As the link above you will show you, the 50 Shades of Grey theatrical trailer was released today for the world to finally see. Fan girls young and old rejoiced the world over at the sight of erotic fiction leading man and lady, Christian Grey and Anastasia Steel being portrayed by Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson respectively.

The question is, what is all the hype about now that the trailer has been seen? Also is this film going to live up to the hype and fame that precedes it thanks to the successful novels by E.L. James? In my humble Opinion, no it is not. Now with me being a 25 year old African American male, I am not in the target audience for the novels or the movie so I’m already naturally biased. I’ll be the first to admit I’m pretty much impervious to all the elements that attract people to the series. Two things made me pay attention to it though. First, my beautiful wife is reading them and we like to read novels together. Second, I’m a writer myself so I can appreciate someone using their talents and getting recognized. With that said congrats to E.L. James on your success.

But, her success is the film’s failure if not done correctly. Because of the hype created by the novels, the film’s have a mountain to climb just to stand up on their own pedestal. As all of us do, I have my own vision of Christian Grey in my mind thanks to the description in th novel, and Jamie Dornan isn’t it. This is another Rocky crag on this mountain, because the fans all see him as a different person. It will be hard and pretty much impossible to please everyone with their choice of a leading man. Good luck Dornan, you will need it to successful seduce America Anastasia. Personally I think he needs more masculine features. Dornan’s Grey just seems to soft thus far.

I didn’t leave out the wonderful Ms. Steel played by Johnson. My wife and I have envisioned Ana as a quite beautiful young woman who just doesn’t know how gorgeous she is. A woman who hasn’t acknowledged her beauty that Her inner goddess has long accepted. Johnson captures the hum drum I don’t care about media’s perception of beauty and I don’t know I’m beautiful look, but she looks older than Dornan in some of those scenes. Her acting will have to shine through for me to believe her to be this naive girl that will be enveloped into this world of Hard and Soft limits.

Neither of these leads do it for me, but that is just me. Its my opinion, I still hope it’s a good movie. Its just going to be hard to shine with that much of a wall to climb towards success.

(Oh and this trailer being banned from TV is rubbish, they didn’t show anything worth banning. I hope that is just a silly rumor to make people crave it more.)

-Poetic Ice