.
I Was a Teenage Werewolf: Why would any girl put up with an abusive passive-aggressive guy like Tony? Well, it's The '50s, but still.
Nearly every James Bond film has Bond and the Bond Girl barely interact before they become a couple, and even in the cases where they do get some interaction (for example Pussy Galore and Wai Lin) none of it is romantic, with the only real exception being On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Casino Royale (2006). It's especially bad in The World Is Not Enough, where Bond and Dr. Christmas Jones have absolutely zero romantic interaction or flirtation before he beds her at the end of the film. In the novels this makes much more sense, as Bond is a philanderer and pretty misogynistic on top of it, rarely feeling much for the women he has sex with; the problem is that the films keep trying to present meaningless flings as genuine romances.
In the 2003 Australian film Japanese Story Sandy goes from hating Hiromitsu to sleeping with him in the next scene with absolutely no explanation whatsoever. Soon after, he dies because of a diving accident and the rest of the movie is about Sandy being in deep mourning over a one-night stand.
Josie and the Pussycats (2001): Alan M seems like a genuinely nice guy, and apparently he and Josie have a history full of chemistry and common interests, but most of their relationship shown in the movie is them staring deeply into each other's eyes as they realise they love each other, with none of the relationship actually visible. Which might have been intentional.
Killers of the Flower Moon: Mollie and Ernest really don't show much chemistry in the brief segment of the film before their marriage, so them getting together, though a necessary part of the plot/history, feels rather out of nowhere. While their interactions having little chemistry late in the movie is almost certainly intentional and a show of Mollie's distrust of her husband as her family dies around her, their initial interactions beg the question of why she decided to marry him in the first place, especially considering the scene directly prior to their engagement is her pointing out to her sisters that he's an obvious Gold Digger. Some have wondered if it might have made more sense for the film to make more of a point of why Mollie (and other Osage women) historically would have been compelled to marry white men.
In The Kissing Booth, Rachel shows up out of nowhere after Lee is stood up at the Kissing Booth in front of everyone, tells him that she 'hopes he likes what he sees' after she kisses him and takes off his blindfold — implying that she's had a crush on him for a while — and they immediately begin dating for the rest of the movie. This is the first time Rachel's character appears, without any foreshadowing or build-up to her crush on Lee. He also immediately reciprocates despite the fact they'd apparently never even interacted prior to this and he'd spent a chunk of the movie crushing on Mia.
The Lord of the Rings:
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (the theater release, anyway) has this between Faramir and Éowyn. It's elaborated on in the book, but in the unextended movie version, it's all rather sudden... Thankfully the filmmakers chose to play it subtle, so it's not as bad as other examples here.
The Magic Sword: George falls in love with Helene after spying on her numerous times with Sybil's magic pool, doesn't speak to her until he gets to Lodac's lair, and they're married after Lodac is defeated.
Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- In Thor, this seems to be a widely held opinion on the romance between Thor and Jane Foster, which really only serves to give Thor a reason to want to get back to Earth. Some have even labeled it a Romantic Plot Tumor, which is kind of funny considering that the same thing was said about the character played by Jane's actress in the Star Wars prequels. Kenneth Branagh must have realized this and says in the DVD Commentary that their relationship wasn't meant to be true love, but more a mutual crush and respect. It gets worse in Thor: The Dark World. They've been pining for each other for the two whole years since. Once reunited, this movie proceeds to pretend they were madly in love throughout the last and their Sickeningly Sweethearts interaction is incredibly jarring when they've never been anything like that before. Part of one of The Stingers at the end even starts with Jane looking all miserable again as if two days without him is hell on earth. However, the writers apparently got the picture in Thor: Ragnarok, when it's revealed in dialogue that Thor and Jane broke up. Their actors, Portman and Hemsworth, also didn’t have very good chemistry. The only kissing scene between them (end of the second movie) that's really believable isn't even them. It was Portman's day off, and they asked Hemsworth's wife Elsa Pataky when she stopped by to be her stand in.
- Pre-release, this was feared with the teasing of the Black Widow/Bruce Banner romance in Avengers: Age of Ultron. After release, given it's Widow's major story arc in the movie, both critics and fans were divided on how it was handled. A big factor in this is that at least an hour of footage was cut from the movie (the theatrical cut of which is still 2 1/2 hours long), which makes much of their romance (and the rest of the plot) seem to just lurch from event to event without any proper build-up. Additionally, the pre-amble to their Romance Arc in this film seems to have occurred entirely off-screen, between films.
- In Ant-Man, Hope spends most of the movie resenting Scott over the fact that her father Hank chose some random ex-con as his successor and not his own daughter, and her interactions with Scott are hostile as she begrudgingly trains him. But near the end of the movie, as he grows into his role as Ant-Man, she slowly starts respecting him and they work together. You would think that she only just now started liking him as a person, but at the end of the movie, Hank walks in on them making out and suddenly they're now an item. Though for what it's worth, Ant-Man and the Wasp did do a good job showing them function as a steady couple, which is not the MCU's strong point.
- In Captain America: Civil War Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter share a kiss before the action of the movie kicks into gear. Most fans found the whole thing baffling, as while they have occasionally hooked up in the comics, Sharon was little more than an extra in the prior film and didn't have too much to do in Civil War, either, on top of the rather weird implications of Steve hooking up with his old girlfriend's descendant (and mere days after learning she died, on top of that). On top of that, it's Sharon's last speaking appearance to date in the films, which makes the whole thing feel rather pointless.
- Played for Laughs in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Ned unexpectedly hooks up with fellow student Betty Brant, neither of them having been interested in each other before and then suddenly passionately flirting in the span of a single plane ride. They continue to be eerily invested in each other throughout the whole field trip, much to Peter's disbelief. Then when the students all get back home, Ned and Betty broke up offscreen during the return plane ride, and are already Amicable Exes. Peter is still befuddled.
Brian and Judith in Monty Python's Life of Brian. Brian finds her attractive, and Judith is upset when he is captured by the Romans, but not in a way that implies that she sees him as something more than a fellow rebel. Then they meet in the desert, and the next shot is them waking up in bed together.
The Mortal Kombat movies have Kitana and Liu Kang. While it is established in the first film that Liu is attracted to Kitana when they first make eye contact, there are only three scenes of spoken expository dialogue between the two before the end of the movie shows them returning to Earth, arm in arm like a couple. In the sequel, Liu and Kitana act like they've been a couple for years despite the events of the sequel taking place immediately after the end of the first film. When Jade tries to tempt Liu Kang as part of a test of character, he refuses her advances claiming his heart belongs to Kitana even though he only knows Kitana slightly more than he knows Jade.
Oscar and Theodora in Oz the Great and Powerful. A major part of the movie's plot revolves around her falling in love with him, and then turning evil after she thinks he's betrayed her. But this falls short when you realize that Oscar and Theodora have only known each other for a day or two before he leaves the Emerald City and they don't see each other again until after her Face–Heel Turn. Despite this, she's already talking about how she'll be his queen and they'll rule Oz together, and completely breaks down when she thinks he's cheating on her. It's also not entirely clear how far their relationship went to begin with and whether they actually slept together or not, which can make Theodora come off as a Clingy Jealous Girl or a Stalker with a Crush.
Parodied in the ending of The Pirate Movie, when Mabel arbitrarily grabs Pirates and Daughters and throws them together, with even the last two male pirates getting stuck together with suitably shocked expressions.
In Pixels, Violet falls in love with the main character Sam Brenner, despite him acting like a creep (checking her out when he's supposed to do his job, making comments about her masturbating) and being a loser. It's also fairly abrupt how fast she goes from hating him to being willing to talk about personal issues like her recent divorce.
In Prince Caspian, Caspian and Susan become a couple for five minutes at the end of the movie because he rescued her once from some soldiers. Suddenly at the end, the two are snogging in front of a crowd, only for their relationship to end five seconds later when Susan and her siblings return through the portal to England, meaning she and Caspian will never see each other again. Thus, there was no reason to include their romance in the first place because it was doomed to end anyway.
In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Dastan and Tamina have the whole movie to slowly bond with each other, get into playful arguments and display plenty of Belligerent Sexual Tension. This seems to be one of the good things as their chemistry and the buildup feels natural... But their First Kiss comes at the worst possible time: right after violently dispatching the Big Bad's dragon.
Being a loving sendup of swashbuckler stories, The Princess Bride has this going on with Buttercup and Westley. Almost all of their relationship development happens in the prologue when Buttercup realizes that the local farmboy is in love with her, and then they kiss. In the rest of the movie, they're separated for all but two scenes (and they spend most of those scenes bickering), and the entire plot is driven by their true love and their need to be back together. This is pretty much in-line with how the genre tends to have the audience Take Our Word for It that the Damsel in Distress is the hero's true love and primary motivation, further suggested in that Westley and Buttercup exclusively describe each other's physical appearance when speaking of each other. Weirdly, the actors are so passionate and sincere that they mostly manage to sell the romance anyway. The book even joked that their relationship would probably run into troubles if either of them ever aged out of their good looks.
Replicant: The innocent clone eventually fakes his own death and starts a new life with a Hooker with a Heart of Gold he had met for only a few minutes.
The Running Man: Ben and Amber share little to no romantic chemistry for the duration of the movie, save for Amber developing sympathy for Ben when she realizes he's not the mass-murdering psycho the world has painted him as and a few vague flirty lines. Yet the two managed to produce The Big Damn Kiss during the film's climax.
Deconstructed in Rush: James Hunt's resolve to "marry a good woman and form a stable relationship" results in him marrying a British model Suzy Miller one scene after their initial interaction. Hunt's unsuccessful Formula One career in 1975 and his team's bankruptcy cause him to throw a tantrum, yelling at his wife and ultimately leading her to desert him through sheer frustration. This marks them as an unideal couple compared to the stable and understanding Niki and Marlene Lauda, whose developments and dramas are shown throughout the last third of the film.
Shanghai Noon: Even for a goofy action flick, Lin is clearly way out of Roy's league (both in terms of looks and ass-kicking), yet becomes smitten with him after just a few days and one conversation of knowing him, and still wants to date him even after Chon explains all of Roy's flaws in brutal detail (including his philandering), for no other reason than "he has a good heart." Girl, you can do so much better.
Sixteen Candles:
- Their interest in each other is established early on, but Sam and Jake only ever talk to each other near the very end of the film before they have a romantic night almost entirely offscreen except for a brief moment coinciding with a kiss.
- Ted and Caroline wake up together too drunk to remember what happened the previous night, but quickly are all over each other.
Slumdog Millionaire: Jamal is in love with Latika and literally risks his life to find her because... they were friends as kids? Granted, they went through some very rough stuff together, but it's entirely possible for two kids to go through a bad time and not fall in love. The presence of the trope is only confirmed by the movie's explanation for their ending up together: "It is written". They're together because they HAVE TO BE, OK?
Speed: Jack (Keanu Reeves) and Annie (Sandra Bullock). After knowing each other for all of a few hours, they're making out and about to have Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex in a wrecked subway car in the middle of a street with a crowd of people watching. Justified and Truth in Television; people bond over traumatic experiences quickly. Amusingly enough, thanks to Keanu Reeves refusing to do the sequel it turns out they really didn't last long. They both lampshade this.
Jack: I have to warn you, I've heard relationships based on intense experiences never work.
Annie: OK. We'll have to base it on sex then.
Star Wars:
- In the prequel trilogy the audience already knows from the original trilogy that Anakin and Padmé are supposed to end up together to have Luke and Leia. Apparently, George Lucas thought this was enough and that their relationship didn't actually need to be convincing. Without the original trilogy, they fall headfirst into this trope.
  - In The Phantom Menace, the two do interact on Tatooine, and it's made clear that Anakin is attracted to her when he asks if she's an angel, but given that he's nine-years-old it comes off as a Precocious Crush. After leaving Tatooine, the only interaction the two are shown having is a brief scene on Coruscant where they exchange a few lines of dialogue, and he doesn't even know it's her.
  - Immediately upon his introduction in Attack of the Clones, despite having not seen or talked to Padmé for the past ten years, he's showing near stalker-esque levels of attraction to her, saying how he's dreamed about her every night for the past ten years and how "just being around her again is intoxicating". You can say that's just pure physical attraction speaking (Anakin is canonically a teenager at this point after all), but that wouldn't explain why he seems so singularly obsessed with her when as a Jedi he's surely seen and met many attractive women throughout his interstellar adventures or even just in the Temple (human or no). Their romance dominates the movie and distracts from the more important war and political aspects due to the completely unnecessary decision for it to be a Forbidden Love story (despite the original trilogy and Episode I making no mention of it being forbidden for Jedi to be in relationships, and this film not actually giving a reason other than "it's not the Jedi way" and "I'm a senator"). And Padmé does a complete 180 from "We can't be together" to "Let's be together", with the only important conversation they had in the interim being Anakin confessing that he murdered children.
  - In Revenge of the Sith, their relationship is confined to the two declaring how much they love each other in the most cringe-worthy ways, and Anakin deciding that Padmé is worth turning to The Dark Side, killing Jedi Padawans (the guy just likes killing children), and bringing about the collapse of the Republic and replacing it with an oppressive dictatorship. As The Distressed Watcher put it:
    His single-minded objective is to prevent his dream from occurring, no matter what the cost. For this weak motivation, he betrays the Jedi, slaughters children, tries to kill his friend and mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, ends democracy so that Palpatine can begin a galactic empire... all of this because of a couple of nightmares. All of this to save someone for whom his love is not even very convincing.
- The Rise of Skywalker has this with Rey and Kylo Ren, who have been, in the words of this film's Visual Dictionary, "sworn enemies" ever since their violent first meeting in The Force Awakens. The Last Jedi gave them Foe Romance Subtext, but not much in the way of genuine affection; Kylo still stalks Rey, painfully invades her mind, kills and attacks people she cares about, rejects her redemption offer and battles her repeatedly, culminating in him almost killing her before Leia intervenes. Despite all of this giving Rey valid reasons to hate and distrust Kylo, in this film she heals a wound she dealt him and kisses him after he revives her. Prior to this, the pair hadn't shared any scenes that weren't antagonistic on some level since The Last Jedi (a year ago in-universe), and they apparently hadn't met since between the end of that movie and the start of The Rise of Skywalker, meaning the interactions the audience sees are apparently the entire basis for their relationship.
Sunday School Musical: At the end, Zachary and Savannah kiss with virtually no development whatsoever.
Sweet Liberty has an In-Universe example. Director Bo Hodges has Mary Slocum, a local woman, fall in love with Colonel Banastre Tarleton during the Revolutionary War. Michael Burgess, the historian whose book is being adapted for the film, is aghast, since Tarleton, among other things, bragged about raping American women.
Michael: Tarleton was a vicious ruthless beast! Why would she fall in love with this guy?!
Bo: He's number four at the box office.
Michael: What?
Bo: Elliott James is an international star. He comes on the screen in Paris, they wet their pants in Manila. If she doesn't fall in love with him, the audience will set fire to the ushers.
Synecdoche, New York: After a single night of sex, the movie cuts straight to Caden and Claire getting married despite the former's feelings for Hazel.
In The Terminator, Reese claims to have been in love with Sarah ever since seeing her picture. Sarah is suspicious of him at first but comes to trust him. Then, thanks to the fast pacing of the movie(with roughly 24 hours passing between their first meeting and the climax), they suddenly have sex, followed by them being too busy fighting the Terminator to develop their relationship for the rest of the movie. In the end, Sarah says in a recording she's making for her son that she and Reese "loved a lifetime's worth".
In-Universe example. This is pretty much the point of Timer. Once you meet your soulmate via Timer, you know you're going to end up with them eventually. Even if you love someone else right now, or are fourteen years old.
Track of the Moon Beast: Paul and Cathy have no chemistry together, but they've fallen in love after a few days. Johnny has more sexual tension with Paul than she does; the same goes for Johnny and Cathy. Johnny Longbone just oozes sexual chemistry, though.
Underworld (2003): There is never any indication that Selene feels any real emotion toward Michael; they don't have any sort of conversation with each other about anything apart from vampires and werewolves, and they have known each other for a total of about two days. Word of God says this was the way it was supposed to be; special features on the DVD reveal that the two characters were not supposed to actually be "in love," but rather attracted to each other based on lust, confused feelings, and being forced together.
In the Renaissance Period Piece Tulip Fever, Sophia is portrayed as falling so passionately in love with artist Jan that she and her maid hatch a plot to fake her death so that she and Jan can run away together. Except apart from hot sex, it's not clear why Sophia is so attached to Jan, nor is it clear why she's so desperately unhappy with her husband — who is admittedly older and a bit stodgy, but seems to treat her well and genuinely care about her, which was about as good as most people expected from marriage at the time. Beta Couple Maria and Willem are much more believably in love, but their relationship is subject to different Kudzu Plot shenanigans. Doubles as a Romantic Plot Tumor, as viewers expecting a movie about the Dutch Tulip Craze will find that element to be mostly set dressing for the various relationship dramas.
Warrior of the Lost World: The Paper Chase Guy and Nastasia inexplicably get together at the end of the film, even though The Paper Chase Guy was nothing but rude, selfish, and neglectful to her. In fact, the only reason she needed rescuing at the end of the film is because he refused to actually help her when it would have been rather simple to. Plus, she shot him. She had enough willpower to resist shooting her father and shoot Prossor instead, but not the Paper Chase guy. One could speculate she wanted to shoot him.
White Wolves: Pandra and Benny's romantic subplot is an unwelcome distraction from the survival elements for some fans of the second movie, and the amount of chemistry they have is debatable.
In The Whole Nine Yards, protagonist Oz meets Cynthia for about five minutes, she later comes to his hotel room, and after spending the evening together sharing stories, they have sex. The next day Oz flies home, several days later Cynthia arrives, and later that night he's proclaiming he loves her, to her ex-husband no less. The relationship between the ex-husband and Jill is a bit better — those several days between Oz flying home and Cynthia arriving, the two of them also swap stories and he trains her, and she's a fan of his who idolizes him and has followed his work for years. By the end of the film, it's just attraction they share, though years later in the sequel they're married.
In the Wing Commander series of games, the relationship between Blair and Angel is built up slowly and believably. In the film... it wasn't.
In The Wolverine, Logan constantly dreams about Jean Grey and wishes to be with her again yet he shares a few intimate moments with Mariko, who's already engaged to another man at the time and has only known Logan for a few days. The film noir setting could justify this relationship as a form of comfort for Logan. It's worth noting that Wolverine also only knew Jean Grey for a few days at most ^note and, more importantly, they weren't actually in a relationship. And that one's played as a romance for the ages.
Wonder Woman 1984: The relationship between Diana and Steve gets turned into this. While they were given a fairly believable relationship in the first movie, in the sequel she has been pining for him for nearly 70 years despite having known him for only a few weeks before he died. That's not devotion, that's just ridiculous, especially since Diana is supposed to be an All-Loving Heroine.
Zardoz has Zed hooking up with Consuella, instead of May, in the end, even having a son with her, despite the fact that she literally spends the entire movie demanding that Zed gets eliminated. Then again, the whole film is such a Mind Screw, and the ending so bizarre that it hardly matters by that point.
Zoom: Academy for Superheroes has Dylan and Summer, who hook up after a couple days of knowing each other and have little to no obvious romantic chemistry. Essentially, he's a teenage boy, she's a teenage girl, and the movie needed a romance of some kind.

Strangled By The Red String / Live-Action Films

Previous

Index

Next

Strangled By The Red String / Live-Action Films

Edit Locked

Previous

Index

Next