I don’t know if you guys heard, but the Fifty Shades of Grey movie recently came out. I’m pretty sure a few people have seen it. For those of you who haven’t (or for those of you who love to discuss the differences between film adaptations and the books they’re based on), I’ve started to put together A Definitive List of differences. Except it’s probably not definitive at all because I saw the movie once and this is purely based on my memory of the movie and my memory of what happened in each book. I’m sure you all understand how those books blur together.
Fun fact: Occasionally when I had to google things like “When does Christian shave Ana” Bad Books, Good Times came up as the first result or high up on the list! Thank you past Ariel and Matthew for reading bad books so I don’t have to keep precious space in my memory free for them.
Differences Between the Fifty Shades of Grey Book and Film
1) Tragically, Ana’s inner goddess and subconscious were not hanging out, reading Dickens and dancing around wearing feathered boas. I mean, I’m sure that was all still happening in Ana’s mind, but we were no longer subjected to it on a near constant basis.
2) No tampon scene. Obvs. This has been talked about at length already, but this post would not be complete without mentioning this missing moment.
3) Mia and Ethan were (almost) completely nonexistent. Was Kate’s brother even in this at all? In the books, Christian was all jealous of him because he was an attractive male who spoke to Ana, but then Mia is all about Ethan. I think Mia had one line, thus she is almost as non-existent as Ethan.
4) The big family dinner was 30 seconds long. Seriously! Ana and Christian date a week…Christian makes a huge deal about how he doesn’t do relationships…but he’s calling Ana his girlfriend and not acting weird at all about bringing her to family dinner? Then after all that they talk to his family for a hot minute and then just go argue elsewhere about their relationship. I think in the books we at least had to sit through the entirety of the boring family dinner.
5) No model glider kit gift at the end of the movie. At the end of the book, when Ana is all sad about leaving Christian, she leaves him this gift to remind them of happier, gliding times :(. Just in case we’d somehow forgotten that they went on a stupid glider date. I was all for the removal of this.
[A special thank you to Leanne for pointing out that it wasn’t Christian who gifted this to Ana. I’m a terrible authority on Fifty Shades!]
6) Instead of acknowledging that somehow Ana didn’t have an email address, the movie leaves this distracting detail out and instead has Ana mention that she’s having “computer trouble” a couple times.
7) The whole part of the book where Christian upgrades Ana to first class when she’s going to Georgia (and she gets a massage in the first class lounge and sends sassy emails to Christian that of course piss him off) was completely cut. I really do think everyone involved was like, “Shit…we need to at least attempt to make him not seem completely psychotic.”
8) No dialogue during the sex scenes. Remember the good old days when Christian would essentially be like, “Hold on, Anastasia I’m going to come!” And Ana would be like, “Oh my, triple craaaaaap I’m about to detonate.” Well, despite EL James purported creative control, this terrible dialogue was mercifully absent from the movie.
9) Even though they kept Paul Clayton in the movie, there was really 0 purpose because he doesn’t ask Ana out multiple times. It makes Christian’s accusation that Paul’s into Ana seem even more random and paranoid than it did in the books somehow.
10) Christian doesn’t given Ana a Blackberry. It would have been hilarious if they had kept this Very Important detail in the film.
11) In the books, Jose and Ana’s reconciliation is handled poorly, but in the film it’s not handled at all. One second he’s coming onto Ana even when she’s telling him to stop and fleeing when she starts to puke, and the next he’s cheerfully moving Ana and Kate into their new apartment.
12) The movie is weirdly obsessed with…hands. Like there are constant, lingering shots of hands.
13) Kate is really likeable in the movie. It could be because she’s barely in it, but when she was I enjoyed her! Maybe it’s because in the book Kate’s only characteristic was that she was nosy – in the movie she’s just pleasantly fucking Elliot and being nice.
14) Continuing on from 13, I thought in the first book Kate was always confronting Christian for making Ana sad/being generally suspicious of him. The whole NDA that prevents Ana from talking about Christian with Kate barely factors into anything in the film, but in the book Ana struggled with not being able to talk to Kate about anything that was going on.
15) Didn’t Ana have her internship already lined up in the first book? Didn’t Christian try to convince her to work with him – more than just suggesting his company has internships going. Which, seriously, what the fuck would that internship entail? Businessing the business of business? WHAT DOES GREY INDUSTRIES DO????. I thought Ana had the internship when she moved to Seattle, but Jack Hyde doesn’t become a threat until later.
16) But where were the vaginal balls?
17) KayMia graciously reminded me that absolutely no voice activated orgasms occurred because of the lack of dialogue during the sex scenes.
18) Mrs. Jones is nowhere to be seen in the film! I think this was a shocking oversight because this series is definitely most well-known for the epic love story of Mrs. Jones and Taylor.
[Gee, you are a star for remembering this! And for your incredible memory about the time “Christian was whining that Ana was flirting with Taylor, and she said “He has an avuncular appeal to me.” I remember that exactly because I read it over multiple times in annoyance like bitch, nobody in the history of the human race has ever used that word in casual conversation.”]
Please share any differences you can think of and I will add them to the list (crediting you of course).