Asking acclaimed filmmakers for their opinion on the superhero movie boom during interviews has almost become a trend at this point, and we can now add Steven Soderbergh to the list of directors who have very little interest in the genre - though the Kimi helmer's reasoning is definitely a little more... specific.
While chatting to The Daily Beast, Soderbergh (Oceans 11, Solaris) revealed that, while he doesn't believe superhero movies are "lower tier in any way," he simply can't envision himself writing or directing in that space because he finds the films so sexless.
“For me to understand the world and how to write or supervise the writing of the story and the characters — apart from the fact that I can bend time and defy gravity and shoot beams out of my fingers — there’s no [frick]ing,” Soderbergh explained. “Nobody’s [frick]ing! Like, I don’t know how to tell people how to behave in a world in which that is not a thing… the fantasy-spectacle universe, as far as I can tell, typically doesn’t involve a lot of [frick]ing, and also things like — who’s paying these people? Who do they work for? How does this job come to be?”
It's true that superhero movies, particularly Marvel Studios projects, have been criticized for being sexless in the past, but Chloe Zhao's Eternals did deliver the franchise's first love scene - even if it didn't exactly set pulses racing! Of course, there's only so much you can get away with when working with a PG-13 rating.
What do you guys make of Soderbergh's comments? Do you think superheroes should screw more in movies?
About The Author:
Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.