Fifty Shades Darker...and a bit different.
As the second installment of the Fifty Shades series heats up theaters all over the country today, fans of E.L. James' BDSM-centered romance will reunite with moody magnate Christian Grey and the woman who turned his glossy world upside down, Anastasia Steele.
While the sequel promises plenty of the bedroom behavior that made the first film one of the biggest at the box office, a few changes were made to make the transition from the written word to the film. Before you turn 50 shades of red, the film's director James Foley insisted there was a reason for the changes.
"There's nothing we left out on purpose. It was all simply about time," he told Cosmopolitan."The movie's two hours. When you go to edit, you can't see everything [as an audience might]. You look at it and it seems pretty good. Then you screen it for an audience and it kind of lags in places, so you say, 'Oh, why did I leave that in there? And you change it.'"
Here are some of the things that didn't make the journey from page to screen:
1. "Laters, baby" to these characters.
The movie did not feature a handful of minor characters, including bodyguard Sawyer, Mia Grey's beau, Ethan Kavanagh, and Christian's psychiatrist, Dr. John Flynn. However, since Brant Daugherty was cast as Sawyer for Fifty Shades Freed, it's possible Ethan and Dr. Flynn will also pop up in the third film, but since they didn't make appearances in the first movie either, we won't hold our breath.
2. There is no naughty work chatter.
Remember all of those mildly sexual emails Anastasia and Christian would send each other while she was hard at work for Jack Hyde? Well, it seems they're staying on paper.
3. Christian's goes digital with his gifts, but forgets the romance.
Speaking of emails, the twentysomething mogul does gift his lady love with some new technology in the film, but instead of an iPad filled with an entire library of British literary classics and romantic playlists, he buys her a Mac laptop and iPhone.
4. These major sex scenes are missing.
Fans of the book know all about how Christian spanks Anastasia with a ruler over a game of pool and then the two have sex on the table. However, that scene will have to remain in everyone's imagination because it didn't make the silver screen cut. Neither did the time Christian eats ice cream off of Anastasia as she is tied to her bed.
Not to fret—Anastasia's first experience with a spreader bar was not left on the cutting room floor.
(E! and Universal Pictures are both part of NBCUniversal.)