Minor spoilers for the 50 shades series and major spoilers for 365 days but honestly you shouldn't read or watch them because they are bad. Pro tip: go watch sex positive people on the YouTube roast them both. There are so many better love stories out there, even kinky and erotic ones.
Remember when the whole progressive side of the internet was up in arms about how bad 50 shades of grey is? How it was using BDSM as a flashy showcase and not representing the morals of the community, and that so much of how it was written was creepy and abusive?
365 days is worse. Like 50 shades is about an unhealthy relationship between a young woman who doesn't know how to advocate for herself being manipulated by a emotionally blocked off guy.
365 days is that except the woman is framed as a bad boss who has agency until this mob boss falls in love with her face and kidnaps her. And its romanticized that she looses that autonomy to him. Flat out, the whole movie is from her perspective being manipulated by a kidnapper. And it's framed as romantic and hot. I hate that the lack of consent has to be explained. There can be no aspects of consent in that relationship because from the start she has no free will. Kidnapping isn't romantic. Why is it framed as such???
Also the 365 days kidnapper is framed as sympathetic and that what he's doing is okay because it's *true love*
From my perspective, both movies would have been actually worth my time if they were reframed to be thrillers and not love stories. 50 shades would have been better if it explored Mr. Dommy Christian Grey as a villain instead of a love interest. He could have been this weirdly sympathetic villain tho, like a man trapped in his own masculine façade that he can't form relationships and uses women. It would have at least been poignant. And I wish 365 days was about how psychologically terrible it would be to be kidnapped by a guy and 'forced' to fall in love with him. She lashes out against her abuser several times in the movie and it doesn't lead up to anything like it should. There's a bunch of setup that didn't do anything and didn't go anywhere and it was a bunch of missed opportunities. Maybe the movie could have explored Stockholm syndrome and the cycle of abuse, like that would have been *problematic* but at least it would have been substance. It's sickening that they are love stories because no healthy love is present in either. Only manipulation.
Someone tell the media that the masculine 'Mr in charge' guy, and the 'always gets his way' guy can still practice consent and be sexy. You don't have to make him a kidnapper or a control freak to make him sexy so please don't.
Also, if I wrote 365 days I would have had a plot twist. Keep the guy a manipulative high and mighty hypocrite (by the way the guy from 365 days is anti human trafficking but he kidnaps a woman because he fell in love with her -in a vision-) and the woman will still get kidnapped by him, she will act out the whole time but still be steadily wooed by him. But I would change up the framing so instead of the side story about him being a mob boss being just like, his background, I would make it a plot element. I would make the woman he kidnaps a secret assassin from a rival mob, who planted the idea of her in his mind because the rival mobster is just mad he's a hypocrite or for a personal bloodfued or something. Anyway, she only pretends to be mad she's kidnapped and is acting like she doesn't want it at first to sell the illusion, and acts like she's falling in love with him to gain his trust and make him think he's in control. Maybe i'd make her toy with him the way he toyed with some rival mobsters son or something, add a lil backstory, but make it vague and not tie her to it until the end. Like just one scene about him toying with people in an abandoned house or something and boom the setup is all there. Also I would make the moment that she is revealed to never have been in love with him, and that she was just planted in his head by some hypnosis bs, the same moment she kills him. Boom. Better more compelling ending, more intriguing plot, playing with expectations. Movie would immediately go from a 0/10 to like a 6/10.
Just a thought.
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