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I have a confession. I’m part of society’s downfall. I was one of the thousands of people who paid good, hard-earned money to go watch Fifty Shades Darker when it opened on Valentine’s Day. I thought I’d be watching two hours of steamy drama that I could laugh about with my roommate. What I got instead was a world of insanity scattered with missionary position sex scenes.
Fifty Shades Darker is a cycle of soap-opera levels of whiplash madness I will never be able to fully understand. Their popularity is truly a testament to how much we ignore stories about female sexual fantasies. On a base level, this isn’t a movie for me. However, I’m certain it’s never-ending tonal swings, huge, movie-altering plot points, and complete lack of chemistry between its leads will haunt me for years to come.
Ana is a terrible friend with equally terrible friends.
I think we can all agree that Ana needs more of a social life. It’s been two movies now, and almost all of her free time has been devoted to Christian’s weird “sexy” mind games. But I think I finally know why Ana only really interacts with one person besides the whole Christian-controls-her-life thing — Ana is a bad friend. José (Victor Rasuk), an equally bad friend, invites Ana to his art show, which is composed of six giant portraits of Ana he never asked her permission to present. Ana is understandably horrified, so he offers to buy her dinner. She bails on him to get dinner with Christian instead. José is not mentioned again, no apologies, no “Hey, stop forcing me into your art shows, dude.” Nothing.
Christian really doesn’t know how to talk about his crack addict mother.
When do you think it’s the right time to say the following thing to another person: “My birth mother died when I was four. She was an addict — crack. You can fill in the blanks.” The correct answer isn’t “when you’re trying to get your ex back over dinner.” There are just so many questions. Which of the MANY blanks are you talking about, Christian? Does he really think telling people things when they’re asleep counts as communication? How often does he ramble about his darkest secrets in the middle of the night? These movies would have been a lot shorter is Ana had just woken up.
Ana works at the worst publishing house in existence.
In Fifty Shades Darker, Ana gets a job as an assistant at Seattle Independent Publishing, where she works for Jack Hyde. Jack Hyde is a bad man. He almost immediately ties to sexually assault Ana because Jack Hyde is a serial abuser and garbage person who loves to abuse his power. Christian understandably freaks out and uses his superpower — money — to buy the publishing house and fire Jack Hyde. Less understandably, he appoints his girlfriend, who is a recent college grad and has next to no experience, to be editor in chief. Cool.
There’s a stalker subplot and a gun face-off.
What’s sexier than missionary position and taking off your panties in the middle of dinner? Stalkers. Throughout the movie Leila (Bella Heathcote), one of Christian’s former submissives who is clearly mentally ill, stalks our BDSM couple. At one point she even threatens to shoot Ana before Christian talks her down. It would have been nice if she had shot the camera instead.
The sexy lipstick scene defies the laws of makeup.
There’s only one part of Fifty Shades more unbelievable than a humanities major immediately graduating college with a job — that lipstick. At one point Ana draws on Christian’s body with lipstick, which seems like it would be a dry, difficult, and very expensive experience but fine. Almost immediately after, they take a shower together, and the lipstick wipes away with the ease of a whiteboard marker. Ask literally any woman. Life does not work that way.
Christian may actually have superpowers.
Hear me out on this one — Fifty Shades did start as Twilight fan fic. At one point Christian gets emotional and decides to blow off some steam in his big boy toy, a helicopter. An engine fails, and he disappears around Mt. Saint Helena. Seattle must have the best news reporters in the country because they are on that story as it’s still happening.
However, while Ana and his loved ones are all panicking about whether or not the billionaire is alive, Christian casually walks in barely scratched. What happened? How did he survive the accident? Didn’t he have a radio? Did he just leave his presumably burning helicopter in the woods without telling anyone? More troubling, how was he able to run home unseen while the news teams were still investigating his missing helicopter? There’s only one answer to most of these questions: superpowers.
Christian was definitely abused by Kim Basinger’s character.
Just kidding, there is one thing apparently sexier than stalkers — emotional trauma. Christian reveals that the first woman who taught him about sex was his mother’s friend Elena (Basinger), who was his dominate when he was a teenager. That’s definitely statutory rape, by the way. Christian finally cuts all ties with the most interesting character and actress in this movie by telling her “you taught me how to f*ck, not how to love.”
Everyone 100% knows about that elevator fingering scene.
There’s really no reason to get too detailed about this one. The blonde lady’s face says it all.
‘Fifty Shades Darker’ thinks Jamie Dornan’s mouth is really sexy.
It is wrong. At one point the camera zooms in on Christian’s mouth an uncomfortable amount, which is when you realize he actually has a pretty bad mouth. Is this creepy closeup of his mouth supposed to be sexy? I feel bad about having intense opinions on Dornan’s small mouth, but this is what Fifty Shades has done to me.
Ana accepts Christian’s proposal by giving him a light up keychain.
For a movie obsessed with money and sexiness, this is the grand gesture of their love — a light up keychain you can probably find at a gas station. This keychain will haunt me for years to come. Also, I need Ana to understand that saying you’ll marry someone isn’t the same as getting them a birthday present.
For a movie about sex, this isn’t that sexy.
Almost all of the sex is standard missionary position and shower stuff. I don’t ask for much when it comes to steamy scenes, but I expect a little more from a sex movie than two people with minuscule amounts of chemistry doing getting down to cable TV levels of dirty. Seriously, if you want something steamier, watch Insecure.
