Superheroes need loving, too.
In a recent interview, Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven, Magic Mike) was asked if he’d ever consider directing a superhero movie, to which he said no, with one of the primary reasons being:
“For me to understand the world and how to write or supervise the writing of the story and the characters – apart from the fact that I can bend time and defy gravity and shoot beams out of my fingers – there’s no fucking.
“Nobody’s fucking! Like, I don’t know how to tell people how to behave in a world in which that is not a thing.”
Late in 2021, after 25 previous entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Eternals featured the series’ first sex scene, filmed entirely from the waist up, with next-to-zero carnal enjoyment visible on screen.
Before comic book adaptations became the single most profitable and popular types of movie around, there was violence and there was sexiness.
That all went away practically overnight in 2008, thanks to the one-two punch of The Dark Knight and Iron Man, two massively successful blockbusters that were made for as wide an audience as possible, which means the tempering of violence and complete removal of sex.
There have been some exceptions to the rule over the last decade or so – Deadpool got up to some kinky stuff, and Harley Quinn had a fun time with that evil dictator in The Suicide Squad – but for the most part, it seems like superheroes are so preoccupied with saving the world, they made no time for sexy times.
Remember, these are usually some incredible attractive people, traditionally clad in form-fitting, body-moulded outfits, sometimes made entirely out of leather.
They are merely a set of wrong directions away from fitting right in at a BDSM convention, and movies like Batman Returns and Watchmen were completely aware of that.
And, thankfully, so is The Batman.
We spoke to Colin Farrell about the inherent sexiness of the Batman franchise, to which he said:
“I think the relationship between [Batman] and [Catwoman] in this film is really romantic and really painful, as well. And the relationship between Michael Keaton’s Batman and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman was also really romantic and sexually charged, but also kind of heartbreaking.
“You got the sense that these people should be together, because they couldn’t be. They’re too alike, their pain is too legion.
“They’re too early on in the unravelling of the degree of pain that compels them to be the way they are. The same thing that should have them together is the same thing that makes that impossible.”
Back in 1992, Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle’s sexual chemistry absolutely popped off the screen, as they both fought with/against Oswald Cobblepot, a man who went on a killing spree when his sexual advances were rejected.
There is also a scene where The Penguin bites the nose off a competing male to impress a woman, pure animal instinct stuff.
Three years later, Nicole Kidman’s Chase Meridian verbalises the in-built kinkiness of fancying the dark knight in Batman Forever: “What is it about the wrong kind of man? In grade school it was boys with earrings, high school; motorcycles; college, leather jackets. Now… ahhh. Black rubber.”
Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face is clearly in a polyamorous relationship with Sugar (Drew Barrymore) and Spice (Debi Mazar), and it was never entirely clear who Jim Carrey’s Edward Nygma was more infatuated with, Chase Meridan or Bruce Wayne?
Jump forward another two years, Batman & Robin gave audiences costumes complete with moulded nipples and longing close-ups of Bat-butts.
But once Christopher Nolan took over the franchise, all that horniness that felt like an integral part of Batman’s DNA was gone.
And when Nolan’s sexless take on superheroes proved popular, it influenced all of them.
However, as Farrell notes above, Pattinson and Kravitz’s takes on the characters in The Batman do successfully bring back a certain horny energy that has been almost entirely missing for a very long time.
Their versions of Batman and Catwoman clearly do fancy each other, a lot, so much so that they can’t help but express those feelings even when they’re in the middle of a punch-up.
A lot has been said – even by us – about how this new version of the caped crusader skews its story to a much darker, more adult place, thanks to borrowing themes and moods from Se7en, Zodiac, and The Silence of the Lambs.
But it is also fantastic to see that director and co-writer Matt Reeves has also remembered that Batman, his fellow superheroes, and the entire rogues’ gallery are, as Steven Soderbergh wanted, behaving like people in the real world, and people in the real world get horny sometimes.
When they’re not actively trying to save and/or destroy Gotham, obviously.
The Batman is in Irish cinemas right now.
Clips via Warner Bros UK & Ireland
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