When Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) isn’t saving the world from monsters from outer space, Marvel’s latest superhero spends a lot of time with her hunky commanding officer (Jude Law), her air force buddy (Lashana Lynch), a cat-stroking secret agent (Samuel L Jackson) and a pointy-eared shapeshifter (Ben Mendelsohn). But she keeps things strictly platonic with all of them, much to the critics’ approval. Praising Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s film, Stylist magazine argues that “the real superpower in Captain Marvel is female friendship” while Screen Rant puts the absence of a love interest on its list of “5 Things That Captain Marvel Did Better Than Wonder Woman”.
Is it really that radical? It’s true that most superhero franchises have a love interest in the opening instalment, but it’s also true that costumed crime-fighters have far less romance in their lives than they used to. Look back at Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Batman, Superman and the X-Men films, and you’ll see relationship subplots being whittled away to nothing. The current DC and Marvel line seems to be: “No sex please, we’re superheroes.” And in that respect, Captain Marvel is bang on trend.
Perhaps it’s liberating for writers to dispense with the lovey-dovey stuff, but star-crossed romance has been central to the superhero genre ever since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster saw Glenda Farrell as ace reporter Torchy Blane in a 1930s film series, and were inspired to create Superman’s better half, Lois Lane. The earliest Superman comics were, among other things, screwball comedies lit by the dazzling idea of having Lois adore Superman as much as she detested his wimpy alter ego, Clark Kent. “Why is it that you always avoid me at the office?” asks Clark in 1938, on their first ever night out. “Please Clark,” groans Lois, “I’ve been scribbling ‘sob stories’ all day long. Don’t ask me to dish out another.”
Until recently, romance has been essential to superheroes on the big screen, too. The Batmen played by Michael Keaton and Christian Bale had Catwoman on the Batphone’s speed dial, and the superhero genre can lay claim to at least two iconic romantic sequences. One is the magical airborne ballet, scored by John Williams, during which Superman (Christopher Reeve) flies Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) over the sparkling city in Richard Donner’s Superman. The other is the saucier moment when a rain-drenched Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) peels back Spidey’s mask just enough to kiss him as he (Tobey Maguire) hangs upside down in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man.
But in the last few years, superheroes haven’t been so lucky in love. Think of the films which introduced the Avengers roster. Iron Man gave a substantial role to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts; Captain America: The First Avenger featured Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter; Thor had Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster; and The Incredible Hulk had Liv Tyler’s Betty Ross. Now think of the way those love interests have been sidelined or written out altogether. Meanwhile, Rachel McAdams’s character Christine Palmer was barely there in 2016’s Doctor Strange; and Amy Adams’s Lois Lane never seems to know why she is in the Superman films with Henry Cavill. Ben Affleck’s glum Batman would rather brood with his butler than hit the town with one of Gotham’s most eligible bachelorettes; and the love triangle between Wolverine, Phoenix and Cyclops in the first three X-Men films has no equivalent in the retro X-movies starring James McAvoy et al.
The only action any of these guys get is when they’re punching villains, so it’s been left to tender-hearted fans, or “shippers”, to imagine dalliances between their favourite supermen and superwomen. The films themselves raise the question where is the love?
One answer is that today’s superhero sagas keep running on (and on and on) until love is exhausted. In Hollywood movies, relationships tend to be about the meet cute, the breakup and the final clinch, not about how couples might fare several years down the line. Another explanation may be that there is just no room for romance any more. When you’ve got a convoluted multi-film epic about 50 heroes foiling a genocidal alien giant, something has to hit the cutting room floor.
The industry’s prevailing wisdom seems to be that audiences would rather puzzle over knotty, mythology-clogged plots than hang out with two people who fancy each other. The unstoppable rise of the superhero movie over the past decade has coincided with the almost total disappearance of the mainstream romantic comedy –and sci-fi/action blockbusters in general are pretty much through with love.
Compare the princess-scoundrel flirtation in the original Star Wars trilogy with the just-good-friends chastity of the new one. Compare the 1984 Ghostbusters, in which Bill Murray’s Venkman chatted up Sigourney Weaver’s Dana, with the 2016 reboot in which the women gawped at their himbo secretary but didn’t go any further. The Bourne Identity paired off Matt Damon’s amnesiac assassin with Franka Potente’s Marie, but she was killed off in the sequel. And The Fast and the Furious franchise began with two happy couples, but gradually shifted its focus to baldy bromance.
If all that means that Captain Marvel can throw missiles around the place without stopping to swoon over a supporting character, then maybe it’s for the best. But rewatch those four fairy tale minutes of Reeve and Kidder gliding above the clouds together. Doesn’t it seem that by ditching scenes like that in favour of intergalactic conspiracies, superhero blockbusters have lost one of the main reasons we fell madly in love with them?
