I have a great movie script idea. A successful man who’s in a happy relationship with a good-looking woman abandons his lucrative university career (and said woman) and becomes a fugitive from justice with a 40-to-45 year old, fairly ordinary-looking woman who turns into a 10’ green monster when she gets mad. Her worst habit when she has an “episode” is throwing Humvees into helicopters. Which is kinda messy.

The fugitive lovers stay in crappy hotels and he gives her haircuts, because she can’t have sex, lest she morph into the monster. This is because he needs to take care of her and help her out. Plus he Still Loves Her, Deep Down Inside. They are old flames. In her monster-state she once hurt him so badly he nearly didn’t recover, then abandoned him for years and years.

Does this sound like the next summer blockbuster to you? Hold on, I think I hear Spielberg knocking at the front door.

As a superhero movie (bad pun alert) this would never fly. It’s preposterous on its face. A man giving up everything in a relationship—plus risking life imprisonment or death--and getting precisely nothing back? Not even sex? And at the end, his darling goes off on a yoga retreat, and mails him a cuff link or something, as a token of her undying esteem?

Reverse the genders of the lead characters and I’ve summarized for you the new "Incredible Hulk" movie.

I didn’t say it’s not a romantic movie. It’s a terribly romantic movie. My heart-strings were wrapped around my popcorn bucket twice. Ed Norton and Liv Tyler have oodles of sexual chemistry, and not just in the science lab. What woman has not wanted to be Liv’s character, Dr. Betty Ross, and become a fugitive with a guy like Ed Norton's Bruce Banner? I’d be all over it. I have a weakness for emotionally crippled men anyway, but give me a commitment-phobic Jeckyll-and-Hyde wreck with such a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder that the shower freaks him out, and I’d abandon everything for him and take it out on the lam. Assuming, like Ed, he had a personal trainer.

And women can relate to the story line so well, except for the boring, deafening 20 minutes toward the end when CGI monsters throw cars at each other. We’ve all been in uncivilized surroundings and put our hand on the knee of a glowering monster, and cooed in our most loving, supportive tone: “Okay. I made you a sandwich and a beer. NOW can I have the remote control?

Liv-as-Betty has father issues, conveniently enough. William Hurt portrays her father, sociopathic General Ross. Hurt’s general is the next best thing to Stalin and has carte blanche in the name of Homeland Security to unleash the government’s entire stockpile of weapons—including top secret ones in R&D—not just on American soil, but in crowded cities and on college campuses. The Crazy Father angle, I assume, is meant to lend some credence to Betty’s love affair with Bruce Banner, if that is what you call it. Daddy can’t care about anything except winning, so our heroine overcompensates and cares way too much about a man who offers her nothing except a chance to save him from himself. Hulk needs a mother, basically.

Besides, it’s important for American move superheroes to have Beautiful Women Waiting Around. You’ve got your cool tools (well, in the Hulk’s case, you have only a fitness watch and stretchy pants, but most superheroes have cool tools), you’ve got your superpowers, you’ve got your neuroses, and you’ve got your woman in limbo, holding her heart in reserve, just in case you ever get your act together. Rachel left Batman to rebuild Wayne Manor with assurances that she’d be hopefully waiting. ("Batman Begins," 2005). Superman flew off and left Lois Lane hopefully waiting, and also a single mother ("Superman Returns," 2006). Spiderman swung off and left Mary Jo hopefully waiting ("Spidey I", "Spidey Swings Again II," "Spidey Goes Emo III", 2002, '04, '07).

So where does feminism come in? It enables the women to be very strong while they wait and to have really impeccable tailoring on their business clothes. New York City Assistant DA and Batman's Hot Babe Rachel Dawes, played by Katie Holmes, even evidently burned her bra before the end of "Batman Begins."

These superhero leading ladies all have their modern careers, of course--Lois as a reporter, Rachel as a district attorney, Mary Jo as an actress, Betty as a science prof. But their main job on film is waiting for and loving their beloved monsters. They are on hold, they are resigned to being abandoned, and they have an unwritten contract with their freak-lovers, that a) you will rescue me physically, if some partial or entire CGI creation climbs a building with me in the rain, and b) I will rescue you emotionally and sometimes even sexually by re-affirming my commitment to you and dropping my job/boyfriend/identity at a moment’s notice. Just let me know when you want to go for a flight, or take a spin in the Batmobile, or decompress in a cave, all green and wearing rags. Give me a call, a bellow, a bat-signal. I’ll be right there, big boy.

Whose adolescent, retrograde fantasy is this, exactly? I’m sorry to confess that, as enlightened and liberated as I am, it’s mine. That’s why I bought the ticket.