By Megan Hess
“Where have all the good men gone?/And where are all the gods?/Where’s the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?/ Isn’t there a white knight/ Upon a fiery steed?/ Late at night, I toss and I turn/ And I dream of what I need….”
Bonnie Tyler, “Holding Out For a Hero”
“Where have all the good men gone?/And where are all the gods?/Where’s the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?/ Isn’t there a white knight/ Upon a fiery steed?/ Late at night, I toss and I turn/ And I dream of what I need….”
Bonnie Tyler, “Holding Out For a Hero”
“I’ll have what she's having:” The genre's golden years (1920 - 2009)
Inspired by Italian commedia dell'arte and classic Shakespearean and Wildean comedies, filmmakers have taken the “boy meets girl” plot device and added humor - creating what we call “romantic comedies” - since the Silent Era. Sherlock Jr. (Keaton, 1924) and Girl Shy (Newmeyer & Taylor, 1924) kicked off the genre in American cinema, and it continued to build on itself ever since, taking slightly different forms each decade. (Yehlen 1) In the post-World-War era, for example, MGM made millions off of musical romantic comedies like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Donen, 1954). Romantic comedies were a resume staple for actors. Garry Marshall and Nora Ephron built their careers on rom-coms, and careers of many of today’s biggest stars, including Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey and Ryan Reynolds, got their start with them as well.
Inspired by Italian commedia dell'arte and classic Shakespearean and Wildean comedies, filmmakers have taken the “boy meets girl” plot device and added humor - creating what we call “romantic comedies” - since the Silent Era. Sherlock Jr. (Keaton, 1924) and Girl Shy (Newmeyer & Taylor, 1924) kicked off the genre in American cinema, and it continued to build on itself ever since, taking slightly different forms each decade. (Yehlen 1) In the post-World-War era, for example, MGM made millions off of musical romantic comedies like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Donen, 1954). Romantic comedies were a resume staple for actors. Garry Marshall and Nora Ephron built their careers on rom-coms, and careers of many of today’s biggest stars, including Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey and Ryan Reynolds, got their start with them as well.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was a financial success, ranking in over 9.4 million dollars at the box office, and also becoming a romantic comedy classic since its debut in 1954.
Today, the romantic comedy has been banished from the big screen and can primarily be found one of two places: banished to the Hallmark Channel, a content factory churning out laughably predictable movies targeted to middle-aged and older white women, or played out on ABC’s The Bachelor (Fleiss, 2002 -) through cut-together meet-cutes. In the words of the Talking Heads...how did we get here? What changed? Is there hope for the rom-com’s survival or will it go the way of the dinosaurs? This article will identify the potential causes of the romantic comedy’s disappearance, as well as what it might take to revitalize the genre.
“How far the mighty fall:” The rise of superhero movies (2000 -)
Technically, the superhero movie has been around since Richard Donner’s Superman in 1978. However, the cinematic “superheroissance” began with X-Men (Singer, 2000). Instead of an individual hero, X-Men focused on a team of superheroes - a predecessor to Marvel’s Avengers movies. Spider-Man (Rami, 2002) was released soon after and is also notable to the history of superhero movies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) began with Iron Man (Favreau, 2008). The Avengers (Whedon, 2012) was the first of its kind. Similar to Godzilla movies or the ever-popular TV crossover event, it brought different heroes/villains together. These films created a successful formula that we’ve seen replicated multiple times annually ever since.
Technically, the superhero movie has been around since Richard Donner’s Superman in 1978. However, the cinematic “superheroissance” began with X-Men (Singer, 2000). Instead of an individual hero, X-Men focused on a team of superheroes - a predecessor to Marvel’s Avengers movies. Spider-Man (Rami, 2002) was released soon after and is also notable to the history of superhero movies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) began with Iron Man (Favreau, 2008). The Avengers (Whedon, 2012) was the first of its kind. Similar to Godzilla movies or the ever-popular TV crossover event, it brought different heroes/villains together. These films created a successful formula that we’ve seen replicated multiple times annually ever since.
Marvel's The Avengers (2012) was a smashing hit, generating over 1 billion dollars in ticket sales.
At the time of this writing, the MCU has over 20 films. With Captain Marvel (Boden and Fleck, 2019), Avengers: Endgame (Russo & Russo, 2019) - the first Avengers movie in a year as opposed to two or three years” (Sandwell 1) - and Spider-Man: Far From Home (Watts, 2019) being released this year, the volume of films coming down the pipeline isn’t decreasing. DC Comics has also seen success with its film releases - even ones that were critically panned, like Suicide Squad (Ayer, 2016). The competition between DC and Marvel Comics is akin to the feud between 1890s’ media barons Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst but the rise of superhero movies has taken it to another level. Considering Disney, Marvel Studios’ parent company, just made a $70+-million merger deal with 20th Century Fox (which gets the rights to certain Marvel properties, like X-Men and the Fantastic Four, back in Marvel’s hands) (Krawcyzk 1) and two superhero movies made it to the Academy Awards in 2019 - Black Panther (Coogler, 2018), the first superhero movie to be nominated for Best Picture and Best Animated Feature winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Ramsey, Perschetti and Rothman, 2018), that war is only likely to escalate over the next several decades.
So, why are superhero movies so profitable right now? What drives the demand? In a tense political climate, the idea of rescuing has more appeal than ever. With the average person’s trust in the media and government declining, according to 2018 findings from the Pew Research Center, we can no longer count on politicians and major media outlets to save us, if we ever could. Romantic comedies are often critiqued for falling into genre conventions, but superhero movies have them, too. These films play on our emotions and require the same “suspension of disbelief” as rom-coms. They even feature some of the same actors. The Proposal’s (Fletcher, 2009) pretty boy, Ryan Reynolds, starred in Green Lantern (Campbell, 2011) before his star turn as Deadpool, “The Merc With a Mouth” in the eponymous Tim Miller film and its 2018 sequel, and Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the Batman villain Joker was one of his last roles before his death. However, unlike romantic comedies, which create one-off situations, most superhero movies are threads in an overarching narrative. The highly detailed storylines and intense parasocial relationships they create drive fans to the box office and to purchase merchandise and create buzz on social media and online in a way that romantic comedies haven’t been able to sustain in the past. Hollywood gives the people what they want, and right now, that's superhero movies.But it isn't just superhero movies’ superior marketability that is killing off the rom-com….
So, why are superhero movies so profitable right now? What drives the demand? In a tense political climate, the idea of rescuing has more appeal than ever. With the average person’s trust in the media and government declining, according to 2018 findings from the Pew Research Center, we can no longer count on politicians and major media outlets to save us, if we ever could. Romantic comedies are often critiqued for falling into genre conventions, but superhero movies have them, too. These films play on our emotions and require the same “suspension of disbelief” as rom-coms. They even feature some of the same actors. The Proposal’s (Fletcher, 2009) pretty boy, Ryan Reynolds, starred in Green Lantern (Campbell, 2011) before his star turn as Deadpool, “The Merc With a Mouth” in the eponymous Tim Miller film and its 2018 sequel, and Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the Batman villain Joker was one of his last roles before his death. However, unlike romantic comedies, which create one-off situations, most superhero movies are threads in an overarching narrative. The highly detailed storylines and intense parasocial relationships they create drive fans to the box office and to purchase merchandise and create buzz on social media and online in a way that romantic comedies haven’t been able to sustain in the past. Hollywood gives the people what they want, and right now, that's superhero movies.But it isn't just superhero movies’ superior marketability that is killing off the rom-com….
Ryan Reynolds has starred in various films, ranging from action movies to rom coms.
Part of what makes classic, pre- or early-Internet rom-coms like Harry Met Sally (Reiner, 1989) still fun to watch for modern viewers is their datedness. The technology - and their outfits - are laughable. However, there are some places rom-coms show their age that aren’t so funny…. The typical rom-com reflects traditional attitudes about gender, sexuality, race, class, beauty and more...attitudes that the culture at large has moved on from. For example, same-sex marriage has only been legal in the US for less than five years, but LGBT+ individuals and their rights are being more recognized and accepted...but still not represented in romantic comedies as more than the “gay best friend.” Furthermore, the typical romantic comedy man feels less believable in the days of #MeToo, which revealed that Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer and other figures who seemed like trustworthy paragons of male virtue, had really been preying on women for decades. Like in the days of second-wave feminism, women find themselves saying “Do I really need a man?” Even the new What Women Want (Meyers, 2000) remake What Men Want (Shankman, 2019) featuring Taraji P. Henson doesn’t deliver what 2019 audiences want. According to Entertainment Weekly critic Dana Schwartz, “...the film’s approach to gender dynamics is about the same as a beer commercial where a lazy husband on the couch can’t watch football in peace because his wife keeps trying to take him antiquing. Whereas this movie could easily have been fresh and nuanced — and funnier! — it resorts instead to tropes as lazy as that beer-wanting couch husband. ”
Romantic subplots are also being integrated into other genres. The aforementioned Deadpool is a “superhero romantic comedy;” even children’s films like Mary Poppins Returns (Marshall, 2018) have romantic subplots. The grand romantic gestures that used to belong to rom-coms are happening outside of films where romance is the driving force. We’re getting our humor elsewhere, too. The romantic comedy has been replaced with raunch comedies like The Hangover (Phillips, 2009), Blockers (Cannon, 2018) and their woman-centered counterparts like Girls’ Trip (Lee, 2017).
“I want to know what love is:” What are we missing with a lack of rom-coms?As discussed previously earlier, romantic comedies are critiqued for portraying sex and gender in ways that some consider outdated, or even offensive. However, superhero movies can't escape scrutiny. Black Widow was the only female Avenger for many years, and only the most recent films have started giving her the common decency of character development. Her first appearances (like Tony Stark ogling her while boxing in Iron Man 2, or escaping from her Avengers captors doing high kicks in a little black dress) emphasize her sexuality over her spy-dentity. It took Marvel 10 years to make an African-American led superhero film despite having several black Avengers who they could have featured, and dragged their feet even longer with putting out a female-centered flick: 2019’s Captain Marvel (Boden & Fleck, 2019). (For once, DC cinema had the upper hand; they released Wonder Woman (Jenkins) in 2017). Superheroines might be more empowering than their rom-com sisters, but both genres still have a long way to go. Technology and shifting cultural norms have changed the pursuit of love, sex and romance, but none of those things are dead, and the romantic comedy shouldn't be either.
Captain Marvel (2019) is the first female centered movie Marvel has ever released.
In closing, a brief non-sequitur: In 1970, Stephen Sondheim’s Company - “a shockingly modern...still remarkably insightful...view of late-twentieth-century relationships [that]...explores the games, the angst, the loneliness and the badinage in an alternatingly brittle and heartfelt manner” - (Bloom and Vlastin, 71) premiered on Broadway. Besides being “the first ‘real’ Sondheim score” and launching a career that would shape the next half-century of American musical theater, Company was revolutionary - and relatable - because it bucked the trends of the day that had been set down by the musicals of the 1940s and 50s’. As Sophie Gilbert says in her 2016 article “An Updated Company for Single Women:”“Before the Broadway premiere of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company in April 1970, American musicals mostly had a single purpose: to bring a man and a woman together in romantic (and melodic) harmony. But Company upended this tradition, offering instead a collection of vignettes featuring marriages in different states of (un)happiness, seen from the perspective of Bobby, a flaky 35-year-old bachelor. Bobby’s ambivalence toward marriage frustrated his friends and shocked early audiences, as did the fact that he ended the show still single… so much so that Company, Rob Kendt wrote in The Los Angeles Times in 2004, “represented a full-scale assault on two venerable institutions, marriage and the musical theater.” (1). Perhaps the romantic comedy genre needs a Company (which could be considered a romantic comedy, albeit a dark one) of its own. Isn’t It Romantic (Strauss-Schulson, 2019), a send-up of romantic comedies, and, of course, the countless scholarship on the genre prove that we can deconstruct the genre….and if, we can deconstruct the genre, we can build it back up.
Works Cited
Gilbert, Sophie. “An Updated ‘Company’ For Single Women” The Atlantic. 29 November 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/company-sondheim-sexual-politics/508895/ Accessed 25 February 2019.
Krawczyk, Kathryn. “Disney Buys Fox for $71.3 Billion” The Week. https://theweek.com/speedreads/780191/disney-buys-21st-century-fox-713-billion 20 June 2018. Accessed 3 March 2019.
Sandwell, Ian. “Will Avengers: Endgame Be The Biggest Movie Of All Time?” Men’s Health. 11 February 2019. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/avengers-endgame-biggest-movie-time-142200462.html Accessed 25 February 2019.
Schwartz, Dana .“What Men Want Delivers Some Fun, But Leaves Us Wanting: EW Review” Entertainment Weekly. https://ew.com/movie-reviews/2019/02/07/what-men-want-review-taraji-p-henson/ Accessed 3 March 2019.
Yehlen, Shanna “A Brief History of Romantic Comedies.” Glamour. https://www.glamour.com/story/a-brief-history-of-romantic-co Accesssed 3 March 2019.
