50 Shades of Grey: Pt. 3
Dec. 21st, 2015 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyPreviously on 50 Shades of Grey, they did more paperwork than sex, and both were quite boring. Also, David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, fucked a dead pig’s head. That didn’t happen in 50 Shades of Grey but it happened in real life, and I thought you should know about it if you didn’t already.
I guess Ana did get her thesis done after all because she graduates. Her mother doesn’t show up for the ceremony because she’s married to a manbaby who broke his foot playing golf and therefore cannot be left alone to feed himself, because he won’t. Her father shows up and seems like a decent enough guy, so don’t get too attached to him.
I don’t know what to make of the family relations in this movie. There are very complicated backstories: Christian’s mother was a crackwhore and then he was adopted by rich people who appear loving but didn’t notice that their friend was molesting him. Ana was raised by her stepfather (no clue what happened to her biological father) and her mother appears to have been left and married like three or four other guys, which is a valid life choice, except none of this is relevant to the plot. Conservation of detail, people! They could cut out easily 10 minutes by eliminating the complicated family discussions.
When did we relocate to Vancouver? Eh I am tired of trying to figure out continuity here. We’re in Vancouver now.
Two women in front of Ana go on about how hot Christian is, so she tells them that he’s gay. I think this is supposed to be funny. Maybe?
His speech is about eradicating hunger and poverty, which would happen a lot faster if maybe you gave up some of your million cars and helicopters and redistributed your wealth, Christian. Power to the people!
It’s a very smarmy and mean-spirited speech to give to a bunch of Millennials who are staring down a lifetime of working minimum-wage jobs while trying to pay off their student debts for the next 80 years while Christian Grey sits up in his tower and plays piano and cries a lot.
Christian is wearing the tie that he tied Ana up with last time they hung out (I don’t know how she can tell the difference, since all his ties are the same, but she somehow can, so we’re going to roll with it) and takes the opportunity to nag her more about The Contract while she’s up there in front of her family and friends and professors and this is really icky. Possibly the ickiest thing that has happened so far, which is saying a lot.
Christian interrupts Ana’s conversation with Kate and her dad, who she probably hasn’t seen in a while. Then the dad gets pushed out of the frame and we never see him again. I told you not to get attached.
Without telling her, Christian sells Ana’s cute VW bug and buys her a different car with less personality and I hate him and want him to die. Why has no one killed him yet? Why have 15 women not bludgeoned his doughy face in?
God I love Death Proof. That was a great movie.
She rolls her eyes at him, contrary to his orders, so he spanks her. Again, I can see how this could be hot to someone, but there’s a difference between consensual play and doing controlling things like selling someone’s car without their permission. She hasn’t signed The Contract; he’s not the boss of her.
She seems to like being spanked but then she calls up her mother—the one who didn’t even bother to attend her graduation but whom she’s now magically close to—and cries a bunch, so maybe she wasn’t into it? It would be kind of great if the film could let us know one way or the other. It would help the audience gain insight into what is going on with the characters.
They have more sex but this time it’s the Red Room of Pain-type of sex and not the vanilla-candle Sarah McLachlan-type of sex. But for a movie that’s mainly about sex it’s really unsexy and shot the same way as any other sex scene in movies that are not either porn or art house films. He carries her off to sleep in her fugly room and then fucks off, but at least he leaves her a new dress.
Then there’s an awkward family dinner scene with Christian’s parents, his sister Mia (who is Alice from Twilight but only gets one or two lines and is not a vampire as far as I can tell), Eliot, and Kate. Kate mentions that Jose helped them move and he and Eliot now have a bromance going on so okay, I guess he’s not dead after all.
She lets slip that she’s going off to Georgia to visit her mother and Christian gets all upset like the whiny manchild he is. We know he’s angry because he says that he’s angry. What, were you expecting a facial expression? We don’t have the budget for that.
Ana says she can’t walk in her shoes so he picks her up and throws her over his shoulder and spanks her and people find this hot? Really? Like really really?
I don’t get it.
“Blah blah blah why can’t we be like normal people?”
“Blah blah blah I am so angsty and mysterious and my mother was a crackwhore.”
Holy shit if your sexual needs are that incompatible, just break up already. Seattle is a big city and they’re both conventionally attractive rich white people; it should not be hard to find some more appropriate partners who are into the things that you are into.
Ana goes to Georgia and hangs out with her mother and latest step-dad, who seem to have a healthy relationship in the way that healthy relationships are depicted in movies, which is to say that they bicker good-naturedly. And I guess this leads to a revelation that Ana wants moooooore with Christian, except that she’s been saying that all along so it’s not really anything new. Christian tries to make her jealous by saying that he’s having dinner with Mrs. Robinson, a.k.a. the child abuser who molested him into liking BDSM.
Is this like the tent peg thing with Anne McCaffrey? Through the Valley Of the Nest of the Spiders was less disturbing than this.
Christian calls her and she doesn’t answer her phone so he fucking stalks her in Georgia and bursts into her mother-daughter time like he’s the goddamn Kool-Aid Man.
He nags her about drinking too much (two cocktails! The lush!) and then Ana’s mother disappears out of the frame and is never heard from again.
Well, no, we see her in one more scene but it’s really gross how every person in Ana’s life who is not Christian gets shoved out of frame and disappears. If this film were more competently made, I would say it’s a statement on abusive relationships, but the film is not competently made so I think it’s just laziness and bad blocking.
Ana seems less than thrilled at Christian’s sudden mantrusion into her family time but for some reason still gets into a car with him for a “surprise.”
They spend the extra budget money saved from shooting such boring sex scenes so Christian can take Ana on an airplane ride, which is supposed to make up for being an emotionally unavailable stalker who pressures her into doing sex acts she has no interest in and controls her financially and physically.
Then he has to go back to Seattle for a work emergency and because he’s emotionally unavailable and doesn’t do romance so she is left to mourn in her first-class plane seat with only her complimentary glass of wine to console her.
Her life is so hard, you guys. SO HARD.
More sex. This time it’s a knock-off of Eyes Wide Shut or something, and the soundtrack is more hardcore, like people who have never listened to proper metal imagine metal must sound like. Also, and I don’t know much about BDSM, but I don’t think he’s using the flogger properly.
You know what else bothers me about the Red Room of Pain stuff? It’s like his garage. This guy has a million identical cars, and he also has a million identical floggers, and a million identical blindfolds and handcuffs, and maybe he just likes to collect things, but this compulsiveness is never addressed or questioned. He is supposedly only fucking one woman at a time and driving only one car at a time, so why does he need extras of everything? Is this what the One Percent does? I bet it’s exactly what they do and this is why the world is going to shit.
They have another fight about their misaligned sexual predilections and emotional desires and she basically demands that he do the worst thing possible to her so he beats her six times with a belt.
I’m very confused about this scene. She explicitly asks for it, and he asks her if she’s sure, and she says yes several times. But she’s crying and not enjoying herself as far as I can tell. He doesn’t really seem to be enjoying himself either, so why doesn’t he stop? She never uses her safe word, either.
She’s disgusted and upset and tells him not to touch her or come near her. He is surprised that this recent virgin who has expressed no interest in sex, let alone kink, before she met him, is not into being beaten really hard. God, these people are stupid.
Ana has run away from Christian because he has unleashed his true sadistic nature and now she’s terrified and in pain. She never wants him to touch her again. So what does Christian do?
You guessed it.
HE BREAKS INTO HER ROOM WHILE SHE’S LYING IN BED CRYING.
Christ, what an asshole.
Anyway, he doesn’t want her to hate him, she doesn’t want him to ever hit her again, she’s in love with him, he can’t be loved, blah blah she finally tells him to fuck off after two hours of excruciatingly bad filmmaking.
Plot twist! Ana uses her shrink-ray to shrink Christian down to a more manageable size. If she had done this right from the beginning the movie would have been much more enjoyable.
Anyway they break up. She wants her car back. The car has been sold. He’ll send her a cheque. She says no. He makes an emotion with his doughy face. They say each other’s names.
There is a montage of the good times together, like the time he beat her with a flogger and the time they did paperwork and that’s it, that’s how the movie ends. No resolution, no denouement, just this montage. While I kind of respect the creative decision to not resolve the plot in any way, this is worse than when I read Dead Souls and found out that it ended mid-sentence, because at least I was enjoying the book up until that point.
I mean, is the moral that BDSM is fun and liberating? Is it that you shouldn’t compromise your sexual needs for someone else? Or that if she’d compromised a little more she would have gotten to like it? Is this an empowering tale of a young woman claiming her sexual agency and walking away from a relationship that isn’t right for her? Is it a tragic tale of how child abuse can fuck you up long after it’s over?
What is the point of all that suffering? (Which is to say, my suffering?) Did she learn a thing? Without knowing the answers to any of these questions, it’s a bit like The Road, with just endless, pointless pain, except lacking in all the funny bits like the world ending and people starving to death and getting eaten. Why was this movie even made? What empty niche did it fill in our aesthetic and erotic experiences that, say, Game of Bones or Star Fuck Fist Contact or Flesh Gordon has not already explored, with better cinematography and narrative coherence?
I suppose there was that tampon scene. But they left that bit out of the movie.
Which ultimately begs the following questions:
1. Does anyone actually find this kind of thing hot?
2. At what point did the actors realize they had made a huge career mistake?
3. Why is this movie?
Leave your answers and David Cameron/dead pig fanfic in the comments.
I guess Ana did get her thesis done after all because she graduates. Her mother doesn’t show up for the ceremony because she’s married to a manbaby who broke his foot playing golf and therefore cannot be left alone to feed himself, because he won’t. Her father shows up and seems like a decent enough guy, so don’t get too attached to him.
I don’t know what to make of the family relations in this movie. There are very complicated backstories: Christian’s mother was a crackwhore and then he was adopted by rich people who appear loving but didn’t notice that their friend was molesting him. Ana was raised by her stepfather (no clue what happened to her biological father) and her mother appears to have been left and married like three or four other guys, which is a valid life choice, except none of this is relevant to the plot. Conservation of detail, people! They could cut out easily 10 minutes by eliminating the complicated family discussions.
When did we relocate to Vancouver? Eh I am tired of trying to figure out continuity here. We’re in Vancouver now.
Two women in front of Ana go on about how hot Christian is, so she tells them that he’s gay. I think this is supposed to be funny. Maybe?
His speech is about eradicating hunger and poverty, which would happen a lot faster if maybe you gave up some of your million cars and helicopters and redistributed your wealth, Christian. Power to the people!
It’s a very smarmy and mean-spirited speech to give to a bunch of Millennials who are staring down a lifetime of working minimum-wage jobs while trying to pay off their student debts for the next 80 years while Christian Grey sits up in his tower and plays piano and cries a lot.
Christian is wearing the tie that he tied Ana up with last time they hung out (I don’t know how she can tell the difference, since all his ties are the same, but she somehow can, so we’re going to roll with it) and takes the opportunity to nag her more about The Contract while she’s up there in front of her family and friends and professors and this is really icky. Possibly the ickiest thing that has happened so far, which is saying a lot.
Christian interrupts Ana’s conversation with Kate and her dad, who she probably hasn’t seen in a while. Then the dad gets pushed out of the frame and we never see him again. I told you not to get attached.
Without telling her, Christian sells Ana’s cute VW bug and buys her a different car with less personality and I hate him and want him to die. Why has no one killed him yet? Why have 15 women not bludgeoned his doughy face in?
God I love Death Proof. That was a great movie.
She rolls her eyes at him, contrary to his orders, so he spanks her. Again, I can see how this could be hot to someone, but there’s a difference between consensual play and doing controlling things like selling someone’s car without their permission. She hasn’t signed The Contract; he’s not the boss of her.
She seems to like being spanked but then she calls up her mother—the one who didn’t even bother to attend her graduation but whom she’s now magically close to—and cries a bunch, so maybe she wasn’t into it? It would be kind of great if the film could let us know one way or the other. It would help the audience gain insight into what is going on with the characters.
They have more sex but this time it’s the Red Room of Pain-type of sex and not the vanilla-candle Sarah McLachlan-type of sex. But for a movie that’s mainly about sex it’s really unsexy and shot the same way as any other sex scene in movies that are not either porn or art house films. He carries her off to sleep in her fugly room and then fucks off, but at least he leaves her a new dress.
Then there’s an awkward family dinner scene with Christian’s parents, his sister Mia (who is Alice from Twilight but only gets one or two lines and is not a vampire as far as I can tell), Eliot, and Kate. Kate mentions that Jose helped them move and he and Eliot now have a bromance going on so okay, I guess he’s not dead after all.
She lets slip that she’s going off to Georgia to visit her mother and Christian gets all upset like the whiny manchild he is. We know he’s angry because he says that he’s angry. What, were you expecting a facial expression? We don’t have the budget for that.
Ana says she can’t walk in her shoes so he picks her up and throws her over his shoulder and spanks her and people find this hot? Really? Like really really?
I don’t get it.
“Blah blah blah why can’t we be like normal people?”
“Blah blah blah I am so angsty and mysterious and my mother was a crackwhore.”
Holy shit if your sexual needs are that incompatible, just break up already. Seattle is a big city and they’re both conventionally attractive rich white people; it should not be hard to find some more appropriate partners who are into the things that you are into.
Ana goes to Georgia and hangs out with her mother and latest step-dad, who seem to have a healthy relationship in the way that healthy relationships are depicted in movies, which is to say that they bicker good-naturedly. And I guess this leads to a revelation that Ana wants moooooore with Christian, except that she’s been saying that all along so it’s not really anything new. Christian tries to make her jealous by saying that he’s having dinner with Mrs. Robinson, a.k.a. the child abuser who molested him into liking BDSM.
Is this like the tent peg thing with Anne McCaffrey? Through the Valley Of the Nest of the Spiders was less disturbing than this.
Christian calls her and she doesn’t answer her phone so he fucking stalks her in Georgia and bursts into her mother-daughter time like he’s the goddamn Kool-Aid Man.
He nags her about drinking too much (two cocktails! The lush!) and then Ana’s mother disappears out of the frame and is never heard from again.
Well, no, we see her in one more scene but it’s really gross how every person in Ana’s life who is not Christian gets shoved out of frame and disappears. If this film were more competently made, I would say it’s a statement on abusive relationships, but the film is not competently made so I think it’s just laziness and bad blocking.
Ana seems less than thrilled at Christian’s sudden mantrusion into her family time but for some reason still gets into a car with him for a “surprise.”
They spend the extra budget money saved from shooting such boring sex scenes so Christian can take Ana on an airplane ride, which is supposed to make up for being an emotionally unavailable stalker who pressures her into doing sex acts she has no interest in and controls her financially and physically.
Then he has to go back to Seattle for a work emergency and because he’s emotionally unavailable and doesn’t do romance so she is left to mourn in her first-class plane seat with only her complimentary glass of wine to console her.
Her life is so hard, you guys. SO HARD.
More sex. This time it’s a knock-off of Eyes Wide Shut or something, and the soundtrack is more hardcore, like people who have never listened to proper metal imagine metal must sound like. Also, and I don’t know much about BDSM, but I don’t think he’s using the flogger properly.
You know what else bothers me about the Red Room of Pain stuff? It’s like his garage. This guy has a million identical cars, and he also has a million identical floggers, and a million identical blindfolds and handcuffs, and maybe he just likes to collect things, but this compulsiveness is never addressed or questioned. He is supposedly only fucking one woman at a time and driving only one car at a time, so why does he need extras of everything? Is this what the One Percent does? I bet it’s exactly what they do and this is why the world is going to shit.
They have another fight about their misaligned sexual predilections and emotional desires and she basically demands that he do the worst thing possible to her so he beats her six times with a belt.
I’m very confused about this scene. She explicitly asks for it, and he asks her if she’s sure, and she says yes several times. But she’s crying and not enjoying herself as far as I can tell. He doesn’t really seem to be enjoying himself either, so why doesn’t he stop? She never uses her safe word, either.
She’s disgusted and upset and tells him not to touch her or come near her. He is surprised that this recent virgin who has expressed no interest in sex, let alone kink, before she met him, is not into being beaten really hard. God, these people are stupid.
Ana has run away from Christian because he has unleashed his true sadistic nature and now she’s terrified and in pain. She never wants him to touch her again. So what does Christian do?
You guessed it.
HE BREAKS INTO HER ROOM WHILE SHE’S LYING IN BED CRYING.
Christ, what an asshole.
Anyway, he doesn’t want her to hate him, she doesn’t want him to ever hit her again, she’s in love with him, he can’t be loved, blah blah she finally tells him to fuck off after two hours of excruciatingly bad filmmaking.
Plot twist! Ana uses her shrink-ray to shrink Christian down to a more manageable size. If she had done this right from the beginning the movie would have been much more enjoyable.
Anyway they break up. She wants her car back. The car has been sold. He’ll send her a cheque. She says no. He makes an emotion with his doughy face. They say each other’s names.
There is a montage of the good times together, like the time he beat her with a flogger and the time they did paperwork and that’s it, that’s how the movie ends. No resolution, no denouement, just this montage. While I kind of respect the creative decision to not resolve the plot in any way, this is worse than when I read Dead Souls and found out that it ended mid-sentence, because at least I was enjoying the book up until that point.
I mean, is the moral that BDSM is fun and liberating? Is it that you shouldn’t compromise your sexual needs for someone else? Or that if she’d compromised a little more she would have gotten to like it? Is this an empowering tale of a young woman claiming her sexual agency and walking away from a relationship that isn’t right for her? Is it a tragic tale of how child abuse can fuck you up long after it’s over?
What is the point of all that suffering? (Which is to say, my suffering?) Did she learn a thing? Without knowing the answers to any of these questions, it’s a bit like The Road, with just endless, pointless pain, except lacking in all the funny bits like the world ending and people starving to death and getting eaten. Why was this movie even made? What empty niche did it fill in our aesthetic and erotic experiences that, say, Game of Bones or Star Fuck Fist Contact or Flesh Gordon has not already explored, with better cinematography and narrative coherence?
I suppose there was that tampon scene. But they left that bit out of the movie.
Which ultimately begs the following questions:
1. Does anyone actually find this kind of thing hot?
2. At what point did the actors realize they had made a huge career mistake?
3. Why is this movie?
Leave your answers and David Cameron/dead pig fanfic in the comments.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-12-21 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-21 04:55 pm (UTC)*weeps*
*gnashes teeth*
WHHHHHY?!!!
no subject
Date: 2015-12-21 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-21 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-21 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-21 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-21 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 01:18 am (UTC)http://itsrainingmensheviks.tumblr.com/tagged/bolshevik%20mean%20girls/
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 08:33 am (UTC)THANK YOU
I'm pretty sure I've just died at "I got in trouble for the most random things".
Do you know this blogger? This person, whoever they are, are awesome.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-23 04:00 pm (UTC)https://www.facebook.com/Meantrots-675045492617890/?fref=nf
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 12:31 am (UTC)Laughing.
Cringing.
Confused laughing.
So not fucking laughing anymore.
Oh god. Please let someone wake up and NEVER make the rest of this series. Thank you for warning me that it got worse. I am horrified.
You, however, are delightful and your banter made my night. (((HUGS))) You ROCK!
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 06:20 am (UTC)2. She is pretty nice-looking. She must know. I mean, she's got a Lit. Mayor, doesn't she? Maybe, if she married someone like Cameron...?
3. This movie was made so that you can give us your review and also
4. Thank god this is a trilogy! This means: more of your reviews!
5. I oppose to the senseless violence against a poor defenseless (he looks hunky enough but is against violence) man who furthermore just suffered a car accident, I find, this is victim-blaming of the worst sort as if the poor sod was the worst sort also they are three girls against one guy and this is so very unfair it makes me feel I'll become a Manist (but not in a Manic Mothers sense -now there's a band name for anyone in need but as I already play the bass in Girls Who Took His Name; nevermind- as I am against those too as an evil stepmother and against it as it is against my will but I can&will tell)
6. Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill!
Must now go make an emotion in front of the bathroom Mirror.
Btw (7 or so); the end is no end to make one want more, right?
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 02:44 pm (UTC)I do see the appeal of being carrying around, I guess, but as a tiny someone who gets picked up fairly regularly—occasionally, but not lately, without consent—the idea of being picked up and spanked for deciding to visit my mother is creepy and does not appeal at all.
I appreciate being named Most Hon. Non-Member; that is v. flattering, thank you.
I shall of course review the other two if they actually come out, because lol.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 05:53 pm (UTC)We do not get to see his piece. Not even a little.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 06:34 pm (UTC)*takes a bow*
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-23 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-24 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-29 08:07 am (UTC)Oh my God I have missed your movie recaps so much. (Did you ever do Atlas 3? Did they even release that into the wild?)
no subject
Date: 2015-12-29 02:22 pm (UTC)I also need to do Nic Cage Left Behind, because epic.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-02 09:51 pm (UTC)But I do fear for your eyes and brain.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-03 06:32 pm (UTC)Uh anyway welcome back.
And wait until you read my next one. (Of course, I have to write it first, but it's even worse than this.)
no subject
Date: 2024-01-27 01:21 pm (UTC)So the reader/viewer can get off on it while being assured that the character they're identifying with is still Good and Pure and Not Like Those Women Who Are Into That Sort Of Thing.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-27 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 03:02 pm (UTC)"Rape fantasies" are a time-honoured mechanism for a reason, after all.
But yeah, I think that's why you end up with this very very odd-feeling set-up where it can't be that Ana enjoys the kinky sex because she discovers that she is in fact into kinky sex
and then talks to the local kink community and finds a nice dom who's not an abusive stalker control-freak.She has to have lots of kinky sex while definitely not being a person who is actually into kinky sex.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 09:44 pm (UTC)