It took around two dozen films to be released before Marvel Studios opened a movie, “Eternals,” with a scene of physical intimacy.
The superhero genre as a whole, especially in terms of its films, has been a remarkably chaste one which is one reason why “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Out of Sight” filmmaker Steven Soderbergh won’t tackle them.
Speaking to The Daily Beast whilst out doing promo rounds for the HBO Max premiering “KIMI,” Soderbergh revealed why he’s not a good choice to helm a superhero movie:
“I’m not a snob; it’s not that I feel it’s some lower tier in any way. It really becomes about what universe you occupy as a storyteller. I’m just too earthbound to really release myself to a universe in which Newtonian physics don’t exist [laughs].
I just have a lack of imagination in that regard, which is why the one foray I had into pure science-fiction [2002’s ‘Solaris’] was essentially a character drama that happened to be set on a spaceship.
Also, for a lot of these, 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 f—ing. Nobody’s f—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 f—ing, and also things like – who’s paying these people? Who do they work for? How does this job come to be?”
In the wake of this quote, filmmaker James Gunn has quickly stepped forward in a tweet to indicate his efforts in the genre including “The Suicide Squad,” “Peacemaker” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” have all had characters getting intimate.
Soderbergh’s “KIMI” arrives on HBO Max on February 10th.
