Romance is part of the essential fabric of the comic book movie. Where would Christopher Reeve’s Superman have been without Margot Kidder’s vivacious Lois Lane in the Richard Donner and Richard Lester films – the flawed, human counterweight to the tedious perfection of everyone’s favorite big blue alien boy scout? Would the early Sam Raimi Spider-Man films have flourished without Kirsten Dunst’s effervescent Mary Jane Watson to inspire our web-slinging crimefighter into acts of heroism on the streets of Manhattan, to remind us that Peter Parker is just an ordinary teenager prone to falling in love with the girl next door when he’s not taking down the bad guys?

These movies take their cue from the comic books, which have always imagined their (usually male) costumed titans requiring the support of a (usually female) love interest in order to save the world. Behind every great superman, there stands a great woman.

But maybe it’s time to push the envelope, to twist the trope into new forms, because it’s no longer working in an era when we may be about to see a first female president in the Oval Office. There are many excellent aspects to Doctor Strange, from Benedict Cumberbatch’s charismatic performance in the lead to the movie’s cerebellum-twisting special effects – but Rachel McAdams’ Christine Palmer really cannot be counted as one of them, and this is an area in which Hollywood screenwriters have been failing miserably for way too long.

From the first moment we see her, Palmer is a one-woman Bechdel test. She exists only to tell us more about Strange himself, his ability to cope with the horror of losing his surgeon’s skills after suffering a hideous car accident (early on), his wit and enduring ability to love (later in the film). We know little or nothing about this latest addition to the ranks of superhero love-interest types beyond her obvious attraction to the movie’s hero and her place of work, the hospital where Strange also plies his trade. So gossamer-thin is her storyline that were the future sorcerer supreme not to exist, we can imagine Palmer simply folding in on herself like the shifting cityscapes of Doctor Strange’s mystical parallel dimensions.

It’s a great pity – Scott Derrickson’s movie is in many ways one of the great superhero origin stories – but Doctor Strange looks like a throwback to the treatment of female characters in the early Iron Man movies, when Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts came across as little more than Robert Downey Jr’s housemaid. Potts was elevated to the role of Stark Industries CEO by the time we last saw her on screen, in Iron Man 3, but has since been largely written out of the Marvel universe.

Palmer’s problem, one that she shares with most other superhero love interests, is that she doesn’t have superhuman abilities. Her only purpose, then, is as a grounding force to keep Strange’s head from accidentally spinning off his shoulders under the weight of all the heavy psychedelic shit he’s being fed by Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One and her cronies.

But at least Marvel hasn’t stripped all the superpowers from a character who previously retained them, as 20th Century Fox did with Deadpool’s girlfriend Vanessa Carlysle in the potty-mouthed mutant’s recent big-screen debut. Because if you read the comics, Vanessa is a very different creature: a blue-hued, shapeshifting mutant so powerful that she can even mimic other superheroes’ abilities.

Not in the movie, though. It’s hard to criticize Morena Baccarin, who more than held her own with Ryan Reynolds’ scarred antihero for deadpan badinage and saucy bedroom oneupmanship. But once again a potentially intriguing female comic book player was downgraded to common or garden love-interest status. Perhaps Baccarin will get powered up in the sequel, as the film-makers have hinted, but don’t bet on it.

If being superpowered is what gets you screen time and a little extra attention from the script polisher, there are plenty of comic book paramours due an upgrade. Mary Jane Watson, soon to make her debut in the Marvel universe in next year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, has appeared as Spider-Woman in non-mainstream versions of the comics, while Pepper Potts has fought bad guys under the guise of Rescue while wearing one of Tony Stark’s spare suits. Another famous love interest, Jane Foster, has even taken over the mantle of Thor himself in the comics. In the movies, by contrast, she’s been written out altogether, a startling decision by Disney/Marvel given the role has been played by Oscar winner Natalie Portman.

To be fair, studios are beginning to place female superheroes front and centre. Marvel debuts Captain Marvel, its first female-led comic book flick, in 2018, and will follow later that same year with Ant-Man and the Wasp (with Evangeline Lilly stepping up to co-headline alongside Paul Rudd as the size-shifting superhero duo). There is even talk over at Warner Bros of a Margot Robbie-led Harley Quinn solo outing in the new DC Expanded Universe, presumably to try to undo some of the nasty work carried out by the deeply misogynistic Suicide Squad.

But it’s Warner Bros’ Wonder Woman that might offer a better clue to where we really stand. The trailers for Patty Jenkins’ film have placed Israeli actor Gal Gadot front and centre as the battling Amazonian princess. But can anyone imagine Chris Pine, a Hollywood A-lister if there ever was one, truly playing second fiddle to a relative unknown as her perennial love interest, the prosaically monikered Steve Trevor? If the part is as insubstantially written as the one handed to poor McAdams, I’ll eat my Superman pyjamas.