I was sitting in a theater a few weeks back, when a trailer for Andy Serkis’s Breathe began to play. It was a maudlin, moralizing mess of a trailer, complete with a swelling score and tired histrionics like, “I don’t want to survive, I want to live.” Fucking boo. Without having seen the film (though being gratefully aware of the lackluster critical reaction it has since garnered), I surmised that whatever rousing elements there were to be had on the true story of the great polio-afflicted Robert Cavendish, were utterly usurped by the film’s insistence that “love” is the ultimate motivator, or more accurately, the industry’s insistence that “love” is the only motivator. I reject both premises.
I have never been moved by my infatuation toward another person to do anything I’m particularly proud of, much less something that ends up contributing to some greater good of mankind. There's this notion that a story simply can’t feel cinematic unless we are made absolutely certain that our hero is ultimately driven by the desire to get “a bit of crumpet.” While I will concede that the golden age of cinema would amount to very little without the stagey romance that defined it, I think it's a crutch we lean on far too often.
I prefer a hero that’s either above that sort of thing, like Rey in The Force Aawakens, or tormented by it, like Kay from this year’s Blade Runner 2049. That’s just the way it usually works in the real world. Those smart enough to truly perceive love aren’t dumb enough to be beguiled by it. It almost always weakens the hero’s journey. It’s distracting and obligatory.
Why is Romanov into Banner exactly? Did you give two slim shits about Jen Urso and Casilian Andor’s romance? Oh. Superman can travel around the world so fast he can reverse time. A power he uses ONCE to save his girlfriend and not prevent WW2?!
It’s a miserable affair, an illusion that movies as a whole are absolutely worse for. It’s a lazy motivation device. Any worthwhile protagonist shouldn’t need the validation of another human (that’s all love is, you saps) to be driven to do good.
At the risk of sounding like a bitter grouch: GET your romance outta my movies, Hollywood, I’m over it! God, I’m lonely.
