James Gunn doesn’t take kindly when major auteurs speak ill of superhero movies. After all, he’s made a few of them. In the past, he’s repeatedly clapped back at no less than Martin Scorsese, the king of comic book movie critics. But he had a more gentle response when Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh claimed that the genre has a despairing dearth of sex.
In a recent interview with The Daily Beast, Soderbergh was asked if he — brains behind the Ocean’s and Magic Mike movies — was ever approached to do, say, a Marvel movie. He said he wasn’t, and that even if he was he wouldn’t know what to do with them. Not only is he not sure how to handle their more outlandish aspects, he pointed out that “there’s no f*cking. Nobody’s f*cking! Like, I don’t know how to tell people how to behave in a world in which that is not a thing.”
Not quite, Gunn wrote the following day. In a post featuring images from last year’s The Suicide Squad and the new show Peacemaker, showing superheroes in compromising positions, he wrote, “With all due respect, Steven Soderbergh, some people are f*cking.”
Me & Zack Snyder & Richard Donner & Chloe Zhao & Tim Miller off the top of my head. But, to Soderbergh’s credit, sex seems to be nonexistent in many comic book films, so it’s not like his statement is groundless. https://t.co/PDMsQvOZXx
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) February 8, 2022
Gunn pointed to the other directors who’ve made superhero movies featuring shtupping. Zack Snyder (Watchmen), Tim Miller (Deadpool), and Chloe Zhao (Eternals) all feature on-screen boudoir antics. Some of them are even R-rated. (He also cited Richard Donner, whose Superman: The Movie invented the serious comic book blockbuster, but perhaps he meant Superman II, from which he was booted mid-shoot and which features some post-coital lounging between Lois and Clark.)
When one person chimed in with an all-too-common refrain — that sex scenes aren’t “necessary” in the comic book movies — Gunn responded, “It isn’t necessary in any single story. But to have an entire antiseptic sexless film universe is a denial of who we are as human beings (and how every single one of us got here).”
It isn’t necessary in any single story. But to have an entire antiseptic sexless film universe is a denial of who we are as human beings (and how every single one of us got here). https://t.co/NeUGBCLPLV
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) February 8, 2022
Still, considering how many superhero movies there are, the batting average of ones that do feature superheroes knocking bedposts is not exactly high.
(Via IndieWire)