What's the point of bloody sex scenes? Is there a single film that's genuinely needed one?

[IncompleteSenten]

They're everywhere. I'm just waiting for the next bloody Harry Potter film to be Harry Potter And The Beast With Two Backs.

What's the point of them? I've never watched a film in my life where I've gone ahh, well, i was a bit confused but now i saw that bit of sweaty nudity and theatrical groaning I totally get the characters and the plot.

It's ridiculous. I'm watching a film and all of a sudden I've got two naked professional fakers writhing around on screen for no discernable reason.

This is in chat not aibu because I'm not. I bet none of you can name a film that badly needed us to see the characters fucking.

Porn films are obviously excluded. I accept that without the sex, we simply won't understand why the pizza delivery guy was happy not getting £18.95 for the cheese crust large ham and pineapple.

I was going to make a joke about stuffed crust but I'm a better person than that.

There's been a LOT of exploitation of actors, especially the young female ones. Brando committing on screen assault in Last Tango in Paris, the Game of Thrones actresses. Why the intimacy coordinator/director has recently become a thing, and one which a lot of directors and actors resent.

And what about the soaps ? (Well Corrie, I don't watch any others)

They're all at it and it's totally unnecessary.

I find the older I get the more I channel my inner Mary Whitehouse!

YES....I thought it was just me. There's just no need at all. It's just CRINGE!!

I think it depends on the film you are watching!!
For example how could you make a film like 'the piano teacher' without sex scenes?
It's literally about those scenes.
There's many other films I can think of where the sex scenes are integral to the plot but they are mostly more serious films..
Apart from 'Poor Things' but I guess it's still not really a mainstream film.. altho it did win oscars??

Then commercial romcoms.. obviously they are made to make money and sex sells. A lot of people want to see the hot actors get it on.

Actions movies for men.. men like tits I guess?

I mean the answer is either for money or for art.

I've seen films where I thought the sex scenes were both irrelevant and embarrassing..
But equally I've seen films where the lack of sex and nudity seemed odd..
I've seen films where I thought they hot it just right..
I've seen films where the sex scenes have been very uncomfortable but that's been a main point of the film.

I can't sit through Fifty Shades of Grey tho... not coz I'm a prude but just because its so cringeworthy I find it unwatchable.
Bridgerton too...
But other people love it and that's fine.

I have sat through films like 'Antichrist' and 'Love' which have real unsaturated sex scenes in them..
I don't know why I found that easier than sitting through Bridgerton..
I guess that says some things about me...

surely you mean ex husband?

I think some films sex scenes are necessary, I think in Fatal Attraction they are well done and add to the story, not too vulgar etc.

well I for one like them if they are done well.

The one in Deadpool is brilliant

The sex scene in atonement is crucial to the plot and really well done. Probably because of what you don’t see.

Presumably lots of people enjoy and are entertained by sex scenes?

Might also be exciting on a date with someone newish, to watch something a bit raunchy, without going full porn.

It's not a sex scene but the one film that really annoyed me was The Kingsman. Towards the end the character played by Taron Egerton is running around a place where people have been kidnapped and held and the Princess of somewhere or other promises she'll let him give her anal sex if he lets her out (can't remember how it's worded). I absolutely detest that scene. That that's the reason to release her, not because it's the decent human thing to do!!

I know, I know, it's only a film, and a comedy at that but it makes my teeth grate.

Back in the day, sex scenes were titillation for the viewer, a chance to get an eyeful and therefore an important selling point for the film. Nowadays, the ubiquity of porn has made sex scenes in mainstream movies redundant so I struggle to see the point of them. Why watch a simulation when the real thing is a few clicks away on your phone?

Four weddings and a funeral where Hugh Grant's character is stuck in a cupboard while the couple are bonking with wild enthusiasm is quite funny.

Yes!! I remember seeing that and thought ‘eh?!’ Didn’t get the point at all!

I'm with you OP. It's not too bad if watching with DH but if DD is there too we all just sit in silence watching 2 people having sex on screen and it feels weird tbh.

I'm looking at you Bridgerton 😒

It’s all gratuitous. You never got them in the old movies and we weren’t befuddled or confused by the lack of them. I don’t watch films with them in because they’re an insult to people’s intelligence. (I’m not a prude). It annoys me that they stick them in films that you should be able to watch with all family members, it’s so cringey. One thing you can guarantee - if they remake a good older film that didn’t have sex scenes they’ll add them to the remake.

Actually I was just thinking of Harvey Weinstein. He made the writers put in explicit sex scenes - some control and humiliation of the female actors.
For example, one of the conditions for making Freida was that Hayek had to perform in a same sex scene.

You can say that about things like violence in films as well. If you take all the bits out of a film that aren't absolutely bare bones strictly necessary, you may as well just read the screenplay and crack on with your day.

Oh yes, I remember those sex scenes with Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara. And I almost forgot about those scenes in Casablanca and Brief Encounter (a title that would demand sex scenes you’d think).

Yes it needs to be signposted by sex scenes in movies that the characters have chemistry or we’d never know.

Would the sex scenes not also be written in the screenplay?

But... Did it need to show actual sex to convey all that? Granted there was a gap, it could surely have been dealt with differently. Think, for example of the train entering the tunnel at the end of North by Northwest.

It was gratuitous in the extreme, and incongruous.

YADNBU

It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen it but if I remember correctly the scene in ‘The Big Easy’ was sexy and not gratuitous.

The Big Easy. It shows the change in the relationship and control.

I think the line for where soft porn starts has been blurred for sometime. I don’t think it is necessary, definitely crept into more tv dramas.

Annoys me when there is a scene after a couple have been in bed for example and it is deemed necessary for the woman to sit up with her naked boobs on show whilst they have a conversation.

I do worry about young actors being made to feel it is necessary to do these scenes to get on in the business.