The New-Age Rom-Com Tropes That Will Reshape How We Think About Love

We have entered a new era of romantic comedies, and like any new era, this one comes with a slew of distinctions from society’s previous form, all of which descend from one major shift.


Much like the new philosophical way of thinking moved us into the Age of Enlightenment, and like the advent of the cotton gin and steam engine brought about the Industrial Revolution, society’s recent social progress has ushered us into the Rom-Comaissance — marked largely by the death of the classic rom-com tropes.


No longer will we stand for the decades-old stereotypes infiltrating the genre, the inexplicable perfections in each visual, the happy coincidences that drum every story beat. We want lighthearted love stories that we can believe in — or at least, that we can visualize glimpses of reality in. (We don’t want everything to be different — all of the needed story elements remain: the meet-cutes and romantic gestures, the not-so-realistic concepts.)


This Valentine’s Day, there really are two movies in theaters that exemplify the new age rom-com — What Males Want and Isn’t It Romantic.


In What Males Want, Taraji P. Henson gender-reversed Nancy Meyers’ What Ladies Want for a story about a high-powered sports agent struggling to be recognized for her value at work who gains the power to read the minds of the opposite sex soon after some mysterious tea along with a head injury.


And in another head injury romp, Rebel Wilson stars in Isn’t It Romantic, about a rom-com skeptic who gets stuck indoor a romantic comedy and must live by way of the story to find her way out.


Both movies take very different approaches to address the problematic tropes that we used to sweep under the rug. MTV News talked with representatives from both films to dissect the progress we visualize on the screen.


Trope No. 1: The Single, Impossibly Gorgeous Leading Lady


In both new rom-coms, we have leads who look different than the lean, button-nosed Meg Ryans and Kate Hudsons we’ve grown used to seeing in the roles.


On one side, we have Henson, a Black woman, and on the other, we have Wilson, a female who, as she noted to MTV News, looks like most girls In the United States. “The average American woman is a size 16-18, which is my size,” Wilson said.


although both stars look different than the common rom-com lead, neither movie used their looks as central story lines — they were both just girls — which was, sort of, piece of the aesthetics of seeing them these roles.


case in point, Henson’s race “was not a factor” for What Gentlemen Want director Adam Shankman. “The fact that she was a woman was key, however a woman who maintains the power that Taraji just wears so easily.”


Likewise, Isn’t It Romantic director Todd Strauss-Schulson insisted that their movie had “literally nothing” to do with Wilson’s body. “It's not a key thing,” he mentioned. “There's plenty of girls that look like her that have more than a few love in their life, and big families, and some boyfriends, and it's nothing to do with that.”


This repeated sentiment reflects a very progressive way of thinking — that we can appreciate seeing different types of girls on screen, and at the same time, we can visualize them for more than just their appearance.


and why, you could ask, did rom-coms get to this progressive place?


Well, it definitely didn’t hurt that both Henson and Wilson served as executive producers of their respective movies, meaning both ladies had a mention in how their characters (and other females in the film) were portrayed. How’s that for behind-the-scenes representation?


Trope No. 2: The Gay Best Friend


While it is definitely OK to be both gay and your best friend’s flamboyant good witch, that’s certainly not the only way to be gay — yet you could may not learn that if your only interactions with members of the LGBTQ community occurred in the world of classic romantic comedies.


Fortunately, the Rom-Comaissance has brought with it an expanded understanding of the marginalized community. Take, as an example, Josh Brener’s Brandon in What Boys Want. As Ali’s (Henson) assistant, Brandon’s primary role is to be of service to his very busy sports agent boss and, because of that, his life does seem to mostly revolve around her — a setup that could with little effort fall into the GBF trap, although doesn’t, thanks to their contemptuous boss/employee dynamic.


That wasn’t routinely the case, though, Shankman noted. Originally, Brandon was more of a “fairy godmother” to Ali — which he didn’t find to be believable. “It was problematic for me. And I was exceptionally upfront about that,” the director recalled. “I was the only gay person in the room once those discussions were happening.”


Because of his ability to speak up and his collaborators’ willingness to listen, Shankman was able to paint a more realistic picture of what he envisioned it could be like to be a gay man in a workplace characterized by its toxic masculinity and then translate that to the screen.


“He would have really desire to be there because he loves sports and because he considered in himself,” Shankman mentioned. “And so that's going to be a different sort of guy than the one who was written who was like, picking her shoes out for work.”


In other words, there can be 99 people in the room, and all you need is one behind-the-scenes representative prepared to speak out against stereotypes.


Trope No. 3: The Bedroom Blackout


One notable thing about rom-coms is that no one ever actually has sex. There really are cues to indicate that sex happens or is going to happen, however typically once things get steamy, the screen cuts to black. (Did Richard Gere’s Edward and Julia Roberts’s Vivian actually go all of the way on that piano? One can only assume.)


Well, in these new rom-coms, there’s no sexy sugarcoating.


“Women are constantly magical, sexual… It's either that or they're delicate flowers,” Shankman found — which, to filmmakers, means there’s “an possibility to do more fun storytelling.” In this case, that possibility was for more raunchy female comedy in the vein of Broad City or PEN15 however not quite so uncensored.


In one scene, Henson’s Ali is a maniac during bed with love interest Will (Aldis Hodge) — she gets bug-eyed and basically uses him as a sex doll. Her wild behavior only becomes funnier once Ali can read Will’s thoughts later on. “While we were shooting it, I was laughing so hard because I had never saw a movie where a woman was represented as being terrible in bed,” Shankman said.


Isn’t It Romantic hits that nail right on the head immediately after Wilson’s Natalie wakes up soon after, apparently, a night with love interest Blake (Liam Hemsworth). Blake is feeling particularly bright soon after a night of passion, although Natalie keeps it completely real, saying that they didn’t actually have sex and their lives just cut to the next morning. It turns out, every time Natalie tries to initiate sex, life cuts it out.


That sort of blatant comedy is present during the movie, which Strauss-Schulson hoped would help charm the viewers. “The movie wants to be so fun and funny that you open up to it,” he mentioned. “So at the end any time feeling comes at you, it doesn't have anything to penetrate. It just sort of catches you.”


Which leads us to one final, very crucial trope of the past.


Trope No. 4: A male Will Complete You


To prepare for Isn’t It Romantic, Strauss-Schulson spent 14 days watching every rom-com made between 1988 and 2007, and he found several patterns. Crazy closets, running to stop a wedding, shellfish and categorizing Chinese food from Mr. Wong’s, half-moon windows, and “so several plants in places that plants do not actually belong.”


However one thing irked him the most — the opinion that “another person is holding the key to love for you in your life. That another person can complete you. That another person will make whole. And in case you just swipe right enough times that loneliness and sadness and isolation will be vanquished from your life,” he said.


Strauss-Schulson did not hope to perpetuate that harsh narrative; he wants you to leave the theater — single or not — knowing that you are already complete and you also habitually have been. “If you could accept yourself, you could love yourself so you could be open to yourself, then you could be open to the world, and suddenly you could invite love in,” he mentioned. “That's what we attempted to do at the end of this, at the end of this movie, is to tell that story. A rom-com about falling in love with yourself.”


And in a true sign that we’re in the midst of a movement, Shankman had the exact same idea for What Boys Want, telling collaborators earlier into his involvement that he “will not make a movie about a woman who's made whole by the passion of a man” — alternatively presenting a story about “developing a trustworthy relationship with yourself and understanding your own power, sense of self-worth, and your own value.”


It’s this idea that’s key to the Rom-Comaissance — that you, or I, or anyone can find love, if only we look within ourselves. That’s where we’ll find our real happily ever afters.