The Marvels revives a ridiculous old ’80s trope — and almost redeems it

polygon.com:

There’s a particular disreputable character type that used to be all over the thriller genre, but that we don’t see much in media anymore — at least, not until The Marvels, which summons it back from the grave, howling all the way. It’s one of the movie’s worst, most ludicrous moments — a beat that’s meant to feel like an emotional crisis, and lands more as cheap manipulation. But at the same time, The Marvels eventually makes it meaningful and even touching, in a slapdash sort of way.

Back in the ’90s, I started thinking of this character as the John Grisham Whiny Wife, because I saw it so often in Grisham’s work — though it popped up a lot back then, in books and films and TV, and even in Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Picture the protagonist, deep in the action of some stressful, life-defining heroic business: exposing the Mafia, infiltrating the Klan, psychoanalyzing a murderous antihero. Now picture a particularly important person in the protagonist’s life nagging them to knock off all that heroism, or scolding them for getting so deep into it in the first place.

Nobody likes this character. Nobody is meant to. The JGWW character — which could be the protagonist’s husband, sibling, parent, child, or friend, but is usually a wife or girlfriend — only exists as a road bump to the story’s action, to the exciting bits the audience wants the hero to get on with. A JGWW is always faithless: They don’t believe in the hero’s capabilities or choices. A JGWW is always selfish: They prioritize themselves (and maybe their kids) over the hero’s Big Important Work. A JGWW is almost always boring: They’re rarely drawn well, or characterized with any empathy. They’re minor villains in any story where they appear, and they only exist to