Steven Soderbergh Calls Out Marvel Movies For A Bizarre Reason

Marvel fans have already got used to comments of some filmmakers who think the superhero genre deserves to be negatively called out for whatever reason they can think of. Some filmmakers think superhero movies are focusing too much on visuals, and not so much on storytelling, some think they’re just boring, and some actually think that the superhero genre is ruining modern cinema. Why do they think that? We have no idea, but to each his own, I guess.

Steven Soderbergh now also joined the club of filmmakers who had nothing good to say about superhero movies. Although he wasn’t so rough on them as some other filmmakers that previously called out the superhero movies, his reason for calling them out is pretty bizarre. Academy Award-winning director thinks that Marvel’s main problem is — the lack of sex scenes.

“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…the fantasy-spectacle universe, as far as I can tell, typically doesn’t involve a lot of f-cking, and also things like — who’s paying these people? Who do they work for? How does this job come to be?” — Steven Soderbergh for Daily Beast

Steven Soderbergh is known for directing the Ocean’s trilogy starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon. He also directed the 2000 movie Traffic, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director. He was also nominated in the same category for the movie Erin Brockovich starring Julia Roberts, who also starred in the first two movies of the Ocean’s franchise.

We all know that Marvel Cinematic Universe is a franchise owned by Disney, a company known for creating mostly family-friendly content. All MCU movies so far were rated PG-13. Also, Soderbergh isn’t exactly right. The first Iron Man movie (which happened before Disney purchased Marvel Studios) featured a quick scene that implied sex between Tony Stark and Christine Everhart at the beginning of the movie. The first, let’s say, official sex scene in MCU was in last year’s Eternals featuring Richard Madden’s Ikaris and Gemma Chan’s Sersi. Of course, considering that MCU is targeting a wide audience, it’s unlikely that any of the movies will ever feature a wide-open depiction of intimacy between the characters.

One Marvel movie that featured a pretty explicit sex scene is Deadpool, a Fox movie that was rated R. Ryan Reynolds is set to join the MCU in the upcoming third Deadpool film. Producer Kevin Feige confirmed that the movie will remain rated R despite being part of the MCU, it remains to be seen if there will be some explicit scenes in Marvel movies in the future. So, Mr. Soderbergh, you’re wrong about one thing, sex is definitely a thing in MCU, but it doesn’t need to be openly shown to the audience in order to come to that conclusion.