For many years now, there has been LGBTQ+ representation in films and TV/web series that the audience has witnessed. Over the years, people celebrate the community on screen and many also broke several grounds, thus pushing cinema as a whole way forward. However, LGBTQ+ films have essentially always been focused on dramas, documentaries, biographies, and comedies in the past. After a long-overdue exploration of newer genres, many films, and shows in the west are now focusing on those which usually did not have representation of the community, such as action, horror, and thriller films. So here’s a list that shows how the west, who didn’t move away from the usual genres of having LGBTQ+ representation until quite recently, have entered newer ones with these movies and shows.
Eternals
Marvel is finally featuring its first LGBTQ relationship with an onscreen kiss after over a decade of superhero movies. Eternals is an upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film that stars Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta) as Phastos, a.k.a. the first openly gay superhero in a Marvel movie, and Haaz Sleiman (Little America), who plays his husband.
Spiral
Spiral is a one of its kind, a queer-themed horror film in which a same-sex couple moves to a small town to enjoy a better quality of life and raise their daughter with strong social values, but when their neighbors throw a very strange party, nothing is as it seems in their picturesque neighborhood. The film that is unapologetically gay creates horror in the prejudice it highlights of a society where the worst of us will hurt and exploit minorities for our own sense of strength and pleasure. Spiral is now streaming on Prime Video in India.
Benedetta
Benedetta is an upcoming horror film. Set in the 17th century, the film follows a lesbian nun who was prone to visions and displayed the stigmata – supernatural wounds that mimic the injuries inflicted on Jesus during the crucifixion. This Paul Verhoeven film is adapted from Judith C. Brown’s book Immodest Acts: The Life Of A Lesbian Nun In Renaissance Italy.
The Old Guard
While this film could easily be termed as a classic action movie with plenty of guns and blood, there’s a lot more going on inside The Old Guard. One of the biggest key elements to the story is a gay relationship between two members of the immortal “Old Guard”, the characters of Joe and Nicky. Greg Rucka, who wrote the original graphic novel and also adapted the screenplay has said that the relationship was very important to him as he wanted the audience to see a queer relationship that was perfectly happy.
WandaVision
WandaVision is a sitcom that gave the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the very first gay character in Wanda Maximoff’s (Elizabeth Olsen) son Billy (Julian Hilliard). Billy aka Wiccan is one half of Marvel’s most prominent gay couple in the comics. Ever since the grown-up, version of Billy made his debut, he’s been romantically entangled with another teen superhero called Teddy Altman, otherwise known as Hulkling. After Billy, the next LGBTQ+ representation we will see in the MCU is The Eternals.
Velvet Buzzsaw
Jake Gyllenhaal played a queer art critic in Netflix satirical-thriller, Velvet Buzzsaw and this was his first gay role since his 2005 Brokeback Mountain. Gyllenhaal’s character, Morf Vandewalt, is a conceited and pretentious art critic, who begins the film in a relationship with a man. While Vandewalt’s sexuality is never explicitly stated in the film, the character gives a rare example of sexual fluidity in film as he quickly becomes enamored with Zawe Ashton’s character, a gallerist named Josephina.
Green Lantern Series
HBO Max as per the latest Hollywood Reporter for its series on Green Lantern has cast actor Jeremy Irvine. He will play the iconic superhero who was only in 2021 revealed to be a gay character and was said to have a boyfriend named Sam Zhao.
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