Cutting the kissing from Twisters is a symptom of a bigger problem

Believe it or not, there was a time when movies were made primarily with grown-ups in mind. Studios trusted that we could handle a few swear words, a bit of blood, some complex themes and, above all, a little bit of sex.

That isn’t so much the case anymore. Modern movies seem to have lost a lot of the spark that made the cinema primarily feel like a space for adults.

Just look at the release of Twisters, the sequel to the 1996 disaster classic of (almost) the same name. Despite receiving decent reviews, the film came under fire after backstage footage surfaced which revealed that a scene was filmed, but not used, featuring leads Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell sharing a passionate “we survived the evil tornadoes” kiss.

According to the actors, the decision to cut the scene came from Steven Spielberg, with Edgar-Jones saying that she felt the change helped the film avoid feeling “cliché”. I’m not sure what’s so cliché about two attractive people sharing a kiss after a life-or-death situation. Perhaps a firm handshake would be more avant garde.

This isn’t an isolated incident. It feels like the sex and romance that used to be such a key part of our blockbusters have been drained away in recent years, replaced instead with child-friendly, Disney-approved, bubble gum flavoured abstinence. What romance we do get is often chaste and perfunctory, instead of the sweaty, groping displays of the 1990s.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as big a man-child as they come. I went to the midnight release of Deadpool. My Funko Pop collection is vast and alarming. But this bottom-up approach to filmmaking, where a “family” movie starts with kids and only caters to mum and dad as an afterthought, instead of the other way around, is starting to get a little tedious.

A big part of the issue is that a small but vocal group of extremely-online scolds are ready and willing to brand any public display of sexuality as being somehow tantamount to grooming, or assault, or some other terrible word that you really shouldn’t be using just because you’re upset somebody took their top off in a movie that also featured 50 people being shot to death (they don’t seem as concerned about that second thing, weirdly).

It isn’t just the hyper-conservative elderly Mary Whitehouses of the world doing it, either – Gen Z have been labelled “puriteens” for their pathological aversion to all things sex and sex-adjacent. It’s no surprise that filmmakers might be concerned with scaring off younger people, on whose shoulders the entire dying industry rests – and instead rely on broad, safe themes that won’t get them in trouble.

It isn’t just our cultural infantilisation that’s the problem, of course. A big part of the issue is that the cinematic experience has fundamentally changed. You used to be able to head to the cinema, drop a reasonable amount of cash on a ticket and a few snacks and walk out 90 minutes later, happy as an (uncensored) clam.

But with the rising price of tickets and concessions, plus competition from a thousand sources of free entertainment, cinemas are now facing more pressure than ever to convince you to give them your time, money and attention.

If you’re going to drop $100 on an experience when you could instead be watching YouTube in your underwear, Hollywood wants to make damn sure you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth. That means more spectacular, significantly longer movies that are big on spectacle and low on controversy.

Every big movie now is designed to appeal to all four “quadrants” of the market – older men, older women, younger men and younger women – in order to maximise profits. That means not committing to any one theme, message or topic too hard or for too long: after all, you wouldn’t want to alienate anybody.

Likewise, the desire of most studios to make it big overseas often means that anything that could go against another country’s cultural norms ends up on the cutting room floor. Filmmakers have been caught removing – and adding – entire characters and subplots to films to appeal to international audiences, and avoid the wrath of foreign censors. This results in tonally inconsistent blockbusters that feel designed to appeal to everybody and nobody, all at once.

Ultimately, the problem is that movies have primarily become high-stake bets that studios place with shareholder money, instead of an industry where it’s generally accepted there will be ups and downs, profits and losses. A mid-budget action film or comedy with some raunchy bits designed to appeal to some – but not all – viewers isn’t going to make a billion dollars at the box office, so why bother? Go big or go home (but don’t you dare have sex when you get there).

But maybe the outrage over Twisters represents a sea change. I hope so. Not everything needs to be made with kids, prudes and scolds in mind. Some of us just want to be treated like adults.