Courtesy UniversalLadies and gentleman, we have to report a crime. A crime against cinema. A crime against all moviegoers. A crime against the fine arts as we know them.
Rita Ora was left out of the Fifty Shades Freed trailer.
The singer-turned-occasional-actress' journey through the world of E.L. James has been a well-documented one—at least by E! News. You see, back in 2015 before the first Fifty Shades of Grey movie hit theaters, Ora, as Mia Grey, was billed as one of the main cast members of the flick. Perhaps not of the degree of the stars, Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, but certainly among the realm of the Marcia Gay Hardens. She promoted the movie, gave interviews about her acting debut and attended several of the press events and premieres, leading her fans to believe that they would be hunkering down in the theater not only to watch some good-old-fashioned smut next to perfect strangers, but also to revel in the big screen presence of Miss Rita.
Then disaster struck.
The filmmakers, either in a vengeful change of heart or a tricky bait-and-switch, barely allowed her role to make it past the cutting room floor. She had nary a handful of sentences of dialogue, and her kicky bob wig stole all of the thunder. The Internet revolted, demanding answers or at the very least an acknowledgement that they (and Rita!) had been duped.
None came, but the situation was alleviated in subsequent films. In fact, her turn in Fifty Shades Darker was downright revolutionary. She got to attend the big Grey family masquerade auction. She got to talk to Anastasia on the phone. She got to wear blonde hair. She got to comfort her family during the harrowing 3.5 minutes that Christian was missing in that helicopter accident. It was all magical.
The second installment of the trilogy seemed to set up an even larger role for Ora to play in the finale. As the film comes to a close, we see that Ana's former boss, the maniacal Jack Hyde, is hell-bent on stalking the entire Grey family. In fact, [spoiler alert] those who have read the book version of Freed (or at least browsed the Wikipedia page) will know that one of the storylines involves Jack kidnapping Mia and threatening to kill her if the family doesn't pay a large ransom.
The film's new trailer, which hit the Internet this morning, alludes to the terror that Jack is attempting to wreak—Ana even slips a gun into the waistband of her jeans at one point—but poor Mia's plight is barely even alluded to. If a person were to watch the trailer, say, about a dozen times, they would notice that there is but a flash of a scene in which a hog-tied Mia can be seen blurry in the background, but that. Is. It.
So what does this mean for Rita Ora fans? For the state of cinema as a whole? We wish we could say.
What we do know is that we'll be holding out hope that E.L. James and director James Foley are merely saving some of the best footage for the big screen and not the trailer. Holding out hope that Mia's kidnapping trauma will not be forgotten. Holding out hope that there are several wigs in our collective future.
Doesn't Rita deserve that, at the very least?