14 DAY TRIAL // Not that we’re keeping count, but we have only a little over a month until the release of one of the most anticipated films of 2015, the big screen adaptation of E.L. James’ adult novel “Fifty Shades of Grey” – and the first in a future planned franchise.
The MPAA has finally rated the film, and almost unsurprisingly, it gave it an R, Just Jared reports. So now you know better than to expect a faithful representation of the novel, because it just can’t happen.
James’ books would have warranted an NC-17 rating
If you’ve read as much as 10 pages of James’ trilogy of novels, you know that it’s not exactly the kind of literature you want to have lying around the house when you have your parents over.
There’s a reason why these novels became so popular despite harsh criticism (from anyone from literary critics to people with enough common sense to see their many major flaws), and that’s that it doesn’t hold anything back in the description of love scenes.
Despite early promises that Universal Pictures’ big screen adaptation would try to stay faithful to the source material, that would have meant an NC-17 rating – which happens to be the “kiss of death” for any theatrical release, being the closest thing to actual adult content.
Few are the movies that were able to cause a splash after getting this rating from the MPAA, and that’s because said rating makes them almost always slip off the radar. In other words, no one paid attention to them, which was the last thing Universal wanted with its adult-oriented answer to Summit’s “The Twilight Saga” (which, strangely, inspired James into writing the novels).
An R-rating is a compromise
In late 2013, producer Dana Brunetti hinted that the film might get 2 different versions out: an R-rated one and an NC 17 one, which would come after the wide release.
“It’ll be R, obviously it has to be R. This is just my opinion and this doesn’t mean this is going to happen, but I always thought it would be really cool if we released the R version and then we had an NC-17 version that we released a few weeks later,” Brunetti explained.
That was deemed impractical, so they went just for the R rating instead.
The MPAA warns: “Fifty Shades of Grey” will include “strong sexual content including dialogue, some unusual behavior and graphic nudity, and language.” Still, compared to the source material, it will be vanilla.
“Fifty Shades of Grey” stars Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson as leads, and is directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. It will be out on Valentine’s Day, but since we’re still some time away, embedded below you will find one of the tracks included on the OST: Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do.”
