While we wait for Fifty Shades of Grey to hit theatres early next year, a few lucky ones were treated to a five-minute preview of the highly anticipated erotic film earlier this week.
Never-before-seen footage from E.L. James’ BDSM book-turned-movie was unveiled to some and their reactions have been going viral on the Internet.
Their first thoughts? The flick — which stars Jamie Dornan as the domineering billionaire, Christian Grey, and Dakota Johnson as virginal Anastasia Steele — highlights more on romance compared to raunchiness.
Here’s what folks are saying:
“Rather then [sic] fill the five-minute teaser with the sex that made the books by British author E L James so popular, the studio went against expectations and highlighted the romance between the two leads,” Entertainment Weekly‘s Nicole Sperling writes. “But with the exception of a brief blindfold, a hand on a thigh and a glimpse of a riding crop, Mr. Grey’s penchant for domineering sex was kept to a minimum.”
Although producer Dana Brunetti previously wanted to release an NC-17 version of the movie after the R-rated version is released, the first preview is way more PG. Darn it!
“While the movie promises to be filled with all kinds of taboo carnal relations, what was shown in the clips was very PG-rated (they didn’t even mention the word “sex.”),” CinemaBlend‘s Eric Eisenberg mentions. “Of course, there was plenty of innuendo and suggestion of Christian Grey’s habits behind locked doors, but none of it was explicitly shown. The closest it came to showing anything even remotely R-rated was Ana tied to a bed with a blindfold on, but even that shot lasted only about half a second.”
We are still expecting lots of sex, but what about the chemistry between Johnson and Dornan?
“As for the actors, Johnson appears to play Anastasia’s wide eyed perspective appropriately and certainly looks good with a reddish brown dyed hair,” HitFix‘s Gregory Ellwood writes. “Jamie Doran is handsome and has that debonair thing down, but…whether the two of them have genuine chemistry remains to be seen.”
However, L.A. Times‘ Amy Kaufman says that the studio chairman promised the crowd before playing the video that Dakota and Jamie “have the kind of chemistry that could turn this into the next iconic romance.”
“It’s of course possible some of that footage was of the toned-down sort, thanks to the CinemaCon crowd, which can be a more buttoned-up group,” Kaufman details. “Still, that only underscores the balance Universal must strike in selling this film to a large mainstream audience, some portions of which may have appreciated the explicitness in the privacy of their own home more than they will in the communal setting of a movie theatre.”
Fifty Shades of Grey hits theatres on February 13 2015, just in time for Valentine’s Day. We can’t wait!
[Source]
