Hollywood doesn't do sequels the way they used to. It used to be that a sequel was a reward. Beverly Hills Cop makes $234 million ($613 million in today's money), so it gets a sequel. Kull the Conqueror makes $6 million, and that's it for Kevin Sorbo's movie career. Around the time when Star Wars delivered a second trilogy and Lord of the Rings became a phenomenon with a locked in, three movie set, sequels changed from being a reward to an investment. Studios then planned for movies in sets of three or four. That has resulted in a phenomenon I call the "Requirement Sequel". That's when a movie series doesn't take off the way a studio planned but they still have to finish it. The Maze Runner series was planned as Fox's answer to The Hunger Games. The first movie made a tidy $100 million (on a ~$30 million budget!). They double the budget for the sequel and it only makes back $81 million. Normally, that's when a studio would call it quits, but the studio was committed to finishing the story. So, the similarly expensive Maze Runner: The Death Cure sneaks into theaters with no hype and doesn't even make back its budget domestically. Remember how the Divergent Series got so dire that they essentially scrapped the fourth and final installment?
Fifty Shades Freed is a Requirement Sequel, although not a worst case scenario. The first Fifty Shades movie opened big for Universal, even though it had the studio's 10th choice for both the lead roles and missed the book's hype by a couple years. The second movie made about 2/3s as much and didn't drive the pop culture discussion one iota. It was clear that the series was kind of a mess and couldn't delivery on the trashiness that made the books a worldwide phenomenon. In the old sequel model, a studio would considered stopping after that. Instead, Universal went ahead and made Fifty Shades Freed anyway. And it did make money. It still made $100 million on a $55 million budget. But no one was asking for this movie*.
*I get that I'm not the target audience, but I do think I follow the box office closely enough to gauge hype.
Nothing happens in this movie. Anastasia and Christian* get married. She continues to not realize what being rich means. There's a stalker or two. Christian is even more jealous and demanding as a husband. She's pregnant of course. And it kind of, just, ends. I'm sorry, it doesn't "just end". There is a montage that shows us all the iconic scenes from the series set to "Love Me Like You Do" then a flash forward to them as a happy family with a couple kids. Oops, uh, spoiler alert.
*I keep wanting to call him Earl.
When I saw the first movie, there was a genuine curiosity if they could deliver on the hype. By the second one, I found myself even bored by the nudity. With the third movie, I simply couldn't even pretend to care anymore. I left it on more than I watched it, which was pretty ideal. I didn't dedicate any brain capacity to figuring out the plot or if I should remember who Rita Ora's character was. I didn't concern myself with if Arielle Kebbel was supposed to register as an actual threat to the Grey relationship. I didn't even have focus enough to laugh at how hard the movie insists that Anastasia earned her high level job at the publishing company. The movie is so devoid of a narrative to move things forward, that I couldn't muster up any frustration when something stupid happened.
Excuse me while I go look for a way to feel anything about this movie.
Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend
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