Hope and Max, Mad Max
I love the drama in the kiss between prisoner Hope and Max in the 2015 action-adventure Mad Max game. After Max begrudgingly agrees to find her lost daughter (“A husk! An empty shell! You are nothing!” she screams at him when he, at first, hesitates), Hope reaches into the front seat of his car and grabs his face to kiss him. His mouth is carmine red, splotched with dry blood, and her face has a few blotchy patches of dirt, but they share a few hungry seconds before Max pushes her away, his eyes inscrutable. Eek!
What makes it unforgettable: Video game romance often feels uncanny valley to me, kind of stiff and strange, but the voice acting and art direction here manage to pull together this gut-punching kiss.
