Quote Originally Posted by Confuzzled View Post
You're right. Those paper thin love interests are the bane of the MCU films. Compare them to the depiction of Mary Jane in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films, a fully realized character with her own ambitions, subplots, flaws and strengths. Hopefully DC goes the MJ route with their movie love interests rather than the MCU route.

From the sounds of things so far, Mera seems to be elevated to almost a costar position in the Aquaman solo. And she will also get to kick ass in Justice League which is cool.
Everyone goes on about the one-dimensional villains, but the one-dimensional love interests are the other major weakness of the MCU. Peggy Carter did get to shine, but she had her own show for two seasons so that played more of a part in this than her appearance in First Avenger and cameos in Winter Soldier and Ant-Man.

For all the damsel in distress moments MJ had, she still had her own storyline and development separate from Peter and Spider-Man.

Or Gwen Stacey in Amazing Spider-Man. She plays an active role in the climax, independently making the decision to go in and risk her life to make the antidote. She is clever enough to work at Oscorp and displays this knowledge, so it's not an informed trait. It's not quite as big as MJ in the Raimi films, since that was only two movies, the second of which was leading up to her death, but it's still far better than most of the MCU love interests.