Lorraine: Hello, friends! Long time no see in this dusty “Fifty Shades” corner of Snark Squad. In fact, the last time we were here, Charlie Hunnam was still slated to play Christian Grey.
Sweeney: I’m so glad we got to have this gif for the final Fifty Shades posts. It was so useful!
Lor: Fast forward to ten months later and the official release of the Fifty Shades of Grey trailer:
Now, you couldn’t rightly expect us to watch that and not have a few thoughts.
First, I was a little confused at the beginning, considering that the music is really somber and Dakota Johnson looks like someone ran over her puppy.
I vaguely remember Ana being a little sad at the beginning of the book, but mostly over the fact that she had stupid brown hair, regrettable blue eyes and had succumbed to wearing… A PONYTAIL. Do you see that offender the ponytail in that still? Wow, sad.
Sweeney: There’s also something in her voice that was instantly grating. We made a lot of jokes about never being able to take these actors seriously after this and when I say “jokes” I mean “very serious statements made in a humorous ways,” but Dakota Johnson did a beautiful job of giving spinelessness a voice. Good job, girl!
Lor: And hey, look at that those blue tones! I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that kind of thing done in a movie about a plain girl and an abusive asshole boyfriend…
Anyway, Ana walks into Grey’s office for the interview that dumb bitch Katherine Kavanaugh “made her” do. We don’t get to see her fall on her face, though, which probably would’ve offered a few laughs, going against the cancer movie vibe this trailer is going for so far.
In addition to her ponytail, Ana is wearing a frumpy shirt and sweater combo, because girls who are sad virgins don’t know how to buy clothes that fit them, obvs. We don’t see Grey’s face at first. They keep teasing us with it, and I’m not sure why because we know what Jaime Dornan looks like, you guys.
Finally, Grey sits down near Ana and says he wants to hear about her. It’s a funny question when you consider we (way, way) later learn that after Ana leaves, he just calls his security guard to run a background check on her. These kinds of questions are useless anyway.
Part of what makes this entire series possible is Ana Steel’s crippling low self-esteem, and we get a peak of that as she says that there is nothing special about her. “I mean, look at me,” she says, as she lowers her head a little so we can get a better view of her sad, sad ponytail. Then, we get our first look at Dornan as Grey and… WTF?
Is it me or does he look weird? It looks like the Jamie Dornan from that wolfy bad boy gif got a shave and then gained some water weight. In his face.
Sweeney: It’s a really underwhelming reveal. Jamie Dornan is, in general, a very attractive man, but I’m glad I’m not the only one who was confused by his appearance. It makes the build up seem extra silly, though. Slow, secretive build to a big reveal kind of demands a really epic payoff on the other side and this was not that. It’s totally appropriate, though, because that kind of endless build up to disappointing non-events was a running theme of the books.
Lor: Grey watches Ana get into the elevator and then we get series of quick cuts: Josecob taking pictures of Grey for the article, THE RED POWER RANGER!! (S: FAVORITE FOREVER.) driving Grey around, Grey’s hair looking really poufy and big (because it’s full of secrets, I guess), and then them getting into an elevator.
In case you tried to forget, this is right after Ana uses his toothbrush (not in the trailer) and Grey says, “fuck the paperwork!” (not in the trailer). Elevators are kind of a big deal to Grey.
Beyonce’s new-like version of Crazy in Love starts in earnest as we get a look at Charlie Tango (and presumably that one time Grey made creepy comments while strapping Ana into his abducticopter). There is a scene in which Grey sits at his piano brooding. No telling if this is the first time he played broody piano or the second time. We can at least rule out those times James recycles this same scene in the other books.
Sweeney: I’m really proud of you for revisiting all that trauma to find those links. Traumaland thanks you for your bravery.
Lor: You’re welcome. Send booze.
We see Grey running as he warns Ana to stay away from him. Then we get a brief flash of Grey saving Ana from a drunk Josecob, after he tracked her cell phone to a bar because she was drinking and having fun without him, or something.
Grey’s voice over says he doesn’t do romance as we watch him lift Ana’s dress to finger her at the diner table, we can assume. Not a very big or bulky dinner table, so you guys take a look at this gif and tell me if you don’t think everyone at this god damn table knows exactly what’s going on:
Sweeney: This was the bit that got the biggest laugh out of me. This scene was horrifyingly inappropriate in the books but somehow in my head I still had a visual of it being even vaguely discrete. But no! No, of course not. There is no way nobody sees what’s going on there and it’s both horrifying (BECAUSE HE’S FINGERING HIS GIRLFRIEND IN FRONT OF HIS FAMILY) and also hilarious (because its minuscule potential to be HOT depends on the idea that the act is a big, well-kept secret).
Lor: And to all that, the after-thought is: that dress is peach. Wrong fruit, y’all.
We get a shot of Grey naked, except for his jeans and underwear, and his pants are definitely hanging off of his hips, everyone!
Actually, this is what I was most Tweeted about as you all watched the trailer. “Did you see his pants hanging off of his hips “in that way?”
I did guys! It’s in the way where pants go, you know, on your hips.
Sweeney: I got one of those tweets at almost the exact moment I got to this point in the post. It was glorious. For the record: I too saw it! There they are! Hanging in that way that pants do!
Lor: Ana asks Grey to enlighten her. He takes her to the Red Womb of Domestic Violence and her face does a pretty good job of capturing the, “shit, this isn’t Xbox,” look. We get more quick cuts of some things in the Red Womb like crops and cuffs, then Ana is the bathroom taking off her clothes (no sign of the tampon, y’all. I know you were waiting for it) (S: Guys, they’re trying to trick an unsuspecting audience into actually seeing this movie – that’s for later, when they all arrive at the theater and realize they’ve been punked.) until we end with Ana reacting to Grey doing something with his something to her “down there” (almost a direct quote from the source material) and probably her Inner Goddess is doing some flips in her head or something:
The title card flashes as a breathy Beyonce tells us, “uh-oh, uh-oh, oh no no.”
We couldn’t agree more, Bey. We just couldn’t agree more.
So, here are some of my thoughts:
1.) I have to again mention that Dornan is just NOT doing anything for me in this trailer. I mean, Christian Grey was never going to do anything for me except for make me feel real murdery inside, but damn Dornan looks weird. An intrepid Traumateer pegged it when she said, “anyone else noticed that Christian looks extremely constipated thru the whole trailer?”
Sweeney: I wonder if he saw a doctor about that. I bet his doctor was all, “Yeah, well, playing Christian Grey will fuck up your bowels something fierce. You’re just going to have to ride it out. Probably in the big pile of money you’re getting for this.”
Lor: 2.) While we’re asking “anyone else” questions, anyone else notice this whole thing had a horror movie vibe to it? It’s so FANTASTICALLY ACCURATE. It never seems like Grey is seducing her, but rather, luring her to his murder lair. Even the soundtrack is more stalker-thriller-esque than any romantic shit EL James wanted to make us believe this crap was.
3.) I know it’s just a trailer, but I find myself wishing it were MORE awful. I mean, you can tell the acting is rough and it’ll be pretty damn melodramatic, what with the approximately 27 longing looks in the trailer alone, but I feel like shouting at people who are just watching the trailer, “BUT THE BOOKS ARE WORSE! SO MUCH WORSE!”
My fear is that the movie will just whitewash all of the horrible crimes committed by the book, from the writing to the blatant abuse. It’ll feed into the idea that “there’s nothing wrong with Fifty Shades,” when nothing could be further from the truth.
Sweeney: I sort of suspected that from the get-go, though. It’ll be the rare instance where book readers will be all, “No, you don’t understand just how much worse the movie is than the book.” The fingering-at-the-table bit being but a minor example of the larger problem that the second you attempt to have actual people acting out this book, everyone has to have very quickly realized that you just can’t.
Lor: Too true. Perhaps we just just all accept right now that there is no way to actually, accurately depict some of the things that EL James wrote.
All said, there are still an incredible number of things wrong with Fifty Shades. Add this trailer to the list.
What did you think, friends? Let us know in the comments!
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
(Trailer gifs from this much more forgiving Buzzfeed thing.)
