A good romance won't hurt, that's for sure. But does it mean every movie needs a love story? There are a lot of movie genres outside romance; there's action, mystery, horror, sci-fi, comedy, and more. However, do you realize under genres besides romance, some movies will have a little bit of romance incorporated into the plot?
Take a look at the Jurassic World franchise in 2015, where the animal expert character played by Chris Pratt is involved in a romance later on with the park manager played by Bryce Dallas Howard. Another example is The Lord of the Rings a high fantasy story which shows the epic battles between mythical creatures, yet, we could enjoy a significant screen time dedicated to the love story between Aragorn and Arwen. It makes me wonder, why romance is always present even in movies whose plot doesn't center around a love story among the main characters?
Perhaps, the simple reason is that love is something that everyone can understand and empathize with. People have been involved in or long for romance, making it easy to resonate with, later it became a crucial attribute for global filmmakers to feature it in their movies.
Not every movie or tv show has romance in it yet sometimes a glimpse of unnecessary romance is pushed into the plot, just like the short kiss between Avenger's Steve Rogers and S.H.I.E.L.D secret agent; Sharon Carter in Captain America: Civil War. It made some people raise their eyebrows for the sudden and abrupt romantic escalation between the two, plus adding the fact that he was kissing the niece of his past love interest, Peggy Carter, made it more questionable. There's a phrase used to explain this phenomenon, namely token romance.
Token romance depicted a situation in which a romantic subplot is pinned onto a movie with little relation to the overall story. When talking about token romance, it usually expresses a movie that the romance subplot feels shallow and underdeveloped, hence existing (only) because the audience expects the main character to enroll in a healthy love life. It doesn't even boost the quality of the flow of the story because it is often bland, forgettable, or even ignored.
It just felt obligatory to stamp a romance somewhere, even though it could work and affect the plot a lot in some cases like Tokyo and Rio in the Money Heist series, or the subtle ones like Natasha and Bruce in the Avengers movies. In the end, maybe it has something to do with entrancing audiences, hence making it more appealing to see and ensuring the profitability of the film. We would never know.
(HAI/MEL)