Superhero movies are always in the news, sometimes for breaking box office records and other times for overshadowing cinema. Often at the receiving end of clout, superhero movies are generally considered as not art and unwatchable by plenty of people across the world, including revered filmmakers like Martin Scorsese or actors like Mel Gibson.
Even a certain faction of the audience hails the movies as unwatchable because of their lack of relatability or overbearing nature. Yet for the filmmaker behind movies like Traffic, Magic Mike, and Oceans Eleven, Steven Soderbergh has a different reason not to watch superhero movies. And it is because of the lack of s*xual activity.
Reason Why Steven Soderbergh Does Not Like Superhero Movies
Some hate superhero movies for their lack of depth, emotions, and originality, while others hate them for their excessive reliance on CGI, unrealistic themes, and lack of larger-than-life storytelling. But for Steven Soderbergh, the reason for not watching superhero movies is entirely different.
While conversing with the Daily Beast, the Ocean’s Eleven director revealed what makes him aversive to the genre,
“… 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**king. Nobody’s f**king! Like, I don’t know how to tell people how to behave in a world in which that is not a thing.”
He then added,
“The fantasy-spectacle universe, as far as I can tell, typically doesn’t involve a lot of f**king, and also things like—who’s paying these people? Who do they work for? How does this job come to be?”
Apart from Marvel’s Eternals, superhero movies are usually made keeping viewers of all ages in mind and hence are not reliant on using intimacy to further the story. Instead, being superhero movies the storyline is heavily reliant on action and adventure, something that not only interests their viewers but also sells the movie.
Despite The Lack of Intimacy, Steven Soderbergh Does Not Hate Superhero Movies
Even Martin Scorsese, while revealing his dislike for Marvel movies, was not insulting to the superhero genre (see NY Times). Instead, the esteemed director explained that it was merely how he grew up and how he came to love the art of filmmaking that made him aversive to the popular genre.
Similarly, even Steven Soderbergh does not hate the genre but merely struggles to understand the unrealistic world of superheroes and how to approach it. While conversing with the Daily Beast, he remarked,
“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.”
While he doesn’t judge people for liking the genre or the movies, he added that as a filmmaker he struggles to approach the genre and doesn’t know where to start.
Superhero movies are generally a subject of debate among movie enthusiasts and diverse people hold diverse opinions about them. While some might hate them for their heavy CGI use, others dislike them for their lack of depth. And in that sense, although Steven Soderbergh has a different and unique reason for not liking them, he, nonetheless, has a right to his unique perspective.
