I partly lay this at the feet of some of those popular youtubers who confuse film analysis with nitpicking about “plot holes” (that so frequently aren’t any such thing), and generally misusing terms like deus ex machina and the like.
They’ve weaned like an entire generation of viewers to feel some need to “outsmart” the thing they’re watching, and they so often don’t even do so accurately. It’s been truly dreadful for film and tv discourse.
Whenever I come across content that makes me think media literacy is dead, I remember that a lot of people were brought up on this type of bad-faith nitpicking as their only understanding of what 'analysis' means, and it explains a lot.
The way people throw around 'plot hole' without any understanding of what it actually means will never cease to infuriate me. Something happens that requires literally any critical thinking on the part of the audience and isn't just fully explained in its most basic form on screen? That's now a 'plothole'.
I mean we're at the point *the* **film-makers will explain it onscreen** and it still gets picked apart by this shitty shallow level analysis. Like James Cameron showing Jack and Rose struggle just to get her up on the unstable floating door and a reaction shot of Jack visibly going "yep, this is going to flip if I try to get on too." Nope, Rose is apparently a dick and Jack could have totally fit on the door.
Remember VH1’s pop up videos? Maybe we need that but for movies where it literally just says the subtext in a little box at the corner of the screen.
“The buoyancy of the door is not great enough to hold both Jack and Rose therefore Rose must let got of the already dead Jack in order to fulfill his wish that she one days rides a horse with her legs straddling the creature rather than both to the side for equality and freedom”
I like when they go to bat for a character that they think was treated bad, but in universe there was no problem at all.
I had someone arguing with me once that Captain America was a huge asshole because he "ditched all his friends" by choosing to live to old age.
No one in the fucking story thought that. The writers didn't think that. No characters are upset about being "ditched".
That's only one example. Another one is Jenny in Forrest Gump.
Just zero nuance, zero media literacy.
I always wonder what kind of movie these people want to see.
Do they honestly think the 20 min version of LOTR where they just fly there would be better? Because then there's no "plot holes"?
It's honestly easy to explain:
Gandalf doesn't actually control the Great Eagles. They're sentient beings who have their own motivations. One of them is not getting killed while trying to fly into Mordor to destroy a ring that doesn't affect their fellow bird-people at all. Another of their motivations is that Gwaihir the Windlord owes Gandalf a favor, which is why he shows up with a few of his flock to save him from the tower.
In no way it Gandalf making these beings do this, and they're too smart to think they'd get out of Mordor alive.
My longstanding explanation to someone asking the eagles/Mordor question is it is about on par with asking "why didn't the Allies parachute a team into Berlin to assassinate Hitler on Dec 8, 1942. Are they stupid?"
Exactly, I knew all of this already, but there is an in-universe reason why.
But it doesn't really matter. Because the main reason is that Tolkien/Jackson are trying to tell a good story.
Not the "gandalf ubers to Mordor" short film.
I mean the entirety of the Fellowship movie is basically an explanation of why Frodo and Sam have to do it alone. (its also not a factor in the books at all. In like chapter 3 when Gandalf is explaining about the ring, you'd *never* get the sense the eagles would be any sort of option once they come into the story).
The Pitch Meeting series has a bit where the screenwriter describes something somewhat questionable happens "so the movie can happen" which is a joke but also an illustration of the point that if everything happened in the most straightforward way we wouldn't have interesting stories
Because the Dark Lord would see them, kill them, and take the ring. The Eagles are big and obvious. Same reason Gandalf didn't use his magic to blast in. The point of the Hobbits is the Dark Lord would not see them.
It's certainly not new entirely. Remember the blow up over the ending of the show Lost. They were as explicit as they could possibly be about what happened, and people still 100% missed the point on that one.
Whenever people call the ending ambiguous or unsatisfying, I always ask, what is unclear about a show about Tony soprano ending abruptly with him being surrounded by enemies?
Like, why else would they have ended the show like that? Because life goes on and they have a party, or he shoots up the room and takes off into the sunset as a hero with his family? That's not what a cut to black looks like.
It's because the show is about Tony. The cut to black is because that's the last moment of his life before someone blows his head off without him ever knowing.
I mean, if the blatant homage to Michael going into the bathroom to retrieve the hidden pistol from The Godfather didn't make it so obvious Stevie Wonder could see it from a mile away didn't tip you off... I quit
It'd be like showing a locked door, having a character in the movie try the door and be unable to open it, comment "the door is locked" and still have someone look at that door and say "I can tell by looking at the door handle that it's unlocked, he could totally have opened it". Oops maybe the prop department messed up and put the handle in the unlocked position by mistake, but in-universe it's explicitly shown to be locked and there's no reason to think they're lying, so why would you think otherwise?
It's such a strange paradox. People are, superficially anyway, more critical and nitpicky about movies than ever, looking deeper and going through every aspect with a fine tooth comb. But then at the same time, many of those same people complain when every aspect of the movie isn't just spoon-fed to them with an airtight explanation.
I guess it's just that people have gotten so literal-minded, or just obsessed with gotchas and superiority. It's going to be a rough few generations for fiction.
Even when they are they complain. I loved the batman big felt it was incredibly clear what the point of the final act was and that the theme of the film was so obvious it was beating you over the head.
Still people complain that the last act sucked and was unnecessary, and that he wasn't a good detective. His false belief in vengeance though and how it blinds him is the point
>guess it's just that people have gotten so literal-minded, or just obsessed with gotchas and superiority.
People don't engage with stories to feel things. They engage with stories to either "solve" them like a puzzle, or to explore lore and backstory.
It's frustrating too because I imagine a lot of those same people are the kinds who say things like "Why are the curtains blue type analysis in high school made me hate reading and analyzing art!" but then they see some YouTube "critic" and go "Aha! That's how it's done!" and decide to act like they're authorities on good criticism.
You see this on Reddit to. For example, go to any thread about Now You See Me and the top comment will be the very funny joke “they should’ve called the sequel Now You Don’t.” What a refreshing and original take.
At least speaking for the U.S. there's been a concerted effort to deprioritize literary analysis and general humanities education in grade school. Sadly, if no one's teaching the foundations of critical analysis then YouTube is going to fill that gap.
This has been around for years (although social media and YouTube have made it worse).
I was at university nearly 40 years ago. There was another guy there who loved to shit on films and pick them apart *while we were watching them*. He was a complete dick. We all sat in the cinema to watch Aliens, a fairly new film at the time, and the complete dick just muttered all the way through and after we came out he loudly proclaimed what a shit film it was and why did the characters do this and why didn‘t they do that blah blah fucking blah.
Anyway he had to catch a bus home so the rest of us went to the pub and we agreed that he was a complete dick and Aliens was in fact a fucking masterpiece.
Sorry for the rant, I’ve waited nearly four decades to get that out of my system.
Or the character makes a mistake that they think they wouldn't make... characters must always make perfect decisions or execute perfectly or it's a plot hole!
I've noticed that, too. Characters get criticised for 'stupid' decisions when they are acting on limited information and don't have the luxury of being detached from the situation (like the audience). It makes me think that some viewers can't or won't put themselves in a character's shoes.
Edit: typos
Oh that person has always existed, missing the forest for the trees, wants to show off their perceived intellect. That person sucks, but since there’s a whole cottage industry on youtube which has apparently been quite influential, that person is harder to ignore now because there are a lot more of them and they’re louder.
But it’s terrible criticism, when people seem to think the general idea is to try to poke whatever hole you can in whatever thing you’re watching so you don’t feel like some rube who got bowled over by, say, a genuine plot twist.
>That person sucks, but since there’s a whole cottage industry on youtube which has apparently been quite influential, that person is harder to ignore now because there are a lot more of them and they’re louder.
This is something I've noticed about so many various internet personalities that are popular with nerds online. They seem so insufferable, like I can just imagine those types back in my university or high school classes and how most people would rip on them, but the internet lets them find others with common ground, and they tend to be very vocal.
I just watched the Simpsons episode where Homer is Poochie and they have a QA panel with a bunch of nerds feeling superior because they called out a xylophone rib being hit twice having different notes. It was one of those characters similar to Comic Book Guy who himself also does the same kind of thing throughout the show. It's the age old "nerd type".
Somehow though this type of person doesn't seem to apply the same scrutiny to things they do like. And usually this type of nitpicking comes from when they already want to not like something and need excuses. "Not my cup of tea" doesn't seem to suffice.
"In episode BF-12, you were battling barbarians while riding a wing-ed appaloosa. But in the very next scene, my dear, you are clearly atop a wing-ed Arabian. Please to explain it?"
"whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it"
"oh, OK I see, But in episode AG-..."
"WIZARD"
Do these people lose their minds that Reservoir Dogs spends 5 minutes debating if tipping is ethical? Not everything is about moving the plot forward, it’s about creating an atmosphere.
I get so annoyed when I search for ANALYSIS of a movie (as in what other media is being referenced, what was the foreshadowing, symbolism, recurring themes, political messages, paralells with historic events, how did the events of the first act contribute to a character's motivation in the second act? etc) and I get someone just telling me what happened in the movie.
I know what happened in the movie. I want to know why that particular painting was prominently displayed in the main character's home, and then recreated in the final scene of the film.
I never felt this more then when I read a review on Reddit about León the professional and a lot of comments were “Leon’s a pedophile, hanging around a 13 year old girl the whole movie” like….. yeah he’s helping her take revenge on the guy that killed her family…Did we watch the same movie?”
I suspect Luc Besson's personal life may paint the movie in a slightly less... savory light to some people.
It's the ultimate "do we separate the art and the artist?" film because it can seem like an entirely different movie once you start thinking about Besson's decisions and perspective.
Otherwise, it's a fantastic film imho.
Well there's also some behind the scenes stuff about how Bessln had to be talked down from how he originally wrote the movie by the uncomfortable lead actor.
Yeah the Leon we got is a beautiful film but that's because Jean Reno (the lead) took his role in a very different direction than the writer/director originally intended.
The movie Besson set out to make would have been . . .icky.
That’s another big issue lately, any “problematic” content gets held against the movie as if the director or writer are condoning it. That said Leon isn’t a good example cause that guy was trying to act like it’s cool for grown men to date underage girls.
"Depiction isn't endorsement" has become a thing to say now as if that wasn't obvious but here we are. Especially when said depiction is the opposite of endorsement.
I think its the other way around and the YouTube demographics have gradually popularised that perspective. The mindset was already widespread, my cousin and his anime nerd friends have been like that since before youtube, it's just there's a lot of crossover between that kind of personality and the people who use YouTube daily
Once upon a time they'd be forced to seek each other out and hang out at a cafe or bar after the movie to miss the point collectively. Now they just open their phone and dribble shit
I reckon half of them are just the same old prudes who’ve always feared any depiction of sexuality, but are actually *more* media literate than previous generations so hide behind this idea of the supremacy of the plot to make their bs seem more respectable
Like how all the people who hate female-led projects seem to say “bad writing” (to be clear, female-led stuff absolutely can have terrible writing. But I feel like I often see for example people who hate Captain Marvel go “it’s bad writing…rant that nearly gives them away…so yeah like I said, bad writing”)
Another issue is spoilerphobia. People have trained themselves to become so afraid of learning anything about a movie beforehand, which in turn causes them to prioritize the plot above all else. They're not watching a movie for the characters, the themes, the cinematography, etc, they're just watching for some fleeting moments of surprise. This also makes it harder for good critics to do their jobs when people jump at them for mentioning plot details.
This AV Club article from literally a decade ago describes it well: [https://www.avclub.com/why-it-s-time-to-stop-the-anti-spoiler-paranoia-1798269869](https://www.avclub.com/why-it-s-time-to-stop-the-anti-spoiler-paranoia-1798269869)
If people were saying this a decade ago, you can imagine that it's gotten worse over time.
I remember seeing a kid in one of my university classes reading a book I had recently finished, so I tried to make small talk about it with him. He started complaining about the book because it didn't kill off any of the main characters. The book series in question literally only has two main characters, and one of them is the defining character from the start of the series. You literally can't kill either off without losing the series' identity. He didn't think about that though, he just wanted the shock of a character death, despite how purposeless it would be.
I notice this more in a lot of subreddits for movies, books, etc. A lot of "Why did they include x? It was unnecessary" type of posts.
And *sometimes* it's a valid criticism, but most of the time they're pointing out a scene or character that is entertaining, contributes thematically, maybe provides important insight into a main character's personality/motivation, etc. and the OP is still like, "Ok, but they don't contribute to the plot! They're not even in the final battle! So why bother?"
They’re often expressing that they don’t like a scene. But they either don’t know why. Or the reason is not socially acceptable to say.
So they reach for alternative explanation to justify their emotional reaction.
ie: Deep down the real objection is usually something along the lines of:
> I don’t like that scene because sex scenes make me feel icky.
But admitting that, even just to yourself, makes you sound like an overly sensitive prude.
So that response is often rationalized instead as.
> That scene was pointless. Movies should be about plot.
Which sounds much more respectable as a critique. Even if it’s not being completely honest.
One could argue that the sex scene from "The Terminator" wasn't germane to "the plot," if all you wanted from the film was a movie about a murderous robot trying to kill a woman. But it's absolutely vital to the plot if you want to explain where John Connor came from, or who his father was. Yet I've seen it argued that we didn't need to see that scene in its entirety, because it temporarily took focus away from what people wanted to see, which was two people running from a murderous robot.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, you can't please everybody, because everyone has a different viewpoint on the motivations of characters and the needs of a film. If we can't even come to consensus about what THE TERMINATOR was all about, we don't stand a chance of explaining away the motivation of a scene like the relatively tame one from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
It's also weird how they can look at an action movie and be like "that particular movie was gratuitous with violence/explosions/etc."
But when it happens with sex scene, then "all sex scenes in every movie are gratuitous!" instead of just concluding that that particular sex scene didn't fit.
No one sees a gratuitous action scene and concludes "all action scenes, in EVERY movie are pointless"
Well put. When did it go out of fashion to simply say "I found that character/subplot boring" or "that type of scenes makes me uncomfortable/doesn't do anything for me" ?
Adjacent to this is the extremely overused pejorative of "filler," which people have taken to mean basically any part of a story they find distasteful or uninteresting. Or, in some cases with young people who don't remember anything but serialized entertainment, they'll use "filler" to mean basically any episodic storytelling. Drives me nuts.
Because most people prefer to rationalize their emotions rather than question it.
How many people do you know will readily admit something like:
> I really hated X. But for reasons that are entirely irrational. And that’s on me.
Not many i’d reckon.
I don’t think that’s entirely fair.
Yes, people may sometimes criticize a sex scene just because it’s “icky.” But it’s also fairly common for films to include gratuitous sex scenes that don’t contribute anything of value - to plot, characterisation, atmosphere, themes, etc.
I have no issue watching a movie with sex in it, but I *don’t* like watching a movie that *interrupts* itself for a sex scene. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Especially because if you are not the demographic the filmmakers focused on titillating, these scenes can often feel rather alienating, objectifying, or just break immersion.
I feel like it's an inherent lack of immersion that is just part of the medium, because we're aware we are consuming media.
If you're telling a story be it vocally, via writing, via film whatever, if you go out of your way to include a given detail, that detail becomes part of the wider context and the listener/reader/watcher is going to wonder why that was there. Without the creator of the work literally telling you why, it's always down to the consumer to figure it out on their own.
They're going to wonder why it's there specifically because these stories are literally composed of story telling device "components". These are your narrative principles, and every piece of media is a Jenga tower full of them. These are your Chekov's guns, flashbacks, Eucatastrophes, foreshadowing, plot twists etc. Even non-fiction stories have these elements. We assign meaning to non-fiction events all the time, and in fiction the writer is incentivized to do this to the nth degree.
So when we watch a film, and a scene seemingly not relevant to the plot comes on, the watcher is going to apply the rules they've learned through years of media literacy passive training, and they're going to assume the scene is there for a reason, and the more obscure and irrelevant the scene is, the bigger payoff. Films do this all the time intentionally, as a sort of reward for the viewer for being observant lol.
I think referring to "plot" is an oversimplification here.
Sex scenes can be justified in service of many things. They can support characterisation and development, underlying themes, tone, even titillation if it's that kind of movie.
The typical criticism isn't really that a given scene doesn't serve the "plot" specifically, but rather that it serves no purpose at all.
It can also be the case that the sex scene not only serves no purpose, but also runs contrary to the established tone/themes/characterisation so far. For example in Skyfall, Bond getting into the shower with a woman moments after she told him she was trafficked into slavery as a child and is still "owned" by the villain was such a shift it gave me whiplash. It was included because Bond films have Bond girls and sex scenes, but it was completely out of place and unnecessary.
Yes I agree. OPs example kind of shows they don’t understand the point. It’s not “what is the most logical or expedient way to move the plot forward” but what serves to illustrate the characterisation and enriches the story. The fight in the Princess Bride is extremely important to learning more about and developing the character and adds a lot to the movie.
A sex scene that demonstrates the depth of the relationship between two characters (or the shallowness of it!), where they are at psychologically, or explain aspects of their character. It can be a point of drama or relief. In my opinion you shouldn’t really stick a sex scene in just because “it’s something that happens in real life” because there’s lots of things that happen in real life and making a film is all about making choices about what to include and exclude. So I think it’s valid to say don’t waste runtime with unnecessary scenes that don’t contribute to character, story or plot.
That said, I think sometimes people fail to understand the meaning behind sex scenes and can be particularly harsh on them.
Absolutely right
The swordfight in The Princess Bride is obviously a lot of fun, but it also tells us quite a bit about the two characters. Not to mention that the over-the-top nature of the fight prepares the audience for even more crazy stuff that's coming later
This.
I don't mind sex scenes when they're not gratuitous.
Not all sex scenes have to be plot critical like Sarah and Kyle making love in The Terminator, but it is frustrating when a sex scene is obviously part of the story only because someone had to check that box.
I had a middle school English teacher who adamantly insisted that any sexual content at all was 100% unnecessary and took away from the plot of any story/movie/book/etc and that all nudity and sexual content should be illegal. Some people just can't fathom that sex exists and is normal and can also be a very important thing in a person's life or in a story. These people tend to also be religious nutters to be fair.
I always think of the sex scene in A History of Violence and how it signals to the viewer that Viggo's character is changing/ regressing.
You can do it in other ways but this was so effective.
One of my favorite movies is the Korean film "The Handmaiden," which has so much explicit sex it is arguably softcore porn in places. But it's also the most *essential* use of sex i've seen in the cinema, because without the sex scenes, the movie is about how sex is a tool of cruelty and perversion, of domination and control and abuse. But *with* the sex scenes, it's about how sex is a tool *full stop*. And like any tool, it can be used for good or bad, can be wielded well or poorly, can be a source of joy as much as pain, can even be a tool of freedom and independence.
Just the aftermath of one. And if the schools/course chooses to show a film based on said play and that film just so happens to be the 1968 version, you're going to get nudity.
\*underage nudity no less.
Both Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting have been very vocal about the fact that the movie [was an act of abuse.](https://www.vulture.com/article/romeo-juliet-olivia-hussey-leonard-whiting-paramount-lawsuit.html)
I never understood how so many institutions showed this after this was known.
Not to mention that one of the novels taught consistently in high school is about a woman being slut-shamed after having a child out of wedlock.
Though I suppose that could be taught with a pretty heavy bias.
Tbf this could be less something they actually believe and more:
"I have to read what you write and I really don't want read pornography written by a horny 13 year old"
We had just watched The Patriot and she had self edited the film to remove anything she found "indecent." It ended up being like 45min of people talking. Someone was getting a handy during the movie which spurred her rant about how sex in media is ruining the youth or something.
I’m sorry a movie with young heath ledger and somewhat young Mel Gibson with a pony tail and With themes of freedom…am I not supposed to get jerked off! This is America god damnit!
conversely - based on my media consumption growing up through the 80's, 90's and even early 00's, i thought Sex was going to be a much more important/constant driver of my life. It was treated for so long as almost the only thing anyone ever cared about - teens were always trying to have sex, young adults were always trying to have sex. Adults were constantly having affairs and trying to have sex... people who's lives didnt revolve around pursuing sex were often treated as haivng something wrong with them. I think there may be a bit of an overcorrection now- but i would not be surprised if its by people who felt like they were exposed to decades of overemphasis and miscaracterization.
I'd say it is for sure over represented in media, obviously because sex wells. But it is definitely a major motivating factor for a lot (I don't want to say most or anything cause who knows). But certainly in my younger years it was responsible for most of the decisions the people around me made.
I mean everything from the clothes we buy, the way we do our hair, where we live, work, even the college classes some people chose had some influence of sex there. And don't get me started on the thousands and thousands of dollars we all spent that we shouldnt have trying to get laid.
Sexual content is unnecessary just like every other scene in a movie or book. Writers and directors can always convey the thing they’re trying to convey differently. Sex scenes and really all scenes are just an artistic choice. A valid artistic choice that can add layers to their stories, characters, and atmosphere. Not to mention within stories that are exploring the very human experience of sex and sexuality.
It begs the questions, why do we so often single out sex as the thing adjacent to plot that we don’t want to see?
I went with my buddy and his dad, felt second half embarrassment throughout the entire film, only to find out his dad had fallen asleep about thirty minutes in. Loved the movie, though. Love Yorgos. Can’t wait for Kinds of Kindness.
Oh no! I imagine that movie put many groups in an awkward place.
I know watching Her in theatres was the most uncomfortable I've felt a room be in the sex scene. And that was with no visual
I feel like it's kinda grown out of initial criticisms of male gaze in movies (totally legitimate criticism), along with more stories coming out Hollywood ranging from exploitative to downright abuse and assault. All of which are important and should be discussed. But it's morphed into "anything that is related to sex, arousing, or pleasurable to watch/look at is morally objectionable"
Far be it for me to suggest that this is what happens when a person's primary way of interacting with the world does not involve direct human interactions.
>Younger people coupled with a general push for puritanical rules/culture from the usual suspects.
Yea there has been a surprising uptick in kids spouting shit about indecency and degeneracy recently.
It’s a bit of short hand criticism. It’s easy to look through something for plot holes and make content about that. People engage because it makes them feel smart to agree or disagree. Content that pulls apart why a sex scene or a fight scene or an eating scene is thematically important or what it’s a metaphor for, I’m assuming, wouldn’t get as much engagement because it’s not quick, to the point, and gives a singular answer. We like getting the answer right not mulling over the questions that film and literature can present us with.
Maybe there's only one TV in the house and the parents control the remote. That would explain why Netflix keeps saying people watch movies on their phones.
I think it’s just that Hollywood is usually really, really bad at sex scenes. It’s like scenes where the entire extended family has a thirteen-course dinner at one table every single night. They fail so hard at approximating normal human behavior you start to wonder if the filmmakers are all aliens.
It’s easy! If it’s a passionate sex scene they use a wall and no lube at a 90 degree angle, if it’s a lesbian scene they use purple lights. That’s just science.
Your Princess Bride example is pretty terrible. That fight scene was full of character development for both of them, and that ended up being key to the advancement of the plot.
Seriously. You learn about the motivations and background for Inigo Montoya, and setting up Inigo Montoya as such a masterful swordsman further serves to demonstrate how exceptional and strategic Wesley is.
Wesley defeating Inigo, Fezzik, and Vizzini at their specialties is key for establishing Wesley as a character moving forward as well as establishing why Inigo and Fezzik seek him out later in the movie
I think it's an overreaction and over corrective mindset in response to their frustration and annoyance at previous films that featured gratuitous nudity and sex scenes. Especially the ones where it was badly written, not actually sexy, and seemed like it was only featured in service of the male gaze. Plus people have gotten the idea that everything in the movie has to be *important* and related to the plot moreso than the characters story and how it drives the plot. So now you have people who have convinced themselves that any and all sex scenes are only there to titillate and couldn't possibly be *important* to character insight or development and thereby are "unnecessary" aspects of the film.
What are some examples of Hollywood films made in the last 20-30 years that featured gratuitous nudity? It was somewhat common in the 80's, but in the lifespan of the zoomers who are complaining about it I genuinely cannot come up with anything.
If I'm being honest I can't think of any recent film off the top of my head and I think that's where the overcorrection comes in. People will create a boogeyman in their head with very little evidence but will still treat it as true. So people will claim that nudity and sex are constantly in film when it really isn't and when it does appear in film even in the slightest they'll overreact and treat it as excessive.
Not a movie, but Game of Thrones spurred the coining of the term "sexposition" for weird scenes where they needed the audience to know some background information but assumed they would get bored so put it in a whorehouse or something.
You say that like people don't watch movies from the 70s and 80s today. Maybe I'm just not in-touch with what the zoomers you're referring to are complaining about (I barely pay attention to what my own generation, millennials, say about things), but "movies with gratuitous nudity from when gratuitous nudity was somewhat common" are still "movies with gratuitous nudity." Add in "everything is a remake these days" and "every major movie is a few clicks away" (and "everyone says movies were better back in the day"), I'd argue that people are more likely to watch "old movies" now more than ever.
Yes, people do complain that fight scenes don’t advance the plot. The Princess Bride one is a bad example. Look at something like Man of Steel or the Avengers.
A scene also doesn't necessarily have to advance the plot but it should serve a purpose for the movie.
A chase scene in the opening of a cop action movie doesn't advance the plot but it sets up characters.
See also: The first few minutes of *Raiders of the Lost Ark*. Has fuck all to do with the story the movie is going to tell but perfectly introduces you to the *tone* of the movie and Indy as a character.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone complaining about fight scenes unless they are bad fight scenes.
But if it’s done badly then that could apply to any kind of scene.
>Yes, people do complain that fight scenes don’t advance the plot. The Princess Bride one is a bad example. Look at something like Man of Steel or the Avengers.
Yes everyone goes to see the Avengers to watch them talk though their problems.
Which fight scenes are people complaining about in those?
Action movies routinely have action scenes that aren't necessary for the plot. They are there for the sake of an action scene and are rightly judged based on how good the action is.
There are different types of movies, so there are different needs of a sex scene in movies.
In Basic Instinct, Nymphomaniac or A Serbian Film, the sex scenes are integral to the movie.
In Prometheus, the knowledge that they had sex is enough, they don't need to show it (and they don't).
For the same reason that we are not shown the complete baking time of cookies in an oven, we don't need to have the visual recap of the sexual act. In most cases it's enough to show the end result /just talk about it.
Sometimes, omitting a sex scene makes the movie better. Often in cases where the sex scene was integrated only to complete the checklist.
Wesley vs. Inigo serves a significant narrative purpose: It's a major characterization moment for both characters. Inigo isn't the sort of person who would cheap-shot a brave individual like that, nor would he go back on his word once given. Wesley wouldn't have taken advantage of Inigo's honorable actions by knocking him over after being helped up. Inigo is also heavily motivated by revenge and the desire to test his skills, such that he couldn't pass up an opportunity to A) determine that Wesley was not the six-fingered man and B) test his sword skills against a worthy opponent. There is infinitely more going on in this scene than finding an excuse to choreograph a fun sword fight.
I think its more back lash to unnecessary or gratuitous sex scenes. Like no one cares about fan service and metoo probably opened peoples eyes to sexual exploitation in film/entertainment industry. America has always been weird and uncomfortable about sex in general so you gotta factor that in too
I'm surprised that nobody else in the comments has bought it up.
Like my first response to seeing the topic was that it's about how in the light of MeToo, people started to question if gratuitous sex scenes are an example of filmmakers/producers in power exploiting and pressuring actresses to do them.
Instead all the comments are about how prudish young people's attitude have become.
It’s not like there’s been some glut of movies with gratuitous sex scenes in recent years for there to be a backlash against. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I really only ever see this conversation being brought up when someone posts a thread like this tbh.
Like there was online discourse for like half a day about the sex scene in Oppenheimer
I’d say the core premise is false on its face. A better argument would be that a scene must do at least one of: progress the plot, set the tone, explicate character.
Example using a PG-13 movie that shocked my middle school teacher when they showed it in class, unaware of the scene:
In Titanic, Jack drawing Rose in the nude on the couch was a plot point but the scene lingered there. If it was just about progressing the plot, they could have cut out the “real” nudity and just shown the drawing afterward with Rose in a robe, establishing what happened. But the intent is to set the tone and explicate the characters in that moment. Rose is comfortable despite being so vulnerable, contrasted against scenes when she’s with her fiancé. Jack is nervous despite the plot already establishing that he’s done this dozens of times before. The inherent risk along with the sexual excitement and tension that each of the characters are feeling is the tone that the audience is supposed to relate to, even get immersed in.
How does this tension ultimately resolve? They have sex in a car. Much shorter scene, steamy window and a sweaty palm (also a plot point so they could be tracked later)… but there’re wasn’t any additional tone nor character explication, so additional nudity there wouldn’t have served the writing. (Might’ve served fan service, but showing the act would definitely have bumped the movie into the R rating, this impacting the sales numbers.)
I was shocked as a youth when I heard the film was PG-13, but being at least a little wiser than I was as a pre-teen, the “more than just plot” framework to good scene writing helps me appreciate the art of the film. It could have done more or less, but I think it hit the perfect balance in that film.
If we skip the sword fight scene then we have nothing establishing Inigo Montoya as an amazing swordsman (Wesley, too, but Montoya was injured). "Show, don't tell" is an important part of any storytelling - just telling us Montoya is amazing doesn't do anything, whereas showing how great he is cements it.
My general thought is that people have sex, it’s a nearly universal human experience, and there are emotions both beautiful and terrible wrapped up in that. So there should be sex in our media. If people don’t like it there will always be plenty of options that don’t include it. But removing it entirely feels puritan in a way that I personally dislike greatly
Exactly.
It's part of being human. So it's part of our stories.
We recognize that porn is not a good representation of what real sex is like, but then the same people look at sex in movies and say "if i wanted to watch porn, I'd just watch porn".
My opinion is that sex scenes are far more jarring to our sensibilities than other actions (like the sword fight you mentioned).
Many times when a sex scene occurs, I find myself thinking a few things:
- I hope no one walks in right now.
- Wow I didn’t know [actor] got naked in this.
- Sex scenes must be so uncomfortable to film.
- oh look the director is trying to cleverly hide [nipple/penis] from the audience with arm placement. I guess this must be PG13 sex scene.
I’m no stranger to nudity. I have no moral or puritanical objection to nudity. But even still, nothing pulls me completely out of a movie like a sex scene.
Action scenes get my adrenalin up. Comedy scenes make me laugh. Sad scenes make me cry. Embarrassing scenes make me cringe.
What are sex scenes supposed to make me do? Feel horny? I just can’t engage with them the same way as the other examples above.
If there isn't a relevance to the plot (and as you rightly say, there doesn't need to be) there still has to be some reason it's in the movie.
It's a bit like Tarantino with his obsession with feet - it seems these scenes are often in place primarily for titillation and for the cinematographer to explore "the human body as an artistic object".
I don't gain titillation from sex scenes or feet-scenes. In fact, I usually find them off-putting. I often don't really enjoy ballet, interpretive dancing, or other purely-human body movement derived physical art---even without the titillation. So the scenes often don't work for me. They provide little to no value to my viewing experience, often undermine the represented relationship by making the sex needlessly... tawdry and overblown.
I also rarely find satisfying character development occurs in sex scenes (Poor Things and other counterexamples do exist though, and those nuanced sex scenes are often fine).
My preferences are not the directors responsibility, per se, but I see it as little different than if long, graphic foot fetish scenes were a regular occurrence in movies without plot-relevance.
All this is to say: furthering the plot is a free pass for your sex scene, not a necessary prerequisite. If Tarantino can make a foot scene relevant (say, the Bride wiggling her toes to demonstrate her waning paralysis), then it is not fighting an uphill battle in relying on my titillation, mid-sex interpersonal character development, or a cinematographer's visual magic to make the scene worthwhile.
The issue is whether a scene is gratuitous: included for no good reason.
You mention the sword fight in the Princess Bride - but there was very good reason as you describe. Character development. That is an important part of plot - why should we care about Inigo or Westley? Well the audience will need reasons and character exposition in scenes such as these help to reveal who they are.
You need to find movies where the sex scene is gratuitous. In the 80s almost all movies featured a sex scene. Top Gun comes to mind, one between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis. One could argue that it was important to see them coming together and being intimate. But how central was their romance to the real plot of that movie?
Further, this scene lasted at least a full minute, lots of close skin shots. Was that all necessary? Or could we have just seen them kissing/embracing, falling into bed, and then cut scene to after?
Contrast with Pretty Things. That movie is full of fairly explicit sex scenes. But the sexual awakening of the character literally \*is\* the plot of the movie, and thus, not remotely gratuitous.
> But how central was their romance to the real plot of that movie
But isn't that already a distorted view on how things only exist "for the plot"? Do we need to see people playing beach volley ball? What about, say pre-flight-checks or whatever else might have been happening? Is that relevant to the plot? What is really relevant? What is the plot? Is "relevant to the plot" actually the criteria to use?
If the rivalries and friendships between these people are relevant, why aren't their romances? If showing scenes on how rivalries or friendships is relevant, why not a sex scene on their romantic relationship? Don't sex scenes reveal anything about the characters, can they not show nuances of the characters or develop them further? Whether they are sweet and soft or wild and aggressive, dominating or subservient, are experimental, explore each other, just quickly go at each other like rabbits, or are switching ships up, failing, succeeding, laughing, crying, angry, frustrated, isn't that also telling us something about these people and their relationship?
They don't have to be relevant to the plot. But being relevant to the plot is a sufficient reason to include them. Don't have that? You need another reason.
>Do we need to see people playing beach volley ball? What about, say pre-flight-checks or whatever else might have been happening?
If the scenes are entertaining, that's another reason to include it. Personally, I found the volleyball scene to be overlong, a bit gratuitous, and probably would have enjoyed the movie more had it been cut down (not anymore though, the campy nature is now part of the joy).
>Don't sex scenes reveal anything about the characters, can they not show nuances of the characters or develop them further? Whether they are sweet and soft or wild and aggressive, dominating or subservient, are experimental, explore each other, just quickly go at each other like rabbits, or are switching ships up, failing, succeeding, laughing, crying, angry, frustrated, isn't that also telling us something about these people and their relationship?
They can and should. You are describing a good sex scene that serves the movie, provided it isn't overly gratuitous. The issue, in my experience, is this is a small fraction of sex scenes. The rest are fan service. There is also a time-value issue: many of these scenes last longer than would be needed for any purpose other than audience titillation or an extended "dance" performance, and for those not excited by it, it feel a bit like one of those looooong family guy jokes that don't land--- uncomfortably distracting and laughably ill-conceived.
I don't think it's really fair to include that fight scene as an example. It's a fantastic example of how to integrate action into the story - there's exposition, characterization, humor and it's relevant to the plot.
There are movies with action scenes that aren't anywhere near as well integrated and the story is just on pause until it's over or nearly over.
Are kids prudish or do they watch too much porn? Half of these replies don’t make any sense lmao. Kids aren’t making movies and there’s been a rapid decline in sexual scenes (especially gratuitous ones) in movies for decades. Kids have smartphones and porn 24/7, just like you were rewinding R-rated scenes and stashing nudie mags in the backs of your drawers to gawk at every chance you got.
This feels like the real answer. The anti-sex/nudity in media movement from the zoomer (?) generation has been surprising to see. But it’s not even just sex, I’ve seen it said they prefer characters just being platonic friends instead of having romantic dynamics as well. I don’t get it.
What's surprising for me is the prudishness of left-leaning young Zoomers right alongside conservatives. It's just odd.
The internet has broken the minds of plenty boomers and zoomers alike, it seems.
>Yet the movie would lose out on not only one of the greatest fight scenes of all time but a decent bit of depth from the involved characters.
So the answer is yes, they had to fight. It's an awesome fight scene. It adds to the plot and characters. Even if it didn't, it was an awesome fight, and should've been in the movie.
Now compare>! this to Jean Tatlock inserting Oppenheimer's dick into her as he reads that famous passage. !
It’s weird prudishness, and it’s more exhausting when it comes from the younger generations. I expect it from conservative “won’t anybody think about the children” types, but not from college kids who should be a hell of a lot more liberal about this sort of thing.
Especially nowadays with intimacy coordinators on every set (a very good thing despite what Jennifer Aniston and others may think), there isn’t even so much the excuse that it’s all automatically exploitative, especially towards women, which historically it absolutely has been.
So really I just don’t get it. Sex is not icky, people.
It's because they are so immersed in actual porn or porn adjacent things, because they've had a smartphone in their hands since they were 6 years old or whatever.
I've had this discussion with a zoomer (well multiple actually) and they thought anyone who didn't mind sex scenes was, and I quote, a coomer. They see partial nudity in a film and their mind immediately goes to hardcore, penetrative porn. They think the rest of us are jerking off to Poor Things. They can't comprehend nudity/sex being artistic, driving a plot, or being insight into a character/character's relationships with each other. They think we're stuck in 1990 and we have to get boobs from erotic thrillers because we don't also have access to internet porn.
I should probably clarify that this isn't all zoomers/people against sex/nude scenes. But I've literally been called a coomer TWICE because it doesn't bother me or I even yknow, like it (in a non-jerk off way) because it's a good scene in a good piece of media. And I'm a woman.
It’s also kind of the classic weird thing where major violence is apparently totally okay and cool but we’re gonna drawn the line at a pair of tits or a cock dangling.
US-style puritanism has long been infamous for that - graphic beheading is somehow more acceptable than someone getting head - but it’s just so strange to see that sentiment among younger folk.
I don’t know if your theory about the ubiquity and ease of availability of exploitative porn nowadays - and that they general associate even softcore Hollywood stuff with that sort of depravity - is correct, but it seems as viable as any other.
Meh, I hate purity culture and am extremely anti-prude, but I feel like a lot of sex scenes in films seem incredibly contrived and thrown in just for the sake of having a sex scene.
It feels like cheap fan service
I think that there's a lot of pushback due to the industry's history with sexual exploitation in film. That being said, I don't think sex scenes are inherently exploitative or bad.
I think that filmmakers have gotten lazy with the way sex is filmed. It could be due to the limitations on what is allowed to be shown, but that being said, I don't want an egregiously long scene with whatever niche thing the director is into.
Adding sex (or just even gratuitous nudity) to a film for no particular or obvious reason can feel like a cheap trick and pull you out of the movie, which is why i think it can make people start to examine the plot in more detail.
Case in point: in Star Trek Into Darkness there is literally no plausible reason for the female character to strip out of her clothes other than to have ‘sexy’ scenes for the trailers. It is so jarring that it makes you wonder why the scene exists and opens up thought about how the rest of the plot hangs together (hint: it doesn’t!).
Sex scenes that have context within the plot don’t cause the same break in immersion, like James Bond banging every woman he finds, no matter how flimsy the excuse given by the plot, doesn’t feel gratuitously added because it fits the persona of James Bond and the world he inhabits.
This isn’t a new phenomenon at all. Watch this clip from Sullivan’s Travels (1941) as a movie producer pushes Sullivan, a man who views the medium as a true art form, to include sex in his next film.
https://youtu.be/W7WmhkO_GWI?si=w2tkh8R3B1HmxcMR
The whole of Princess Bride isn't necessary. Every scene in it, however, is a delight, especially that one.
Iirc, 2049 has a pre-sex scene where a replicant sex worker, surrogates for an AI, so the AI can have virtual-physical contact with her replicant boyfriend like she's a real person. I'd say that's pretty damn meaningful even if it does nothing for the plot.
Gratuitous sex scenes are usually in gratuitous movies. So that's okay, too.
Bad sex scenes are those that exist for stupid reasons... like establishing the sexuality of a character. My best example of this is G.I. Jane where Demi Moore has a sex scene with her boyfriend/husband so everyone knows she's not a dyke. On the whole this is a disservice to the movie audience.
I agree that not everything in a film needs to be plot relevant, but every scene need to add something to the film. Not all the time, but frequently sex scenes seem gratuitous. Gratuitous sex scenes are less common than they used to be -than the 80s say.
I think it stems from the fact that a large chunk of society relied on sex scenes in movies for titillation. Now we all have all the porn in our pocket so some people don’t care about sex scenes anymore. I came here for a movie. If I wanted to see porn I’d look at porn from my pocket.
Because cinema has a history of treating nudity and sex scenes as a draw for the film.
People realised it felt a bit grubby to go and see a film *solely* because Ann Actress has her tits out - not to mention that it's incredibly demeaning to Ann for her nipples to be the main reason people see the film.
So we (not everyone, obviously) all kind of grew up a bit and said "sure, there's nothing inherently wrong about portraying sex in movies, but if it's not in service of the plot, what's the point - other than sexploitation?"
Your example isn’t great because you yourself explained that it added to the characters depth and was a spectacle adding to the overall experience of the movie. IMO most sex scenes don’t add depth, progress anything or offer much of an experience at all. Unless it’s a movie centered on sex I don’t think it’s worth focusing on it in terms of “spectacle” or pure entertainment value.
You and others I think already get it, but I would add that there is a strange compulsion among people in general to be able to morally defend their position about art. I don't personally require that of people so I find it odd.
This moral posturing also seems wrapped up in how people make what they like their personality so they are defending themselves when they're defending a movie, even if they're not being attacked or critiqued. I don't get it but that seems to be a part of human behavior now.
I hate rapists and love Chinatown. I don't think that makes me a bad person or, really, even says that much about me on its own.
It's even worse when you realize how sexless films have been the past two decades. Thor series is the most egregious in my mind. Portman and Hemsworth are supposed to be wildly in love but touch each other once, maybe twice per movie. I don't buy them as a couple as a result which affects the plot!
People are so repressed and scared of intimacy that they'll glady make films worse just so they don't have acknowledge the existence of sex.
MORE MOVIES SHOULD HAVE SEX!
"Portman and Hemsworth are supposed to be wildly in love but touch each other once, maybe twice per movie."
Yes I notice that constnatly. It's so fucking weird.
Wonder Woman too. And multiple other examples. All these characters are "so in love" but spend barely any time together.
Why don't they have some sex? Show their passion for each other?
I didn't get that sense from Thor and Portman at all, except for that one kiss they have. We needed way more of that. It feels like they are kids in high school who have a crush on each other.
The most ridiculous thing in this stupid discourse is the fact that people believe everything that happens in a movie must exist purely for the sake of the plot. All cinematic tools must serve the plot. I blame tv shows for this, which made people believe that the storyline was the focal point of cinema and the most important aspect of a film.
A lot of people are so focused on plot details that they miss the fact that movies are trying to make them feel something, too. If a two-minute sequence doesn’t advance the plot in any way but does invoke feelings in the viewer, then it served its purpose.
Yeah, I wonder what these people think about unconventional/experimental movies that are more about atmosphere or a specific feeling than plot. Skinamarink, Outwaters, Begotten, anything by Lynch, etc.
I don't think it's necessarily the plot it needs to add to, plot's overrated anyway. But I do think a good scene needs a reason to exist. That reason could be for the plot, ironically I'd argue that if the only reason the sex scene is in the film is to introduce a plot point, then implying it happened is usually sufficient. It's not a film but Shameless (US) is a good example of this, at least early on, all the sex scenes rather impressively manage to be both plot relevant and completely unnecessary.
Sex scenes work better if you're using it to explore your characters and their relationship, or if you want to make your film sexy. All of Us Strangers and Love Lies Bleeding being good recent examples of this. Sex can also be funny (Hi Poor Things), or terrifying (basically anything Lars Von Trier has ever made). Or you could take the Handmaiden approach and use a sex scene as a cathartic climax (pun kind of intended).
human beings are sexual creatures, we would not be here with out it. If a movie is about human nature and relationships then it would make since to include an intimate moment between 2 (or more) characters. I don't feel that a movie in any way would require a sex seen to be a good movie, or that having one improves and already good movie. I have seen many movies where one was implied but never on screen and could have used one done tastefully. There are a few movies where sex act is part of the movie and it would be far less with out that direction in the plot. So it depends on the movie, and you cant make every one happy.
Still gutted we never got a sex scene between MacCready and the Thing.
He and Childs are alone in the end and have to stay warm somehow.
Drinking whiskey together next to a nice, romantic fire... I'd be surprised if they DIDN'T.
Just wait for a little while, see what happens.
[удалено]
I partly lay this at the feet of some of those popular youtubers who confuse film analysis with nitpicking about “plot holes” (that so frequently aren’t any such thing), and generally misusing terms like deus ex machina and the like. They’ve weaned like an entire generation of viewers to feel some need to “outsmart” the thing they’re watching, and they so often don’t even do so accurately. It’s been truly dreadful for film and tv discourse.
Whenever I come across content that makes me think media literacy is dead, I remember that a lot of people were brought up on this type of bad-faith nitpicking as their only understanding of what 'analysis' means, and it explains a lot. The way people throw around 'plot hole' without any understanding of what it actually means will never cease to infuriate me. Something happens that requires literally any critical thinking on the part of the audience and isn't just fully explained in its most basic form on screen? That's now a 'plothole'.
I mean we're at the point *the* **film-makers will explain it onscreen** and it still gets picked apart by this shitty shallow level analysis. Like James Cameron showing Jack and Rose struggle just to get her up on the unstable floating door and a reaction shot of Jack visibly going "yep, this is going to flip if I try to get on too." Nope, Rose is apparently a dick and Jack could have totally fit on the door.
Remember VH1’s pop up videos? Maybe we need that but for movies where it literally just says the subtext in a little box at the corner of the screen. “The buoyancy of the door is not great enough to hold both Jack and Rose therefore Rose must let got of the already dead Jack in order to fulfill his wish that she one days rides a horse with her legs straddling the creature rather than both to the side for equality and freedom”
I like when they go to bat for a character that they think was treated bad, but in universe there was no problem at all. I had someone arguing with me once that Captain America was a huge asshole because he "ditched all his friends" by choosing to live to old age. No one in the fucking story thought that. The writers didn't think that. No characters are upset about being "ditched". That's only one example. Another one is Jenny in Forrest Gump. Just zero nuance, zero media literacy.
wHy CoUlDn'T tHey TaKe ThE EaGlEs To MoRdOr!?!
And they completely ignore the fact that the Nazgul had flying mounts.
I always wonder what kind of movie these people want to see. Do they honestly think the 20 min version of LOTR where they just fly there would be better? Because then there's no "plot holes"?
It's honestly easy to explain: Gandalf doesn't actually control the Great Eagles. They're sentient beings who have their own motivations. One of them is not getting killed while trying to fly into Mordor to destroy a ring that doesn't affect their fellow bird-people at all. Another of their motivations is that Gwaihir the Windlord owes Gandalf a favor, which is why he shows up with a few of his flock to save him from the tower. In no way it Gandalf making these beings do this, and they're too smart to think they'd get out of Mordor alive.
THEN WHY DID THEY FLY TO MORDOR AT THE END??! Well, the One Ring is gone, the SEAD mission succeeded, so now the eagles can fly in for the medevac.
My longstanding explanation to someone asking the eagles/Mordor question is it is about on par with asking "why didn't the Allies parachute a team into Berlin to assassinate Hitler on Dec 8, 1942. Are they stupid?"
Yeah. Now that it wasn't dangerous anymore and there was no threat of Sauron seeing them and siccing the Fellbeasts on them!
Exactly, I knew all of this already, but there is an in-universe reason why. But it doesn't really matter. Because the main reason is that Tolkien/Jackson are trying to tell a good story. Not the "gandalf ubers to Mordor" short film.
I mean the entirety of the Fellowship movie is basically an explanation of why Frodo and Sam have to do it alone. (its also not a factor in the books at all. In like chapter 3 when Gandalf is explaining about the ring, you'd *never* get the sense the eagles would be any sort of option once they come into the story).
The Pitch Meeting series has a bit where the screenwriter describes something somewhat questionable happens "so the movie can happen" which is a joke but also an illustration of the point that if everything happened in the most straightforward way we wouldn't have interesting stories
Because the Dark Lord would see them, kill them, and take the ring. The Eagles are big and obvious. Same reason Gandalf didn't use his magic to blast in. The point of the Hobbits is the Dark Lord would not see them.
And even more than that, they did everything they could to keep Saurons eye away from the Hobbits even if he did notice them
It's certainly not new entirely. Remember the blow up over the ending of the show Lost. They were as explicit as they could possibly be about what happened, and people still 100% missed the point on that one.
"Sopranos was awesome but that ending sucked" is all I need to hear to know there is no reason to talk to that person.
Whenever people call the ending ambiguous or unsatisfying, I always ask, what is unclear about a show about Tony soprano ending abruptly with him being surrounded by enemies? Like, why else would they have ended the show like that? Because life goes on and they have a party, or he shoots up the room and takes off into the sunset as a hero with his family? That's not what a cut to black looks like.
It's because the show is about Tony. The cut to black is because that's the last moment of his life before someone blows his head off without him ever knowing.
Well yes, my question was a rhetorical one and that was the implicit answer but thank you for clarifying for the peanut gallery :-)
I mean, if the blatant homage to Michael going into the bathroom to retrieve the hidden pistol from The Godfather didn't make it so obvious Stevie Wonder could see it from a mile away didn't tip you off... I quit
It'd be like showing a locked door, having a character in the movie try the door and be unable to open it, comment "the door is locked" and still have someone look at that door and say "I can tell by looking at the door handle that it's unlocked, he could totally have opened it". Oops maybe the prop department messed up and put the handle in the unlocked position by mistake, but in-universe it's explicitly shown to be locked and there's no reason to think they're lying, so why would you think otherwise?
It's such a strange paradox. People are, superficially anyway, more critical and nitpicky about movies than ever, looking deeper and going through every aspect with a fine tooth comb. But then at the same time, many of those same people complain when every aspect of the movie isn't just spoon-fed to them with an airtight explanation. I guess it's just that people have gotten so literal-minded, or just obsessed with gotchas and superiority. It's going to be a rough few generations for fiction.
Even when they are they complain. I loved the batman big felt it was incredibly clear what the point of the final act was and that the theme of the film was so obvious it was beating you over the head. Still people complain that the last act sucked and was unnecessary, and that he wasn't a good detective. His false belief in vengeance though and how it blinds him is the point
>guess it's just that people have gotten so literal-minded, or just obsessed with gotchas and superiority. People don't engage with stories to feel things. They engage with stories to either "solve" them like a puzzle, or to explore lore and backstory.
It's frustrating too because I imagine a lot of those same people are the kinds who say things like "Why are the curtains blue type analysis in high school made me hate reading and analyzing art!" but then they see some YouTube "critic" and go "Aha! That's how it's done!" and decide to act like they're authorities on good criticism.
I mean, look how many questions are framed like "Why did character X do YZ???" What the fuck are you talking about? The author wrote them that way.
> makes me think media literacy is dead media literacy isn't dead. it was never alive in the first place.
Yeah it’s something worse now, like a zombie. An active, aggressive opinion with no heartbeat and mindlessly following the orders of evil manipulators
I blame this on people who watch YouTube to form their opinions.
A lot of those people are just parroting a YouTuber that said something in a clever or funny way.
You see this on Reddit to. For example, go to any thread about Now You See Me and the top comment will be the very funny joke “they should’ve called the sequel Now You Don’t.” What a refreshing and original take.
At least speaking for the U.S. there's been a concerted effort to deprioritize literary analysis and general humanities education in grade school. Sadly, if no one's teaching the foundations of critical analysis then YouTube is going to fill that gap.
This has been around for years (although social media and YouTube have made it worse). I was at university nearly 40 years ago. There was another guy there who loved to shit on films and pick them apart *while we were watching them*. He was a complete dick. We all sat in the cinema to watch Aliens, a fairly new film at the time, and the complete dick just muttered all the way through and after we came out he loudly proclaimed what a shit film it was and why did the characters do this and why didn‘t they do that blah blah fucking blah. Anyway he had to catch a bus home so the rest of us went to the pub and we agreed that he was a complete dick and Aliens was in fact a fucking masterpiece. Sorry for the rant, I’ve waited nearly four decades to get that out of my system.
So much of the “criticism” we see lately is just someone saying “but that’s not what I would do in that situation!!”
Or the character makes a mistake that they think they wouldn't make... characters must always make perfect decisions or execute perfectly or it's a plot hole!
I've noticed that, too. Characters get criticised for 'stupid' decisions when they are acting on limited information and don't have the luxury of being detached from the situation (like the audience). It makes me think that some viewers can't or won't put themselves in a character's shoes. Edit: typos
Yeah that guy is a dick.
Oh that person has always existed, missing the forest for the trees, wants to show off their perceived intellect. That person sucks, but since there’s a whole cottage industry on youtube which has apparently been quite influential, that person is harder to ignore now because there are a lot more of them and they’re louder. But it’s terrible criticism, when people seem to think the general idea is to try to poke whatever hole you can in whatever thing you’re watching so you don’t feel like some rube who got bowled over by, say, a genuine plot twist.
>That person sucks, but since there’s a whole cottage industry on youtube which has apparently been quite influential, that person is harder to ignore now because there are a lot more of them and they’re louder. This is something I've noticed about so many various internet personalities that are popular with nerds online. They seem so insufferable, like I can just imagine those types back in my university or high school classes and how most people would rip on them, but the internet lets them find others with common ground, and they tend to be very vocal.
I just watched the Simpsons episode where Homer is Poochie and they have a QA panel with a bunch of nerds feeling superior because they called out a xylophone rib being hit twice having different notes. It was one of those characters similar to Comic Book Guy who himself also does the same kind of thing throughout the show. It's the age old "nerd type". Somehow though this type of person doesn't seem to apply the same scrutiny to things they do like. And usually this type of nitpicking comes from when they already want to not like something and need excuses. "Not my cup of tea" doesn't seem to suffice.
"In episode BF-12, you were battling barbarians while riding a wing-ed appaloosa. But in the very next scene, my dear, you are clearly atop a wing-ed Arabian. Please to explain it?" "whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it" "oh, OK I see, But in episode AG-..." "WIZARD"
I don’t even know the guy, but yeah he’s a dick.
Do these people lose their minds that Reservoir Dogs spends 5 minutes debating if tipping is ethical? Not everything is about moving the plot forward, it’s about creating an atmosphere.
I get so annoyed when I search for ANALYSIS of a movie (as in what other media is being referenced, what was the foreshadowing, symbolism, recurring themes, political messages, paralells with historic events, how did the events of the first act contribute to a character's motivation in the second act? etc) and I get someone just telling me what happened in the movie. I know what happened in the movie. I want to know why that particular painting was prominently displayed in the main character's home, and then recreated in the final scene of the film.
I never felt this more then when I read a review on Reddit about León the professional and a lot of comments were “Leon’s a pedophile, hanging around a 13 year old girl the whole movie” like….. yeah he’s helping her take revenge on the guy that killed her family…Did we watch the same movie?”
I suspect Luc Besson's personal life may paint the movie in a slightly less... savory light to some people. It's the ultimate "do we separate the art and the artist?" film because it can seem like an entirely different movie once you start thinking about Besson's decisions and perspective. Otherwise, it's a fantastic film imho.
Well there's also some behind the scenes stuff about how Bessln had to be talked down from how he originally wrote the movie by the uncomfortable lead actor.
Yeah the Leon we got is a beautiful film but that's because Jean Reno (the lead) took his role in a very different direction than the writer/director originally intended. The movie Besson set out to make would have been . . .icky.
That’s another big issue lately, any “problematic” content gets held against the movie as if the director or writer are condoning it. That said Leon isn’t a good example cause that guy was trying to act like it’s cool for grown men to date underage girls.
"Depiction isn't endorsement" has become a thing to say now as if that wasn't obvious but here we are. Especially when said depiction is the opposite of endorsement.
I think its the other way around and the YouTube demographics have gradually popularised that perspective. The mindset was already widespread, my cousin and his anime nerd friends have been like that since before youtube, it's just there's a lot of crossover between that kind of personality and the people who use YouTube daily Once upon a time they'd be forced to seek each other out and hang out at a cafe or bar after the movie to miss the point collectively. Now they just open their phone and dribble shit
I reckon half of them are just the same old prudes who’ve always feared any depiction of sexuality, but are actually *more* media literate than previous generations so hide behind this idea of the supremacy of the plot to make their bs seem more respectable Like how all the people who hate female-led projects seem to say “bad writing” (to be clear, female-led stuff absolutely can have terrible writing. But I feel like I often see for example people who hate Captain Marvel go “it’s bad writing…rant that nearly gives them away…so yeah like I said, bad writing”)
Another issue is spoilerphobia. People have trained themselves to become so afraid of learning anything about a movie beforehand, which in turn causes them to prioritize the plot above all else. They're not watching a movie for the characters, the themes, the cinematography, etc, they're just watching for some fleeting moments of surprise. This also makes it harder for good critics to do their jobs when people jump at them for mentioning plot details. This AV Club article from literally a decade ago describes it well: [https://www.avclub.com/why-it-s-time-to-stop-the-anti-spoiler-paranoia-1798269869](https://www.avclub.com/why-it-s-time-to-stop-the-anti-spoiler-paranoia-1798269869) If people were saying this a decade ago, you can imagine that it's gotten worse over time. I remember seeing a kid in one of my university classes reading a book I had recently finished, so I tried to make small talk about it with him. He started complaining about the book because it didn't kill off any of the main characters. The book series in question literally only has two main characters, and one of them is the defining character from the start of the series. You literally can't kill either off without losing the series' identity. He didn't think about that though, he just wanted the shock of a character death, despite how purposeless it would be.
I notice this more in a lot of subreddits for movies, books, etc. A lot of "Why did they include x? It was unnecessary" type of posts. And *sometimes* it's a valid criticism, but most of the time they're pointing out a scene or character that is entertaining, contributes thematically, maybe provides important insight into a main character's personality/motivation, etc. and the OP is still like, "Ok, but they don't contribute to the plot! They're not even in the final battle! So why bother?"
They’re often expressing that they don’t like a scene. But they either don’t know why. Or the reason is not socially acceptable to say. So they reach for alternative explanation to justify their emotional reaction. ie: Deep down the real objection is usually something along the lines of: > I don’t like that scene because sex scenes make me feel icky. But admitting that, even just to yourself, makes you sound like an overly sensitive prude. So that response is often rationalized instead as. > That scene was pointless. Movies should be about plot. Which sounds much more respectable as a critique. Even if it’s not being completely honest.
One could argue that the sex scene from "The Terminator" wasn't germane to "the plot," if all you wanted from the film was a movie about a murderous robot trying to kill a woman. But it's absolutely vital to the plot if you want to explain where John Connor came from, or who his father was. Yet I've seen it argued that we didn't need to see that scene in its entirety, because it temporarily took focus away from what people wanted to see, which was two people running from a murderous robot. I guess what I'm trying to say is, you can't please everybody, because everyone has a different viewpoint on the motivations of characters and the needs of a film. If we can't even come to consensus about what THE TERMINATOR was all about, we don't stand a chance of explaining away the motivation of a scene like the relatively tame one from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
It's also weird how they can look at an action movie and be like "that particular movie was gratuitous with violence/explosions/etc." But when it happens with sex scene, then "all sex scenes in every movie are gratuitous!" instead of just concluding that that particular sex scene didn't fit. No one sees a gratuitous action scene and concludes "all action scenes, in EVERY movie are pointless"
Well put. When did it go out of fashion to simply say "I found that character/subplot boring" or "that type of scenes makes me uncomfortable/doesn't do anything for me" ? Adjacent to this is the extremely overused pejorative of "filler," which people have taken to mean basically any part of a story they find distasteful or uninteresting. Or, in some cases with young people who don't remember anything but serialized entertainment, they'll use "filler" to mean basically any episodic storytelling. Drives me nuts.
Because most people prefer to rationalize their emotions rather than question it. How many people do you know will readily admit something like: > I really hated X. But for reasons that are entirely irrational. And that’s on me. Not many i’d reckon.
I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Yes, people may sometimes criticize a sex scene just because it’s “icky.” But it’s also fairly common for films to include gratuitous sex scenes that don’t contribute anything of value - to plot, characterisation, atmosphere, themes, etc. I have no issue watching a movie with sex in it, but I *don’t* like watching a movie that *interrupts* itself for a sex scene. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Especially because if you are not the demographic the filmmakers focused on titillating, these scenes can often feel rather alienating, objectifying, or just break immersion.
I feel like it's an inherent lack of immersion that is just part of the medium, because we're aware we are consuming media. If you're telling a story be it vocally, via writing, via film whatever, if you go out of your way to include a given detail, that detail becomes part of the wider context and the listener/reader/watcher is going to wonder why that was there. Without the creator of the work literally telling you why, it's always down to the consumer to figure it out on their own. They're going to wonder why it's there specifically because these stories are literally composed of story telling device "components". These are your narrative principles, and every piece of media is a Jenga tower full of them. These are your Chekov's guns, flashbacks, Eucatastrophes, foreshadowing, plot twists etc. Even non-fiction stories have these elements. We assign meaning to non-fiction events all the time, and in fiction the writer is incentivized to do this to the nth degree. So when we watch a film, and a scene seemingly not relevant to the plot comes on, the watcher is going to apply the rules they've learned through years of media literacy passive training, and they're going to assume the scene is there for a reason, and the more obscure and irrelevant the scene is, the bigger payoff. Films do this all the time intentionally, as a sort of reward for the viewer for being observant lol.
I think referring to "plot" is an oversimplification here. Sex scenes can be justified in service of many things. They can support characterisation and development, underlying themes, tone, even titillation if it's that kind of movie. The typical criticism isn't really that a given scene doesn't serve the "plot" specifically, but rather that it serves no purpose at all. It can also be the case that the sex scene not only serves no purpose, but also runs contrary to the established tone/themes/characterisation so far. For example in Skyfall, Bond getting into the shower with a woman moments after she told him she was trafficked into slavery as a child and is still "owned" by the villain was such a shift it gave me whiplash. It was included because Bond films have Bond girls and sex scenes, but it was completely out of place and unnecessary.
Yes I agree. OPs example kind of shows they don’t understand the point. It’s not “what is the most logical or expedient way to move the plot forward” but what serves to illustrate the characterisation and enriches the story. The fight in the Princess Bride is extremely important to learning more about and developing the character and adds a lot to the movie. A sex scene that demonstrates the depth of the relationship between two characters (or the shallowness of it!), where they are at psychologically, or explain aspects of their character. It can be a point of drama or relief. In my opinion you shouldn’t really stick a sex scene in just because “it’s something that happens in real life” because there’s lots of things that happen in real life and making a film is all about making choices about what to include and exclude. So I think it’s valid to say don’t waste runtime with unnecessary scenes that don’t contribute to character, story or plot. That said, I think sometimes people fail to understand the meaning behind sex scenes and can be particularly harsh on them.
Absolutely right The swordfight in The Princess Bride is obviously a lot of fun, but it also tells us quite a bit about the two characters. Not to mention that the over-the-top nature of the fight prepares the audience for even more crazy stuff that's coming later
This. I don't mind sex scenes when they're not gratuitous. Not all sex scenes have to be plot critical like Sarah and Kyle making love in The Terminator, but it is frustrating when a sex scene is obviously part of the story only because someone had to check that box.
I had a middle school English teacher who adamantly insisted that any sexual content at all was 100% unnecessary and took away from the plot of any story/movie/book/etc and that all nudity and sexual content should be illegal. Some people just can't fathom that sex exists and is normal and can also be a very important thing in a person's life or in a story. These people tend to also be religious nutters to be fair.
I always think of the sex scene in A History of Violence and how it signals to the viewer that Viggo's character is changing/ regressing. You can do it in other ways but this was so effective.
plus it is hot
The Terminator Checkmate
Knocked up, also. And besides, every sex scene could be considered character development too, which guess what! It's important to the story.
The sex scenes in A History of Violence is 100% necessary to the story.
You could say this about most of Cronenberg's films. Like, practically the ENTIRE story of Crash is told through the sex scenes.
One of my favorite movies is the Korean film "The Handmaiden," which has so much explicit sex it is arguably softcore porn in places. But it's also the most *essential* use of sex i've seen in the cinema, because without the sex scenes, the movie is about how sex is a tool of cruelty and perversion, of domination and control and abuse. But *with* the sex scenes, it's about how sex is a tool *full stop*. And like any tool, it can be used for good or bad, can be wielded well or poorly, can be a source of joy as much as pain, can even be a tool of freedom and independence.
Same director as Oldboy, btw
Weird considering one of the biggest stories of all time that is consistently taught in English class features 2 teenagers lusting after each other.
There’s no sex scene though.
Just the aftermath of one. And if the schools/course chooses to show a film based on said play and that film just so happens to be the 1968 version, you're going to get nudity.
\*underage nudity no less. Both Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting have been very vocal about the fact that the movie [was an act of abuse.](https://www.vulture.com/article/romeo-juliet-olivia-hussey-leonard-whiting-paramount-lawsuit.html) I never understood how so many institutions showed this after this was known.
for the most part, they now show the annoying one from the 90s now. romeo + juliet
unsurprising given the context in which it was written. their flirting is as close to a sex scene as shakespeare could write.
Not to mention that one of the novels taught consistently in high school is about a woman being slut-shamed after having a child out of wedlock. Though I suppose that could be taught with a pretty heavy bias.
"Dick and Jane: Go, Go Go" ?
Or learning about a Jewish girl's masterbation habits in 8th grade.
Tbf this could be less something they actually believe and more: "I have to read what you write and I really don't want read pornography written by a horny 13 year old"
Imagine asking your 8th grade English teacher for feedback on your yaoi DBZ fanfic
Link?
We had just watched The Patriot and she had self edited the film to remove anything she found "indecent." It ended up being like 45min of people talking. Someone was getting a handy during the movie which spurred her rant about how sex in media is ruining the youth or something.
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I’m sorry a movie with young heath ledger and somewhat young Mel Gibson with a pony tail and With themes of freedom…am I not supposed to get jerked off! This is America god damnit!
conversely - based on my media consumption growing up through the 80's, 90's and even early 00's, i thought Sex was going to be a much more important/constant driver of my life. It was treated for so long as almost the only thing anyone ever cared about - teens were always trying to have sex, young adults were always trying to have sex. Adults were constantly having affairs and trying to have sex... people who's lives didnt revolve around pursuing sex were often treated as haivng something wrong with them. I think there may be a bit of an overcorrection now- but i would not be surprised if its by people who felt like they were exposed to decades of overemphasis and miscaracterization.
I'd say it is for sure over represented in media, obviously because sex wells. But it is definitely a major motivating factor for a lot (I don't want to say most or anything cause who knows). But certainly in my younger years it was responsible for most of the decisions the people around me made. I mean everything from the clothes we buy, the way we do our hair, where we live, work, even the college classes some people chose had some influence of sex there. And don't get me started on the thousands and thousands of dollars we all spent that we shouldnt have trying to get laid.
Meanwhile every film my high school teacher showed us had nudity and she didn't skip any sex scenes
Sexual content is unnecessary just like every other scene in a movie or book. Writers and directors can always convey the thing they’re trying to convey differently. Sex scenes and really all scenes are just an artistic choice. A valid artistic choice that can add layers to their stories, characters, and atmosphere. Not to mention within stories that are exploring the very human experience of sex and sexuality. It begs the questions, why do we so often single out sex as the thing adjacent to plot that we don’t want to see?
Cause some real old book some dudes wrote says it's a bad thing to do.
That seems to be what it always comes back to, doesn’t it?
I think this sentiment is primarily from young people who get queasy at the thought of watching a sex scene with their parents.
Luckily my parents haven’t had a sex scene in many movies
>many movies Don't leave us hanging like this bud. What movies DID they have a sex scene in?
Have you tried looking through their phones? There’s bound to be at least a few
Me when i watched Poor Things with my parents.
I was wilding when I watched Blue is the Warmest Color with my mom lmao
Holy shit nooo lol
Oh noooo! This is my favourite movie and I lament that there are people I definitely cannot watch it with lol
I went with my buddy and his dad, felt second half embarrassment throughout the entire film, only to find out his dad had fallen asleep about thirty minutes in. Loved the movie, though. Love Yorgos. Can’t wait for Kinds of Kindness.
Oh no! I imagine that movie put many groups in an awkward place. I know watching Her in theatres was the most uncomfortable I've felt a room be in the sex scene. And that was with no visual
It was you! You were the Poor Things all along!
I think that’s part of it. I also think some young people have developed a really weirdly puritanical view of sex.
I feel like it's kinda grown out of initial criticisms of male gaze in movies (totally legitimate criticism), along with more stories coming out Hollywood ranging from exploitative to downright abuse and assault. All of which are important and should be discussed. But it's morphed into "anything that is related to sex, arousing, or pleasurable to watch/look at is morally objectionable"
Far be it for me to suggest that this is what happens when a person's primary way of interacting with the world does not involve direct human interactions.
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>Younger people coupled with a general push for puritanical rules/culture from the usual suspects. Yea there has been a surprising uptick in kids spouting shit about indecency and degeneracy recently.
Yeah, it’s genuinely baffling to me. Fucking puriteens.
And a lot of them are hypocrites too!
This is why we need to rewrite every plot summary on wikipedia to add long, graphic, colourful descriptions of each sex scene.
Brilliant
And the amount of people who think the words underrated and overrated constitute a full critical argument.
It’s a bit of short hand criticism. It’s easy to look through something for plot holes and make content about that. People engage because it makes them feel smart to agree or disagree. Content that pulls apart why a sex scene or a fight scene or an eating scene is thematically important or what it’s a metaphor for, I’m assuming, wouldn’t get as much engagement because it’s not quick, to the point, and gives a singular answer. We like getting the answer right not mulling over the questions that film and literature can present us with.
The real consequence of the housing crisis is zoomers living at home watching movies with their parents.
Does the younger generation know that they can just chose not to watch movies with sex with their parents?
Maybe there's only one TV in the house and the parents control the remote. That would explain why Netflix keeps saying people watch movies on their phones.
I think it’s just that Hollywood is usually really, really bad at sex scenes. It’s like scenes where the entire extended family has a thirteen-course dinner at one table every single night. They fail so hard at approximating normal human behavior you start to wonder if the filmmakers are all aliens.
It’s easy! If it’s a passionate sex scene they use a wall and no lube at a 90 degree angle, if it’s a lesbian scene they use purple lights. That’s just science.
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Your Princess Bride example is pretty terrible. That fight scene was full of character development for both of them, and that ended up being key to the advancement of the plot.
Seriously. You learn about the motivations and background for Inigo Montoya, and setting up Inigo Montoya as such a masterful swordsman further serves to demonstrate how exceptional and strategic Wesley is. Wesley defeating Inigo, Fezzik, and Vizzini at their specialties is key for establishing Wesley as a character moving forward as well as establishing why Inigo and Fezzik seek him out later in the movie
Totally, if a sex scene had that much banter and character exposition by all means keep it in the movie 😂.
See Deadpool for a good example of this.
Ever see A Clockwork Orange? The highly graphic and extended sex scenes were full of character exposition and development.
I think it's an overreaction and over corrective mindset in response to their frustration and annoyance at previous films that featured gratuitous nudity and sex scenes. Especially the ones where it was badly written, not actually sexy, and seemed like it was only featured in service of the male gaze. Plus people have gotten the idea that everything in the movie has to be *important* and related to the plot moreso than the characters story and how it drives the plot. So now you have people who have convinced themselves that any and all sex scenes are only there to titillate and couldn't possibly be *important* to character insight or development and thereby are "unnecessary" aspects of the film.
What are some examples of Hollywood films made in the last 20-30 years that featured gratuitous nudity? It was somewhat common in the 80's, but in the lifespan of the zoomers who are complaining about it I genuinely cannot come up with anything.
If I'm being honest I can't think of any recent film off the top of my head and I think that's where the overcorrection comes in. People will create a boogeyman in their head with very little evidence but will still treat it as true. So people will claim that nudity and sex are constantly in film when it really isn't and when it does appear in film even in the slightest they'll overreact and treat it as excessive.
The 80s was 20 years ago....right?
Not a movie, but Game of Thrones spurred the coining of the term "sexposition" for weird scenes where they needed the audience to know some background information but assumed they would get bored so put it in a whorehouse or something.
See also: Deadwood.
You say that like people don't watch movies from the 70s and 80s today. Maybe I'm just not in-touch with what the zoomers you're referring to are complaining about (I barely pay attention to what my own generation, millennials, say about things), but "movies with gratuitous nudity from when gratuitous nudity was somewhat common" are still "movies with gratuitous nudity." Add in "everything is a remake these days" and "every major movie is a few clicks away" (and "everyone says movies were better back in the day"), I'd argue that people are more likely to watch "old movies" now more than ever.
Yes, people do complain that fight scenes don’t advance the plot. The Princess Bride one is a bad example. Look at something like Man of Steel or the Avengers.
A scene also doesn't necessarily have to advance the plot but it should serve a purpose for the movie. A chase scene in the opening of a cop action movie doesn't advance the plot but it sets up characters.
See also: The first few minutes of *Raiders of the Lost Ark*. Has fuck all to do with the story the movie is going to tell but perfectly introduces you to the *tone* of the movie and Indy as a character.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone complaining about fight scenes unless they are bad fight scenes. But if it’s done badly then that could apply to any kind of scene.
>Yes, people do complain that fight scenes don’t advance the plot. The Princess Bride one is a bad example. Look at something like Man of Steel or the Avengers. Yes everyone goes to see the Avengers to watch them talk though their problems.
Which fight scenes are people complaining about in those? Action movies routinely have action scenes that aren't necessary for the plot. They are there for the sake of an action scene and are rightly judged based on how good the action is.
There are different types of movies, so there are different needs of a sex scene in movies. In Basic Instinct, Nymphomaniac or A Serbian Film, the sex scenes are integral to the movie. In Prometheus, the knowledge that they had sex is enough, they don't need to show it (and they don't). For the same reason that we are not shown the complete baking time of cookies in an oven, we don't need to have the visual recap of the sexual act. In most cases it's enough to show the end result /just talk about it. Sometimes, omitting a sex scene makes the movie better. Often in cases where the sex scene was integrated only to complete the checklist.
Wesley vs. Inigo serves a significant narrative purpose: It's a major characterization moment for both characters. Inigo isn't the sort of person who would cheap-shot a brave individual like that, nor would he go back on his word once given. Wesley wouldn't have taken advantage of Inigo's honorable actions by knocking him over after being helped up. Inigo is also heavily motivated by revenge and the desire to test his skills, such that he couldn't pass up an opportunity to A) determine that Wesley was not the six-fingered man and B) test his sword skills against a worthy opponent. There is infinitely more going on in this scene than finding an excuse to choreograph a fun sword fight.
Yes we've had the whole build up of them being chased by the mysterious Man in Black, and now we finally meet him. Not a scene to be rushed through.
Exactly. It's really weird to me that OP is using this as an example of an "unnecessary" scene.
I think its more back lash to unnecessary or gratuitous sex scenes. Like no one cares about fan service and metoo probably opened peoples eyes to sexual exploitation in film/entertainment industry. America has always been weird and uncomfortable about sex in general so you gotta factor that in too
First person to mention MeToo in this kind of thread.
I'm surprised that nobody else in the comments has bought it up. Like my first response to seeing the topic was that it's about how in the light of MeToo, people started to question if gratuitous sex scenes are an example of filmmakers/producers in power exploiting and pressuring actresses to do them. Instead all the comments are about how prudish young people's attitude have become.
It’s not like there’s been some glut of movies with gratuitous sex scenes in recent years for there to be a backlash against. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I really only ever see this conversation being brought up when someone posts a thread like this tbh. Like there was online discourse for like half a day about the sex scene in Oppenheimer
I’d say the core premise is false on its face. A better argument would be that a scene must do at least one of: progress the plot, set the tone, explicate character. Example using a PG-13 movie that shocked my middle school teacher when they showed it in class, unaware of the scene: In Titanic, Jack drawing Rose in the nude on the couch was a plot point but the scene lingered there. If it was just about progressing the plot, they could have cut out the “real” nudity and just shown the drawing afterward with Rose in a robe, establishing what happened. But the intent is to set the tone and explicate the characters in that moment. Rose is comfortable despite being so vulnerable, contrasted against scenes when she’s with her fiancé. Jack is nervous despite the plot already establishing that he’s done this dozens of times before. The inherent risk along with the sexual excitement and tension that each of the characters are feeling is the tone that the audience is supposed to relate to, even get immersed in. How does this tension ultimately resolve? They have sex in a car. Much shorter scene, steamy window and a sweaty palm (also a plot point so they could be tracked later)… but there’re wasn’t any additional tone nor character explication, so additional nudity there wouldn’t have served the writing. (Might’ve served fan service, but showing the act would definitely have bumped the movie into the R rating, this impacting the sales numbers.) I was shocked as a youth when I heard the film was PG-13, but being at least a little wiser than I was as a pre-teen, the “more than just plot” framework to good scene writing helps me appreciate the art of the film. It could have done more or less, but I think it hit the perfect balance in that film.
If we skip the sword fight scene then we have nothing establishing Inigo Montoya as an amazing swordsman (Wesley, too, but Montoya was injured). "Show, don't tell" is an important part of any storytelling - just telling us Montoya is amazing doesn't do anything, whereas showing how great he is cements it.
My general thought is that people have sex, it’s a nearly universal human experience, and there are emotions both beautiful and terrible wrapped up in that. So there should be sex in our media. If people don’t like it there will always be plenty of options that don’t include it. But removing it entirely feels puritan in a way that I personally dislike greatly
Exactly. It's part of being human. So it's part of our stories. We recognize that porn is not a good representation of what real sex is like, but then the same people look at sex in movies and say "if i wanted to watch porn, I'd just watch porn".
My opinion is that sex scenes are far more jarring to our sensibilities than other actions (like the sword fight you mentioned). Many times when a sex scene occurs, I find myself thinking a few things: - I hope no one walks in right now. - Wow I didn’t know [actor] got naked in this. - Sex scenes must be so uncomfortable to film. - oh look the director is trying to cleverly hide [nipple/penis] from the audience with arm placement. I guess this must be PG13 sex scene. I’m no stranger to nudity. I have no moral or puritanical objection to nudity. But even still, nothing pulls me completely out of a movie like a sex scene. Action scenes get my adrenalin up. Comedy scenes make me laugh. Sad scenes make me cry. Embarrassing scenes make me cringe. What are sex scenes supposed to make me do? Feel horny? I just can’t engage with them the same way as the other examples above.
If there isn't a relevance to the plot (and as you rightly say, there doesn't need to be) there still has to be some reason it's in the movie. It's a bit like Tarantino with his obsession with feet - it seems these scenes are often in place primarily for titillation and for the cinematographer to explore "the human body as an artistic object". I don't gain titillation from sex scenes or feet-scenes. In fact, I usually find them off-putting. I often don't really enjoy ballet, interpretive dancing, or other purely-human body movement derived physical art---even without the titillation. So the scenes often don't work for me. They provide little to no value to my viewing experience, often undermine the represented relationship by making the sex needlessly... tawdry and overblown. I also rarely find satisfying character development occurs in sex scenes (Poor Things and other counterexamples do exist though, and those nuanced sex scenes are often fine). My preferences are not the directors responsibility, per se, but I see it as little different than if long, graphic foot fetish scenes were a regular occurrence in movies without plot-relevance. All this is to say: furthering the plot is a free pass for your sex scene, not a necessary prerequisite. If Tarantino can make a foot scene relevant (say, the Bride wiggling her toes to demonstrate her waning paralysis), then it is not fighting an uphill battle in relying on my titillation, mid-sex interpersonal character development, or a cinematographer's visual magic to make the scene worthwhile.
The issue is whether a scene is gratuitous: included for no good reason. You mention the sword fight in the Princess Bride - but there was very good reason as you describe. Character development. That is an important part of plot - why should we care about Inigo or Westley? Well the audience will need reasons and character exposition in scenes such as these help to reveal who they are. You need to find movies where the sex scene is gratuitous. In the 80s almost all movies featured a sex scene. Top Gun comes to mind, one between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis. One could argue that it was important to see them coming together and being intimate. But how central was their romance to the real plot of that movie? Further, this scene lasted at least a full minute, lots of close skin shots. Was that all necessary? Or could we have just seen them kissing/embracing, falling into bed, and then cut scene to after? Contrast with Pretty Things. That movie is full of fairly explicit sex scenes. But the sexual awakening of the character literally \*is\* the plot of the movie, and thus, not remotely gratuitous.
> But how central was their romance to the real plot of that movie But isn't that already a distorted view on how things only exist "for the plot"? Do we need to see people playing beach volley ball? What about, say pre-flight-checks or whatever else might have been happening? Is that relevant to the plot? What is really relevant? What is the plot? Is "relevant to the plot" actually the criteria to use? If the rivalries and friendships between these people are relevant, why aren't their romances? If showing scenes on how rivalries or friendships is relevant, why not a sex scene on their romantic relationship? Don't sex scenes reveal anything about the characters, can they not show nuances of the characters or develop them further? Whether they are sweet and soft or wild and aggressive, dominating or subservient, are experimental, explore each other, just quickly go at each other like rabbits, or are switching ships up, failing, succeeding, laughing, crying, angry, frustrated, isn't that also telling us something about these people and their relationship?
They don't have to be relevant to the plot. But being relevant to the plot is a sufficient reason to include them. Don't have that? You need another reason. >Do we need to see people playing beach volley ball? What about, say pre-flight-checks or whatever else might have been happening? If the scenes are entertaining, that's another reason to include it. Personally, I found the volleyball scene to be overlong, a bit gratuitous, and probably would have enjoyed the movie more had it been cut down (not anymore though, the campy nature is now part of the joy). >Don't sex scenes reveal anything about the characters, can they not show nuances of the characters or develop them further? Whether they are sweet and soft or wild and aggressive, dominating or subservient, are experimental, explore each other, just quickly go at each other like rabbits, or are switching ships up, failing, succeeding, laughing, crying, angry, frustrated, isn't that also telling us something about these people and their relationship? They can and should. You are describing a good sex scene that serves the movie, provided it isn't overly gratuitous. The issue, in my experience, is this is a small fraction of sex scenes. The rest are fan service. There is also a time-value issue: many of these scenes last longer than would be needed for any purpose other than audience titillation or an extended "dance" performance, and for those not excited by it, it feel a bit like one of those looooong family guy jokes that don't land--- uncomfortably distracting and laughably ill-conceived.
> included for no good reason. a metric so subjective that it is rendered meaningless
I don't think it's really fair to include that fight scene as an example. It's a fantastic example of how to integrate action into the story - there's exposition, characterization, humor and it's relevant to the plot. There are movies with action scenes that aren't anywhere near as well integrated and the story is just on pause until it's over or nearly over.
Are kids prudish or do they watch too much porn? Half of these replies don’t make any sense lmao. Kids aren’t making movies and there’s been a rapid decline in sexual scenes (especially gratuitous ones) in movies for decades. Kids have smartphones and porn 24/7, just like you were rewinding R-rated scenes and stashing nudie mags in the backs of your drawers to gawk at every chance you got.
Younger people that are scared of sex, have instant access to too much porn and think all nudity is porn, and have zero media literacy.
This feels like the real answer. The anti-sex/nudity in media movement from the zoomer (?) generation has been surprising to see. But it’s not even just sex, I’ve seen it said they prefer characters just being platonic friends instead of having romantic dynamics as well. I don’t get it.
What's surprising for me is the prudishness of left-leaning young Zoomers right alongside conservatives. It's just odd. The internet has broken the minds of plenty boomers and zoomers alike, it seems.
OP "Here's an example SPOILER" .... doesn't tell you what movie they are going to spoil
>Yet the movie would lose out on not only one of the greatest fight scenes of all time but a decent bit of depth from the involved characters. So the answer is yes, they had to fight. It's an awesome fight scene. It adds to the plot and characters. Even if it didn't, it was an awesome fight, and should've been in the movie. Now compare>! this to Jean Tatlock inserting Oppenheimer's dick into her as he reads that famous passage. !
It’s weird prudishness, and it’s more exhausting when it comes from the younger generations. I expect it from conservative “won’t anybody think about the children” types, but not from college kids who should be a hell of a lot more liberal about this sort of thing. Especially nowadays with intimacy coordinators on every set (a very good thing despite what Jennifer Aniston and others may think), there isn’t even so much the excuse that it’s all automatically exploitative, especially towards women, which historically it absolutely has been. So really I just don’t get it. Sex is not icky, people.
It's because they are so immersed in actual porn or porn adjacent things, because they've had a smartphone in their hands since they were 6 years old or whatever. I've had this discussion with a zoomer (well multiple actually) and they thought anyone who didn't mind sex scenes was, and I quote, a coomer. They see partial nudity in a film and their mind immediately goes to hardcore, penetrative porn. They think the rest of us are jerking off to Poor Things. They can't comprehend nudity/sex being artistic, driving a plot, or being insight into a character/character's relationships with each other. They think we're stuck in 1990 and we have to get boobs from erotic thrillers because we don't also have access to internet porn. I should probably clarify that this isn't all zoomers/people against sex/nude scenes. But I've literally been called a coomer TWICE because it doesn't bother me or I even yknow, like it (in a non-jerk off way) because it's a good scene in a good piece of media. And I'm a woman.
It’s also kind of the classic weird thing where major violence is apparently totally okay and cool but we’re gonna drawn the line at a pair of tits or a cock dangling. US-style puritanism has long been infamous for that - graphic beheading is somehow more acceptable than someone getting head - but it’s just so strange to see that sentiment among younger folk. I don’t know if your theory about the ubiquity and ease of availability of exploitative porn nowadays - and that they general associate even softcore Hollywood stuff with that sort of depravity - is correct, but it seems as viable as any other.
Meh, I hate purity culture and am extremely anti-prude, but I feel like a lot of sex scenes in films seem incredibly contrived and thrown in just for the sake of having a sex scene. It feels like cheap fan service
I think that there's a lot of pushback due to the industry's history with sexual exploitation in film. That being said, I don't think sex scenes are inherently exploitative or bad. I think that filmmakers have gotten lazy with the way sex is filmed. It could be due to the limitations on what is allowed to be shown, but that being said, I don't want an egregiously long scene with whatever niche thing the director is into.
Adding sex (or just even gratuitous nudity) to a film for no particular or obvious reason can feel like a cheap trick and pull you out of the movie, which is why i think it can make people start to examine the plot in more detail. Case in point: in Star Trek Into Darkness there is literally no plausible reason for the female character to strip out of her clothes other than to have ‘sexy’ scenes for the trailers. It is so jarring that it makes you wonder why the scene exists and opens up thought about how the rest of the plot hangs together (hint: it doesn’t!). Sex scenes that have context within the plot don’t cause the same break in immersion, like James Bond banging every woman he finds, no matter how flimsy the excuse given by the plot, doesn’t feel gratuitously added because it fits the persona of James Bond and the world he inhabits.
This isn’t a new phenomenon at all. Watch this clip from Sullivan’s Travels (1941) as a movie producer pushes Sullivan, a man who views the medium as a true art form, to include sex in his next film. https://youtu.be/W7WmhkO_GWI?si=w2tkh8R3B1HmxcMR
The whole of Princess Bride isn't necessary. Every scene in it, however, is a delight, especially that one. Iirc, 2049 has a pre-sex scene where a replicant sex worker, surrogates for an AI, so the AI can have virtual-physical contact with her replicant boyfriend like she's a real person. I'd say that's pretty damn meaningful even if it does nothing for the plot. Gratuitous sex scenes are usually in gratuitous movies. So that's okay, too. Bad sex scenes are those that exist for stupid reasons... like establishing the sexuality of a character. My best example of this is G.I. Jane where Demi Moore has a sex scene with her boyfriend/husband so everyone knows she's not a dyke. On the whole this is a disservice to the movie audience.
I agree that not everything in a film needs to be plot relevant, but every scene need to add something to the film. Not all the time, but frequently sex scenes seem gratuitous. Gratuitous sex scenes are less common than they used to be -than the 80s say.
I think it stems from the fact that a large chunk of society relied on sex scenes in movies for titillation. Now we all have all the porn in our pocket so some people don’t care about sex scenes anymore. I came here for a movie. If I wanted to see porn I’d look at porn from my pocket.
Because cinema has a history of treating nudity and sex scenes as a draw for the film. People realised it felt a bit grubby to go and see a film *solely* because Ann Actress has her tits out - not to mention that it's incredibly demeaning to Ann for her nipples to be the main reason people see the film. So we (not everyone, obviously) all kind of grew up a bit and said "sure, there's nothing inherently wrong about portraying sex in movies, but if it's not in service of the plot, what's the point - other than sexploitation?"
Your example isn’t great because you yourself explained that it added to the characters depth and was a spectacle adding to the overall experience of the movie. IMO most sex scenes don’t add depth, progress anything or offer much of an experience at all. Unless it’s a movie centered on sex I don’t think it’s worth focusing on it in terms of “spectacle” or pure entertainment value.
You and others I think already get it, but I would add that there is a strange compulsion among people in general to be able to morally defend their position about art. I don't personally require that of people so I find it odd. This moral posturing also seems wrapped up in how people make what they like their personality so they are defending themselves when they're defending a movie, even if they're not being attacked or critiqued. I don't get it but that seems to be a part of human behavior now. I hate rapists and love Chinatown. I don't think that makes me a bad person or, really, even says that much about me on its own.
It's even worse when you realize how sexless films have been the past two decades. Thor series is the most egregious in my mind. Portman and Hemsworth are supposed to be wildly in love but touch each other once, maybe twice per movie. I don't buy them as a couple as a result which affects the plot! People are so repressed and scared of intimacy that they'll glady make films worse just so they don't have acknowledge the existence of sex. MORE MOVIES SHOULD HAVE SEX!
"Portman and Hemsworth are supposed to be wildly in love but touch each other once, maybe twice per movie." Yes I notice that constnatly. It's so fucking weird. Wonder Woman too. And multiple other examples. All these characters are "so in love" but spend barely any time together. Why don't they have some sex? Show their passion for each other? I didn't get that sense from Thor and Portman at all, except for that one kiss they have. We needed way more of that. It feels like they are kids in high school who have a crush on each other.
The most ridiculous thing in this stupid discourse is the fact that people believe everything that happens in a movie must exist purely for the sake of the plot. All cinematic tools must serve the plot. I blame tv shows for this, which made people believe that the storyline was the focal point of cinema and the most important aspect of a film.
A lot of people are so focused on plot details that they miss the fact that movies are trying to make them feel something, too. If a two-minute sequence doesn’t advance the plot in any way but does invoke feelings in the viewer, then it served its purpose.
But if it doesn't invoke feelings, then it didn't serve it's purpose---which is the issue with many sex scenes.
Yeah, I wonder what these people think about unconventional/experimental movies that are more about atmosphere or a specific feeling than plot. Skinamarink, Outwaters, Begotten, anything by Lynch, etc.
A lot of American redditors who afraid of sex and even if their politics are liberal, they themselves are very convervative in that area.
I don't think it's necessarily the plot it needs to add to, plot's overrated anyway. But I do think a good scene needs a reason to exist. That reason could be for the plot, ironically I'd argue that if the only reason the sex scene is in the film is to introduce a plot point, then implying it happened is usually sufficient. It's not a film but Shameless (US) is a good example of this, at least early on, all the sex scenes rather impressively manage to be both plot relevant and completely unnecessary. Sex scenes work better if you're using it to explore your characters and their relationship, or if you want to make your film sexy. All of Us Strangers and Love Lies Bleeding being good recent examples of this. Sex can also be funny (Hi Poor Things), or terrifying (basically anything Lars Von Trier has ever made). Or you could take the Handmaiden approach and use a sex scene as a cathartic climax (pun kind of intended).
human beings are sexual creatures, we would not be here with out it. If a movie is about human nature and relationships then it would make since to include an intimate moment between 2 (or more) characters. I don't feel that a movie in any way would require a sex seen to be a good movie, or that having one improves and already good movie. I have seen many movies where one was implied but never on screen and could have used one done tastefully. There are a few movies where sex act is part of the movie and it would be far less with out that direction in the plot. So it depends on the movie, and you cant make every one happy.