Hated Tropes
(Hated)You know this cute couple we spend the last movie developing?Yeah,they broke up off-screen
John and Lori-Ted 2
Sam and Mikaela-Transformers 3
Wade and Vanessa-Deadpool and Wolverine(yeah,i know the ending implies they get back,but it just begs the question what was even the point,even Morena Baccarin Vanessa actress complained about how her character was sidelined)
Okay, I know high school love doesn’t usually last in the real world. But these are dog people, with a pet cat. This kid pulled off like 14 felonies, danced with Powerline, moved, had a blowout fight with his dad, and did so much for her and then… pop, she’s gone. If you were a kid when that movie came out, it was important to you.
The Deadpool example annoyed me soo much. The plot would not change in any significant way if they were together. He'd still have to save the universe.
The literal only change would be that Logan wouldn’t use his failing relationship as an insult in his rant. Though he could’ve maybe emphasized that he doesn’t understand why even a “goddamn stripper” would ever want to be around his pathetic self.
It would still be an insult both at him, and at her.
I think they did it because one of Deadpool's main story characteristics is that things go bad for him. He's supposed to be the fuck up wild card compared to Logan who is the old legend. Harder to write that if he's been in a happy stable relationship for years and Logan is just an old bitter loner.
i thought it was just another meta joke, since the film is a joke about comics (though I guess more so comic movies) and a common thing in comics are relationships and breakups that only exist to push plot. the only reason they broke up is for the "please hire me for the avengers" joke, otherwise its irrelevant and can be cut out completely without hurting the movie at all. I don't think anyone would even question Wade digging up Logan and saving the universe for fun.
cynical side of me thinks Fox wanted it cut to save money and this was their compromise to save her job.
I watched the first Star Trek movie he directed and I thought it was fine, granted never watch any Star Trek shows at all, what made those movies bad for you?
Kirk being made captain out of nowhere makes no sense. Nero going missing for such a long period of time, even with the deleted scenes no way a ship that powerful gets captured by the Klingon’s. The idea of transwarp breaks the universe. Not to mention that even though it’s alternate timeline, Vulcan has no moon.
They did'nt really break up so much as they were just separated because Leia was busy with the Resistance and Han was trying to run away from his truama; I'm not aware of a single source that says they were not still married, and the film itself makes it clear their still very much in love.
Yeah. They just both got a bit traumatized by their son falling to the dark side. The film still makes it very clear that Han and Leia were both still very much in love with each other. Just that they both bury themselves in other things to deal with Ben becoming Kylo Ren. Han going back to doing smuggling and other dangerous jobs because of the thrill of it. And Leia leading the Resistance after her political career got destroyed by the public reveal of her being Vader's daughter
Ellie and Alan in Jurassic Park. Debate still rages over whether or not they're an official couple in that movie, but c'mon - they're all cuddly and goo-goo eyed with each other all the time, they're talking about having kids, Alan even straight up tells Ian that he and Ellie are an item. You can't convince me otherwise.
And yet for some reason, they're split up in Jurassic Park III because suddenly Alan changed his mind back and didn't want kids after all? It was a contrived excuse to keep Ellie out of the action, and it showed 😑
Home with the kids during the adventure in the 3rd movie doesn't mean stay at home mom with no job. Just home instead of helping Alan with the current dinosaur crisis.
The military already was quarantining the island and we know INGEN satellites have been monitoring the island from JP2. So the military launches a rescue mission to get the plane survivors while tracking them to the beach (they already tracked them to the beach in the movie so that isn't really a change).
Or it could be as simple as Ellie calling Hammond who in turn calls the State Department.
Yes. But in Jurassic World 3 she tells Alan she’s divorced and the kids are off at college. Honestly their only purpose in that movie is to have three way sexual tension with Jeff Goldblum and get back together.
I came here for this and have been bitter since I was a child. Never watched any of the sequels because my first reaction was, "Wait, why isn't the second one following Dr. Grant? He was the main character?" And then my next reaction was "WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY BROKE UP?!"
Don't get me started on completely ignoring his character arc from the film and the absurdity of a paleobotanist giving up her career to write children's books. Dominion gets them back together, I guess, but it doesn't get credit from me because they never should have been broken up at all.
Fuck, I forgot Ellie is no longer a paleobotanist in Jurassic Park III! Why did they have her give that up just because she has a toddler, she can’t be a professor/writing instead of away on dig sites?! It’s like the film makers took away her science-based job and gave her one more nurturing and humanities-based so she’d be “acceptably feminine”… but she’s still not a love interest?!
Like you, I’m forever mad about splitting up Allie and Ellie, a couple I didn’t realize watching as a kid appealed to me because I’m demisexual: here I was seeing two adults (Laura Dern was 24 but Ellie definitely isn’t) who clearly started as friends and colleagues before getting romantic, but they’re not all over each other and she’s not sexualized, it’s very “brainy is the new sexy” for both of them.
Most of the romantic relationships in media aimed at kids in the ‘90s had a big sexual dimorphism element: huge guy and tiny girl, athlete/warrior and princess or geek and hot popular girl, and they fall for each other mostly based on looks, the chase/obstacles takes most of the movie with the happily ever after/the issues of being in an actual relationship is not shown because the story is “over”, etc… Starting in medias res with Alan and Ellie working alongside each other and goodnaturedly discussing their differing world views instead of a “slap slap kiss kiss dynamic” = chemistry, had a positive impact on me. I had to pretend I was interested in certain boys and celebrities so other girls would stop asking. It took until I was at least 30 before I realized “oh I need to get to know someone really well to feel attraction, that’s why love at first sight felt so alien to me”.
I might be misremembering but I’m pretty sure the actress for Ellie was blacklisted after playing a lesbian in the Ellen sitcom. That might be why her role was reduced.
Dunno about that. It was mostly due to Joe Johnston not liking them as a couple, and only wanting Laura Dern to have a less involved role, script wise.
Innit? Even crazier is that its only because who the writers were that Dern even came back for the small cameo. She had previously worked with them and they wrote her cameo in becuase of it.
Even so, they could've had it where they weren't spilt up and it wouldn't have changed the plot much. Have Alan just be like "Hey honey, this couple is paying me a fortune to go to this island, be back!".
You know that woman we've been teasing about for 9 seasons who is supposed to be THE ONE for our main character? She shows up in the last season.
And you know how despite having very little screen time in the last season, she still manages to live up to the hype that has been built up over 9 seasons? Yeah, she dies in the end.
“And, kids, that’s how I banged a lot of women and your Aunt Robin before I met your mother. Ahh. Robin. You know it was so good that 20 years later I still think about it. In fact; would you mind if I tried with her again? Her and Uncle Barney divorced recently so I really want to shoot my shot.”
Just a tiny nitpick, the divorce wasn't recent, it happened before the T&T's son was even born. But I agree wholeheartedly with the rest of the comment and with how insane the ending was.
And it was SUCH a waste of an amazing actress. I was shocked by how incredible her acting was in The Penguin.
They had a diamond in their hands and did nothing with it. Her death would've hit so much harder if they'd kept her around for at least half a season too.
You can really tell the ending was set in stone around the 2nd season, when they filmed the kids reactions. It made sense for the direction the series was going around that time, but the rest of the series very much was not written with that ending in mind.
The obvious answer to the problem of the teen actors growing up between seasons 1 and 9 is to just LET IT HAPPEN. In the series finale cut to them as young adults and the joke is that it’s taken dad 9 years, on and off, to tell them about the path to meeting their mother, and it wasn’t in one or two days back in 2005. Like once a week after dinner he sits them down and tells them another story about his young adulthood. The adult kids roll their eyes all “FINALLY, Jesus Christ, Dad!”
The series finishes with the “edited to be actually good” ending of Ted and Tracy under the yellow umbrella, and no scene of her dying of Ali McGraw Disease where she looks radiant in a hospital bed (but we don’t even know what’s wrong with her, we just have to assume cancer). Maybe Tracy WAS sick for many years, but the twist is that she comes home from the hospital on the last night of the story reveal to tell them she has a surprise, she didn’t want to get their hopes up, but the doctor says she’s officially hit the five year mark of cancer-free.
Oh, and Barney and Robin don’t get divorced and waste our time spending an entire damn season on their relationship just to have it fall apart in a few flash forward scenes. This is why I’ve never rewatched a series I loved, the ending made it seem like none of this was worth it!
Man. The show should have ended at the train station when Ted met Tracey. End scene. Roll credits. Perfect ending. No extra nonsense. 10/10 finale that everyone could enjoy.
HIMYM should’ve probably only gone on for 5/6 seasons. Season 7 is where it was clear the writers thought they’d have wrapped things up by now and ran out of ideas.
I think it was a flaw in the last season that they had to write “the mother” as “worth it”, but Christine Milotti was too charismatic and they wrote her character as too perfect.
Ted MOSTLY sucked.
He was whiny and snooty and self-centered and flip flopped and never seemed to care that much about women he dated.
Looking at all of the women he dated and how he picked apart every flaw they had and every minor incompatibility, the only woman he ever COULD have worked out with is a complete blank slate with a brain injury.
So having the mother be revealed at the end as a confident, funny, smart, easy going chick with no red flags?
She was way too perfect for Ted.
There’s no way she would have put up with him.
Obviously they wrote her as Ted’s exact “dream girl”. But she was written as too good of a person for him.
That character should have been written as the perfect one who “got away” because Ted screwed it up, like he always does.
I think a better ending (if they had to make Tracy so amazing) would have been Ted admitting to his kids that their mom was perfect and they got a divorce, and he still misses her and regrets screwing it up.
And then Tracy is out there, married to a good guy, or being a single mom and enjoying her career, and Ted realizing all of his flaws and how he’s chocked out every good relationship he ever had a chance at, with his bad personality.
Going back to Robin AGAIN made sense for Ted. He never learns.
I just wanted Vanessa to matter and actually get to be Copycat at some point instead of just a plot device. One of my biggest gripes with the Deadpool movies.
Pitch perfect 3. Becca and Jessie. Even worse, the movie just had to say Jessie had already moved on to a new girlfriend and is now living together. And all just because the actor wasn't available.
OMG, this!! I just pretend the third movie never existed, i hated so much this (little and unecessary) plot 🙄
(well, the part 3 in general sucks for me but mainly this part)
I watched this recently and was shocked at how much they overturned every message and moral from the first one!! The first movie ended w Gracie accepting that she can be feminine and pretty and still be badass. The second movie seems to make the point that that was silly, femininity is silly, and she has to let go of it to become badass again!
Personally, it didn't bother me that they didn't end up together; what bothered me was the decision to turn her into a "bad person" to justify the breakup.
In Cobra Kai they brought her back and she gives her version of events which basically says that Daniel was just insanely jealous over nothing and a ldr didnt work for them
Thor and Jane Foster (between Avengers Age of Ultron and Thor Ragnarok), and Tony Stark and Pepper Potts (also took a relationship break between AoU and Civil War, but were back together in Spiderman Homecoming)
Tony and Pepper is one of the great failings of the MCU. They break up (Civil War), get back together (Homecoming), get engaged, get married (Infinity War), and have a child (Endgame)... LITERALLY ALL OFF SCREEN
Karate Kid 2. A big chunk of the first movie was setting up their romance and then in the second movie it goes "Yeah, she crashed my car and started dating a new guy. Anyway what's up with you?"
Is it realistic? Yeah probably, but cmon man, you had a perfect ending for the show that you absolutely slaughtered so we could have two fifty somethings getting up to the same shenanigans they were when the show originally ended fifteen years prior
I haven't gotten past the first episode of the revival because this annoyed me so much
I know it's petty, and I've heard the revival is pretty good overall...But, dammit, I already spent 8 seasons watching the writers find convoluted ways to fumble that relationship before they got a perfect ending, I can't do it again
I don’t know why Bill Lawrence has such a hard on for them being split. Instead of getting stories about them navigating their marriage, we skip all of it just to get the same shit again for the fourth time.
And I’m enjoying the revival series, especially this latest season, but it’s just one of many choices that are a little baffling. Like Turk had that powerful scene at the end of the first episode last season where you can see he’s severely depressed, and it’s literally never mentioned again.
I think Bill Lawrence has given us some great television, but he’s also just a fucking bozo.
Yeah I was just complaining to my husband that I wanted to watch the revival but I'm still bummed they brought it back only to split them up. You can have conflict and interesting storylines but still have them (and Carla/turk) married.
Nathan Drake and Elena fisher at the end of Uncharted 2. They are back together by the end of 3 but for most of 3 she’s just not mentioned until you run into her.
IMO it is actually well done in 3, as it is hinted at multiple times and the reason for their separation (and subsequent reconciliation) are significant parts of the story and are catalysts for the biggest development Nate as a character gets throughout the series.
Spoiler (aka Stephanie Brown) and Robin (aka Tim Drake) broke up in 2021 off-page after years of them finally making things work. The in-universe reason as far as I am aware is unknown. The meta reason is because the writers at DC Comics wanted to make Tim part of the LGBT community by having him be bi, and to do this they broke the couple up off-page and had him start dating this dude named Bernard who is about as interesting as a paper weight.
This is so confusing to me because bi men can still date women?? Like they could have just done an arc where he admitted to his girlfriend that he was bi and she accepted him, it would still be cool and inclusive
But that's the thing, you're thinking about ACTUAL bi, they're thinking in THEIR version of bi which is "just gay". For a lot of writers (who are often not bi themselves), they think being bi is just being gay but dated a girl once. (Hell, why do you think that iceman, the most obvious person to be bi, was made gay?)
Genuinely would adore this, seeing him struggling and worrying about her leaving bc of it for her to just be like "okay? Men can be pretty but that doesnt change our relationship"
In Mickey's Twice upon a Christmas, Max has a new girlfriend named Mona that he's taking home for Christmas to meet his dad. According to some behind the scenes info, Mona was supposed to be Roxanne, but allegedly her long hair was too hard to animate in 3D at time, so they just turned her into a new character. They even had Roxanne's VA, Kellie Martin, voice Mona, which is a little like salt in the wound imo.
I wouldn’t have even minded the split if they said something like “he wasn’t ready for the royal treatment” and had him leave because of the pressures of Mia’s princess duties or publicity or whatever. Like sure it’s fine they can just be friends but they could have said more to give it more life and connection to the first film.
Laurel from Men In Black is the first that comes to mind. Her only mention in the second film is an offhand comment that Will Smith's character fired her from the MIB and wiped her memory
Peter and Dana broke up off camera in the five years between Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2. Obviously it was done so they could rehash the same dynamic they had in the first movie, but at least it kind of makes sense that Peter Venkman would be a difficult person to have a stable relationship with.
The original plan was for Oscar to be Peter and Dana's kid, but Murray chimed in and felt this created an imbalance in the story, placing too much emphasis on Peter and Dana's relationship with the child rather than the Ghostbusters and their character dynamics
I do think the film is a lot more fun with the dynamic of Oscar being Dana’s son so Venkman’s interactions and concern for the child aren’t strictly paternal.
The 4th book in the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy series spends a decent chunk of time introducing fenchurch a new love interest for main character arthur dent
The start of the next book literally deletes her from reality
I mean, it deals with Arthur’s acceptance of his fate, which is okay, but I prefer the radio show version because at the last second before the Vogons and the evil Guide 2.0 can destroy them, the Babel Fish deus ex machinas Arthur and co. through a space time portal to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where Fenchurch (Arthur’s love) has been working, waiting for Arthur. They then go flying together and it’s a happy ending.
Not that I actually care about these movies but the whole point of the first movie was Paul trying to impress this woman named Amy, which he does by saving her from a terrorist group at the mall. Though in the second movie, I believe they divorce within not even the first five minutes of the movie.
I also hate how they do it too. The whole first movie they are building a respect and appreciation for each other and in the 2nd one they try to make it a joke at Pauls expense like “she realized how revolting I am and left”
I always hated how in Paul Blart Mall Cop they have Paul get with his dream woman and then in the sequel it’s revealed they got a divorce/broke up. Made me hate the second movie that much more.
Newt and Tina from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them. So cute and the first movie was so charming. But the second movie was easily the most disappointing and pathetic sequel I've experienced, ever, so...
All I remember about the sequel was Johnny Depp taking a massive bong rip and showing everyone WWII with his smoke, and that was the last time I ever interacted with a Harry Potter property.
Not only that but the implication that Johnny Depp knew that WWII (including the Holocaust) was going to happen, and that the wizarding community knew and did nothing about it.
Wade and Vanessa is a weird one because I feel like if they actually tried they could make a good movie with them both in it but that they prefer to just use her as a bland mission objective. Wade is determined to do the film plot because he has to rescue her from the villain/resurrect her/save his universe so she will still exist.
It's both sad and funny to me that vanessa was just collecting cliches over the trillogie! Damsel in distress in 1, fridged in 2 and the off screen breakup in 3!
And in that Christmas special thing, the actor he kidnapped (don't know what his name was) even directly called out that it's fucked up that they fridged her in Deadpool 2, and still they did it again.
Raven and Devon from That’s So Raven breaking up in the reboot pissed me off so bad. I know staying together with your high school sweetheart is unlikely but they had already gone through enough that I felt they could handle an adult relationship. Legit one of my few endgame ships and I’ll never get over it.
Generally writers are lazy when it comes to romance. They'll write everything leading up to the coupling, but they don't have the slightest idea what a happy couple looks like. They often say a happy couple is boring to excuse it, but they just don't know what to do with them afterwards. The problem is they have a hard time to imagine the romantic lead as a character in their own right.
It's a (copout) line of thinking that drama and conflict are story, and the only real conflict in a relationship is in achieving one. Lazy writers who don't want to write a couple as a couple, either tackling a problem together or coming into conflict with each other without one simply being a bad guy
1000% Truly one of the best fictional couples of all time and an excellent proof that you can have a compelling and engaging story without adding in romantic relationship drama or constant breakups.
And further proof with the third movie that I think most fans usually deny the existence of, because they added in relationship troubles and that movie fucking sucked.
"If we get Seven seasons then we're able to tell the whole story" Seven seasons later
"Yikes we gonna end with Sequel Bait with nothing actually really tied up...
Oh and remember the super popular Fan Theory about a Character from S1 that I've been denying forever? It's actually true. K bye"
Honestly, what makes it even worse to me is the fact that if you keep track of the timeline of events, they’ve only been in a relationship for around two months (and have known each other for not much longer) or so prior to her leaving. And when she comes back the series acts like they’re freaking soulmates.
I know this is a kids show and all but, but it’s really hard to take the relationship seriously in that regard
In Paul Blart 2 we find out that Amy left him a week into their marriage, which is itself a huge bummer because the entire plot of the first movie was about his struggle to find happiness and acceptance in people who don't respect him.
They were going through seemingly a rough patch where they were giving each other Space in Avengers Civil war but we just get a one off lien about it and that’s it
I think its because at that point they had no contract for her and weren't sure she would return. It also very very lightly builds upon the story ending of Iron Man 3 by showing the consequences of him going back into the deep end of being iron man.
Alan and Ellie in Jurassic Park 3, they had Alan get over his dislike of kids in the first movie as he steps up, only for them to break up between movies. The one thing that Dominion did right was bringing them back together.
I think they were slowly building up them getting back together at least since 4 and 5 were specifically focused on John mending things with each of his children.
This happens in some books as well. Saxon chronicles or Sharpe by Bernard Cornwell for example. The plot usually goes love interest from last book is dead or dumped main character between books. Main character finds a new love interest. Love interest is somehow in the middle or near a historical battle. Main character participates in the historical battle to save love interest.
Which is kind of pointless as both Uthred of Bebbanburg and Sharpe have reasons to fight besides trying to save love interests. Like, for Sharpe it's his whole profession, it's what he's paid for, to fight for the UK.
The first time I saw Bernard Cornwell doing this was in the Grail Quest series and it was jarring. You spend the first two books with the main character and love interest , building their relationship and so on, just for the third book be : well, she got on with someone else. Now main character is interested in a new character who's a heretical witch. And through this book he'll also start to dislike his BFF the Scottish warrior. And in the end everybody dies of the plague.
They only did that because the actress aged normally and they didn't want to suggest that someone like Tom Cruise would ever be with an average person.
I appreciate they at least cast someone age appropriate as his love interest, though, instead of like, having him hook up with Monica Barbaro's character or something.
It's funny that they keep coming back to this, because the whole reason their first relationship ended so quick in season one of the original run is because the writers didn't want the show to get bogged down in the "will they or won't they" relationship drama.
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u/Joeybfast 4d ago
Max and Roxanne:
Okay, I know high school love doesn’t usually last in the real world. But these are dog people, with a pet cat. This kid pulled off like 14 felonies, danced with Powerline, moved, had a blowout fight with his dad, and did so much for her and then… pop, she’s gone. If you were a kid when that movie came out, it was important to you.