By Sean McDonald
Sports Editor
50 Shades Darker? More like 50 points lower on the Rotten Tomatoes scale.
The second installment of the 50 Shades series, simply put, is a disappointment. The film fails to establish any clear storyline and lacks a narrative that propels the story, leading to lack of character development and overall clarity.
50 Shades Darker, the successor to 50 Shades of Grey, is based off of a 2012 novel by E.L. James. The books and movies have both gained a lot of attention for their frequent usage of explicit descriptions of sexual content, often times relating to sadomasochism and bondage.
50 Shades Darker follows the re-ignition of the relationship between wealthy and youthful Seattle businessman, Christian Grey, and assistant book editor, Anastasia Steele. The movie explores ideas about ownership, human primality, and how to distinguish between the quenching of desires and abuse.
The highlight of the film was the uplifting soundtrack. The addition of the soundtrack easily cracked spells of boredom and directed attention to parts of the movie that were somewhat significant.
Watch the trailer below:
In terms of technicalities, the film was solid. A lot of dull colors really emphasized the grey in 50 Shades, and also helped to highlight the sad and depressing level the characters’ lives were at.
View photos: check out photos from the release of 50 Shades Darker
The movie’s ultimate failure was the fact that there was never a clear and concise plot. The film came across as a montage of uncomfortable sadistic sex scenes that were lightened up by some new wave hipster pop songs. The lack of a plot makes the film boring and hard to watch.
Along with the dull plot, there was no identifiable conflict. This really made some parts of the film hard to watch because it made it feel like there wasn’t any purpose to watching it in the first place.
Some of the dominant motifs throughout the movie were ownership and the animality of human nature. The film exceeds at exploring these two ideas and visually representing them. The theme of ownership adds a unique and likable aspect to the film.
The movie is overall quite lackluster and struggled to ever develop any direction or linearity and isn’t a likely candidate to win any awards.
The film was released on February 10 and is available for viewing in theaters all throughout the South Bay, including Arclight.
Check out what The Atlantic thought about 50 Shades Darker here
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