"Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality."
— Roger Ebert, May 25, 2001
"The trademark sense of isolation is another point the game misses like a champ, when you are given a spunky female sidekick. This is another peculiarly American habit that seems to always go unchallenged: why does a love interest subplot have to be shoehorned into everything? Imagine if there was some kind of parallel universe where every game and movie, regardless of genre, was required to incorporate at least one line dancing competition. We'd think they were all raving lunatics! And yet here's us forcing in an out-of-place, cheesy romance scene that's more agonizingly painful to watch than any of the actual horror the game is supposed to be about."
"...many would assume that dystopian fiction is a cautionary tale of failed societies, and a grim commentary on the human condition, but that is completely wrong! Dystopia is all about love triangles! Make sure that the protagonist has to choose between not one, but two hunky guys! Oh the drama! How cruel is fate when one must choose between two awesome things! What a harsh world our protagonist must endure! [...] Although the love triangle will take up most of the plot, some time must be spent sorting out that whole evil dystopian government thing. [...] Once the dystopia is toppled and its citizens freed, make sure to spend the remaining time detailing the conclusion of the protagonist's love life, and not on the huge power vacuum and rebel infighting that would surly occur after the fall of the central political system. After all classic dystopia novels are known for their happy endings. Now we have everything we need to make an awesome romance I... I mean dystopian story."
"How many folks complain about the Marx Bros. movies that have all that bullshit romance filler in the movies? Romance and story filler about characters THAT NOBODY IN THE AUDIENCE CARES ABOUT. This is pure executive thinking."
"Many a story have been ruined by a lack of focus, like starting with a tale of world domination, where a terrible villain has taken control and it's up to the plucky young hero to lead a resistance and free the world once again, only to halt the plot midway, introduce a love interest, and have the villain and his world domination scheme resolve neatly offscreen, all while the promised tale of a hero toppling a terrible tyrant jackknives into romance. And now, instead of following through on the initial conflict and seeing the hero storming the villain's evil lair, we're watching him meet his love interest's parents in a world that seems to have forgotten it had been conquered just a few days prior. In fact, this particular phenomenon seems to happen so often with independent works that I have been affectionately calling it Sudden Romance Syndrome, where the main narrative feels like it wants to be somewhere else but always shifts back to romance. Like if John Wick started his rampage of revenge against the man who killed his dog during the first half of the movie, then just started dating a new love interest while the guy he wanted revenge against dies offscreen somewhere. You're essentially starting a new story from scratch in the middle of the story."
—Literature Devil, "Literature Devil's 12 Rules for Writing
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