Young lovers develop a romance only to be thwarted by love triangle or similar complications.
External disaster befalls our lovers and their surrounding society.
The external disaster helps to resolve the complications inherent in the romance, but not without a tragic price. What this formula brings about is a 3-hour film marked by an hour of bad melodrama on each end and punctuated by a middle section of intense action via digital effects. Pitt ends up falling for a newly arrived agricultural surveyor played by Cameron Diaz. Things are going just fine until Pitt loses his legs in an accident caused by a new industrial potato-picking machine. Diaz and Reeves presume that Pitt has died and spend several months mourning his loss.