Starting from actor Henry Cavill’s sharing about hating to play hot scenes, the entertainment industry once again erupted into debate whether 18+ segments are necessary in the movie.

Hot scenes overshadow the acting

In early February, while participating in the Happy Sad Confused podcast with director Matthew Vaughn, Henry Cavill declared that he was not a fan of the film’s hot scene.

He admits there are instances where sex scenes actually benefit the film, not just to entice the audience. However, the actor, born in 1983, thinks that sensitive segments seem to be overused in current filmmaking. That led him to question whether it was really necessary or just people wearing fewer clothes.

Henry Cavill argues that movies today are abusing hot scenes. Picture: Allstar.

The 41-year-old Superman added that it is possible for writers and directors to add hot scenes for storytelling purposes, but fans are unlikely to notice that aspect, focusing only on the actor’s naked body.

With 18+ images flooding TV and movies today, Cavill is like a lone moral crusader fighting for his own ideals. However, another character takes the initiative to come to his side. She is a veteran performer, undergoing many changes on screen and has a deep enough understanding of the demands that force actors to undress in the name of art.

On Radio Times, Joanna Lumley said she wanted to cut out sex scenes in the film entirely.

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“The moment you take off your clothes, the audience will look at you, your actors, and your features — what your breasts and genitals look like. You immediately lose the character you built. There’s a playground element in it — pull your pants down and see what you have. I’ll cut them completely. They slow things down. They are rude and terrible,” the actress, who was born in 1946, said.

The British emcee emphasized that nudity is considered something that all female actors have to endure, including veteran stars like Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Christie …

According to Joanna Lumley, the hot scene only distracts the audience, affecting the flow of the film. Picture: Getty Images.

A 2019 study found that films produced in the 2010s had fewer nude scenes than in other years since the 1960s. Specifically, only 1.21% of films produced in the 2010s featured nudity. This may be because the context has changed.

In the past, directors did not think about making a star undress just to get an innocuous moment of agitation that made them face the fact nude scenes would exist forever on the Internet at the present time.

In October 2023, a survey of 1,500 teens conducted by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) found that demand for on-screen is declining.

The majority of respondents said sex was unnecessary in the film to serve the plot progression, while many expressed a desire to see a greater focus on platonic friendship.

Is Henry Cavill wrong to criticize hot scenes?

However, the above research appears to be outdated. 2023 sees the rise of works filled with bold and unusual hot scenes. Of course, not all of those hot scenes are necessary.

Despite the long and fierce debate about how much she despises women, Poor Things is the story of a woman who uses sex to build her entire personality. So removing the 18+ image will deprive the movie of its heart.

But if we remove the hot scene in Oppenheimer, which includes the scene where Florence Pugh takes off her shirt, we are left with a version of the “father” of the full atomic bomb, only slightly shorter.

The hot scene is considered the heart of Poor Things.

The same is true for television. HBO’s disaster series The Idol feels like it was created as nothing more than a medium for nudity, with the intention of attracting the attention of audiences like other films before it. But the results were terrible, because what remained was just countless meaningless nude scenes.

The focus of the entire production is on the actors’ unclothed bodies. The cost is the characters, the plot and even lackluster acting skills. The film fails for a reason Lumley gave in the Radio Times — which is to “pull down your pants and see what you have.”

If audiences really just want to see nude actors, it’s easy for them to find even more authentic footage on the Internet. Why should they subscribe to an expensive movie streaming service to watch outdated stuff on TV series when everyone has a cell phone and wifi?

In The Guardian, British writer Stuart Heritage has an essay analyzing why Henry Cavill was wrong to criticize the hot scene.

The author of Bedtime Stories for Worried Liberals says this view can be rooted in personal experience. The actor’s first film Hotel Laguna was filled with superfluous, boring sex scenes. Similarly, The Tudors TV project is littered with ridiculous footage.

“Maybe if you spent years of your life unhappily suffering in front of your coworkers knowing that your moment of vulnerability would be forever held on the Internet without any context, you wouldn’t care about the idea of (playing a hot scene)” either,” Heritage writes.

However, Heritage thinks that mindset could change if Henry Cavill works with the right director. The proper encouragement, the good script, and the chance to take home an Oscar probably helped him soothe his attitude towards on-screen sex, even feeling amused.

Heritage points to Poor Things, All of Us Strangers, and Saltburn as exemplifying how hot scenes are essential to the plot and so exciting.

“The Idol” represents movies that contain pointless, lousy hot scenes. Photo: HBO.