Why You Might Not Want To Dismiss The ’50 Shades of Grey’ Movie

This came up when I Google searched 50 Shades. I don’t know why Michael Bay is involved, but I’m into it

Yesterday, people like this found themselves in a furry over the casting decisions for the 50 Shades of Grey movie. Charlie Hunnam and Miss Golden Globes 2006 Dakota Johnson in the lead roles of Edward & Bella Christian & Anastasia. Apparently Charlie Hunnam is not good enough for the fans of this book. Apparently, the fans are delusional enough to have thought that Robert Pattinson would have actually signed on for this. His career may have stalled but he’s smarter than this.

Anyway, I have no real opinion on Hunnam or Johnson because I haven’t and never will read the books, but I like Hunnam well enough and thought Dakota did a wonderful job handing out the Golden Globes that one year she did. But let’s take a minute to deflate the delusional one more time: no big names were ever going to sign onto this. Not only because it’s “risky” (sure) but because there is no prestige surrounding this. It’s essentially Mommy Porn. This isn’t The Hunger Games where legitimate actors are actively trying to get involved. No. So, Ryan Gosling was NEVER going to do this. Emma Watson was so never going to do this that she even tweeted this amazingness about her rumoured casting at the time. Now, while I couldn’t care less about who has been cast, I do care about how this movie could be kind of important if done right.

Sex has been missing from the movies for a while now. I miss it. Do you? You do too. Blue Valentine was the last “major” release I can recall that had that kind of buzz, because God forbid people have sex and if they do you get slapped with a NC-17 rating. I wrote about how much I enjoyed the authenticity of the sex scene in The Spectacular Now but that wasn’t even close to what I’m touching on. Let’s talk about sex, baby. You can pretend that 50 Shades is more than just the sex, but it really isn’t and I don’t have to read the books to know. It’s all about the sex. The romance is there, sure. It’s Twilight Fanfiction, sure. But if they strip-away the cliched romance aspects of it, if they have fun with the sex scenes, if they do not sanitize it, this could be kind of exciting in the way that it should be. Cinema needs more cunnilingus and stat.