Steven Soderbergh has helmed a variety of iconic movies, including the original Ocean’s trilogy, Erin Brockovich, Sex, Lies and Videotapes, and, of course, two of the three Magic Mike movies. This week will see the release of his third film in the male stripper saga, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, which is already generating a lot of buzz. The first two films were sensations, performing well critically and commercially. While the films feature several scenes from the strip clubs with all kinds of sexy dancing, they don’t feature many actual sex scenes, and now the famed director is detailing why.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the Contagion director discussed his approach to directing and how he chooses his projects. He also talked about his approach to the Magic Mike films and what plot elements are important to him when approaching a controversial subject matter. When asked why the Magic Mike franchise doesn’t feature many sex scenes, Soderbergh explained:
Everybody has a different attitude about [sex]. To me, it’s about sexy. It’s not about the sex, per se, and whether the movie is explicit. There’s no nudity in Out of Sight. There’s no nudity in Magic Mike’s Last Dance. There’s not even a thong. And yet, it was our desire to make a sexy movie.
Clearly the visuals and suggestive nature of the film is more interesting to the director than sex scenes. Based on much of his previous work, Soderbergh has much more of an interest in building tension and chemistry than he does choreographing explicit sequences. There is a lot more to the Magic Mike films than the subject matter suggests, and the director seems more keen on building character and a story than titillating scenes. The filmmaker further detailed his approach, saying:
What’s sexy is intimacy and genuine emotion. Something that feels alive, and electric, and has the potential for vulnerability. That can be sexy. You’re letting somebody inside your heart and that’s scary. You can get hurt. The really radical thing to do right now, it seems to me, as opposed to showing the beginning of the relationship when there’s all this heat and light because of the attraction –that’s easy — is to show people who’ve been married for twenty years for whom that’s still true. Where you don’t even make a big deal of it. They’ve been together for twenty years and they’re still into each other in that way.
Soderbergh seems to take his characters and his stories seriously. While there is clearly a sexy story at the center, much of the plot of the Magic Mike films centers around the world around the stripper shows and the blue collar nature of the characters involved. The director truly gets great performances out of the cast, and while Matthew McConaughey was snubbed from the awards circuit for the first film, many considered his performance to be Oscar-worthy. Magic Mike’s Last Dance will likely be no different, especially with Selma Hayek in the mix this time around.
Basic plot details of Magic Mike’s Last Dance have already been revealed. The third installment is once again centered around Channing Tatum’s Mike Lane, who returns to stripping after a bad business deal goes wrong. He goes to London, where a socialite offers him an opportunity to assemble a new roster of dancers for a show. The film looks even steamier and sexier than the first two Magic Mike movies, so there is a lot to anticipate. Along with Soderbergh, the film marks the return of screenwriter Reid Carolin, who wrote and produced the other films in the franchise.
Magic Mike’s Last Dance hits theaters on February 10th, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Fans of the franchise looking to revisit Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL ahead of the last film’s release can do so now with an HBO Max subscription. For more information on other films hitting theaters this year, make sure to check out CinemaBlend’s 2023 movie release schedule.