50 Shades of Grey: What The Movie Lacks Compared To The Novel

By MICHELE CALICCHIO

E. L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey was a widely popular novel series in 2011 due to its explicitly erotic scenes sexual practices involving bondage,discipline, dominance.submission, and sadism,masochism.

The trilogy made the New York Times bestsellers,  and within just a year Hollywood studios began fighting for the rights to make the novels into a film. In March 2012, Universal Pictures and Focus Features secured the rights to the trilogy, as long as author James could be a part of the movie’s creative process.

Once the movie rights were sold,  it came into question how a novel that people referred to as “mommy porn” could actual be put into theaters. A novel this graphic would end up on HBO or Cinemax and have an X rating. Still the majority of theaters allowed it with an R-rating, beside France who had it at PG-12, and Malaysia who banned it altogether.

“I don’t see the rating of the film as PG-12 as an issue,” said Shaina Dente a psychology graduate at Rutgers. “In many European countries sex is discussed much more openly and they as a collective are more in touch with their sexuality and less timid about such risque topics. In America it has to be rated R because sex is very taboo here.”

In the films opening weekend which was Valentine’s Day it brought in an estimated $85,171,450 in over 3,000 theaters making it the second biggest franchise next to the Twilight series.

What exactly was the movie missing?

The movie version left out a lot of details that the book touched upon frequently. The movie didn’t have Anastasia (Dakota Johnson) who is the main character get hired at an independent publishing house as an assistant to an editor, which is a large plot point in the second two books. Ana also lacked an “inner goddess” in the film,,  which is her inner persona who enjoys sex.

The movie also failed to touch upon both her weird relationships with food, along with Christian (Jamie Dornan) who is tormented handsome billionaire. He would force her to eat in front of him.

“I was perfectly okay with the fact that the movie didn’t touch upon this,” said DeAna Laudicina, a student at Ramapo. “It however played a huge role in the book and they touched upon it very often to the point that it was annoying, so it should have been mentioned in the movie at least once.”

Fans of the book, though, were the most disappointed in the sheer fact that the book was just sexier. The movie had fewer sex scenes that were far less explicit than they were in the book. According to The Cut only 20 of the 100 minute film were dedicated to sex, that is one fifth of the film.

“The movie left out a lot, it cut out a lot of detailed sex scenes as well as dialogue that went deeper into the story.” Leighanne Dayke of Middletown, N.J. said. “Although it is mostly a novel about sex there was an interesting story line and I feel that the movie didn’t acknowledge that and it jumped around awkwardly.”

The lack of Ben Wa balls also seemed to not sit well with viewers who read the book. Ben Wa balls were a representation of one of the first moments where Christian can really see that Ana is enjoying what he is asking of her. Though it is 100 percent logical why this scene couldn’t make the movie, the absence of it wasn’t replaced by any other scene that showed Ana explicitly experiencing pleasure.

Fans were also bothered by the fact that Christian had a ceiling mirror in his bedroom. It’s the first time Ana has sex and the first time Christian ever had a woman in his bedroom. If he never had a woman in there then what has he been doing with a mirror above his bed?

Viewers were also by the lack of visible male genitalia, the infamous tampon scene being taken out, which according to The Huffington Post, is the most talked about scene in the book, are two components that had been stated they would not be featured in the film ahead of time.