The five most needless erotic movie scenes in Hollywood history
It wasn’t until the 1960s – when Hollywood censorship began to ease – that cinema began to show more graphic content in the mainstream. From violence and drug use to sex and nudity, filmmakers were pushing the boundaries, shocking many audiences in the process.
The first ever sex scene in a mainstream film occurred in 1933’s Ectascy, starring Hedy Lamarr, although it was hardly explicit. It took a few more decades before more graphic depictions of sex and nudity began to be shown. Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 movie Blow-Up didn’t contain particularly graphic erotic scenes, but there was plenty of nudity and implied sex. The success of the film was a groundbreaking moment for cinema, opening the floodgates for more provocative pieces of work.
In the ‘70s, it became more common for unsimulated erotic scenes to feature, such as in Caligula and In the Realm of the Senses. Now, most of us don’t blink an eye when some form of erotic imagery appears on our screens, whether that be in a Hollywood blockbuster or an experimental indie flick.
However, there are some movies that feature erotic scenes that simply feel gratuitous and needless. Sometimes, they’ve been put there to attract more viewers and cause controversy, and in many cases, the objectifying gaze of certain male directors comes into play.
The most needless erotic scenes:
Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)
Andrew Dominik’s Blonde was a vile and exploitative exploration of Marilyn Monroe’s life, painting her as nothing more than a troubled, tragic figure and a victim. Ana de Armas starred as the Hollywood icon, spending much of the runtime cowering in corners, crying or appearing naked.
It’s clear that Dominik did not have Monroe’s best interests at heart, playing into a media image of her as some kind of pathetic, helpless woman. In an interview with Sight and Sound, he even called the movie “a rescue fantasy.” Yet it also feels like a sexual fantasy, with countless scenes showing de Armas naked or having sex sprinkled throughout. There’s even a rape scene which has no historical accuracy – Dominik just put it into the film.
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)
Martin Scorsese released The Wolf of Wall Street in 2013, attempting to depict the excessive lifestyle of Jordan Belfort, a businessman who committed extensive fraud, damaging many people’s lives as a result. While the film aims to show his downfall, it revels in lavishness and debauchery a little too much, with Scorsese showing us extensive shots of the characters engaging in sex and drugs.
Some viewers might argue that these scenes of naked women being used as objects, such as when we see Leonardo DiCaprio snort cocaine off their bodies, are necessary to highlight the way Belfort was living. But with a lack of developed female characters elsewhere, these scenes of Belfort merely using women – and even shots of Margot Robbie appearing fully naked – feel totally unnecessary and irrevocably tied to the male gaze.
Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
Inglorious Basterds is widely heralded as one of Quentin Tarantino’s greatest movies, with critics praising the filmmaker’s violent exploration of Nazi-era Germany. Starring Christoph Waltz, Eli Roth and Brad Pitt, the movie retained Tarantino’s signature style while featuring many real-life people in its fictional narrative, such as Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill and the actor Emil Jannings.
However, in one scene, Tarantino sets up a meeting between Joseph Goebbels, the horrific Nazi propaganda minister, with a translator. Then, out of the blue, there’s a clip lasting just a few seconds, which sees Goebbels having sex with her from behind. He makes odd noises, and while it’s meant to be funny, it feels totally needless – positing the translator as a sex object for one of history’s most evil men to use for his own pleasure.
Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986)
Many people believe that Top Gun is laden with homoerotic subtext, with Tarantino going as far as to suggest that the whole movie is about Tom Cruise’s Maverick struggling to come to terms with his sexuality. While this does make for a compelling theory, we see Maverick engage in heterosexual romance when he gets with Charlie, played by Kelly McGillis.
There’s a random sex scene between them shoehorned in, which many viewers have labelled as cringeworthy. The moment was actually filmed after production as a result of a test-screening audience’s response. This leaves us wondering if it was actually necessary at all.
Eternals (Chloé Zhao, 2021)
After Chloé Zhao made the stunning Oscar-winning movie Nomadland, she signed on to make Eternals, the 26th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It seemed like an odd choice, and Zhao certainly brought her background as an independent filmmaker to the project. Unfortunately, it didn’t do amazingly, with Zhao’s skills as a director failing to translate for such a spectacle.
Zhao did, however, bring the first-ever sex scene to the Marvel Universe with Eternals, although it’s hardly graphic. We see Gemma Chan and Richard Madden’s characters getting it on, and while it’s interesting to acknowledge this as a Marvel first, we must ask why it was necessary. It hardly adds anything to the film, and it just feels a little out of place.