As Universal is set to toast our loins for Valentine’s Day with the release of the big screen adaptation of E.L. “SnowQueens IceDragon” James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, there might be a little confusion over just how hot and steamy of a movie this will be. After all, it was once rumored to be in danger of an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, but now it’s a safe and mildly-horny Rated R. Pointless ratings and teaser trailers aside, just how nasty are Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele going to get for fans of the book series in this film? Not all that nasty, actually.
According to a review from The Sunday Times (via EW), the sex scenes in Fifty Shades make up approximately 20 minutes of the 100-minute film. That means just one-fifth of the movie will be hot, funky, sweaty, sheet-ruining sex while the remaining 40 minutes will be devoted to stuff like story and character development. Basically, Fifty Shades of Grey is like the opposite of a porn movie. Even softcore porn will deliver more excitement than this movie, and that’s exceptional considering the sex toy industry is viewing this film’s release like it’s Christmas morning.
What’s interesting about this is that a Reddit thread from six months ago actually shined a light on how James rose to fame as the author of erotic Twilight message board fan fiction. Among the many supposed truth bombs dropped by “hurricangst,” including revelations that James not only stole her ideas while manipulating a community built on shared creativity, but she also allegedly stole those ideas from teens, is the fact that these people didn’t really give a crap about Twilight. They just wanted some good, old-fashioned porn.
… truthfully, Twilight fanfic commonly has very little do with Twilight. Even Twilight’s fandom hates Twilight. A lot of people got into the series, found the community, and began to either:
1. See the validity of the criticisms now that they were forced to write in the universe.
2. Grow tired of writing and reading about the exact same 5 things.
3. Grow tired of writing in a universe that didn’t support porn.
I mean, porn for Twilight was pretty decent up until the last book, where Meyer jossed her own canon and got Bella pregnant. Now there were all these weird biological ‘variables’ authors had to consider. Did Edward have to wear a condom in our fics for her to not get pregnant (no one waned her to get pregnant)? And if he did, wouldn’t his super vampire venom/semen just burst right through the sucker? And if so, wouldn’t Bella be at risk of ‘turning’ into a vampire anyway?
That’s not a good time. Having to consider all that dumb shit was frankly awkward. It was fun for a few months (DOES THE JIZZ SPARKLE?!), until we all realized that Meyer was a moron who knew nothing about even human anatomy. By that point, everyone was just frustrated. we just wanted to create and consume some fucking porn, give us a break.
So if this film really only has 20 minutes of sex as described by The Sunday Times, it’s safe to say that the original fans of Fifty Shades will put the final nail in their erotic Edward Cullen coffins.
