On August 9, 2024, the movie It Ends With Us was released. Many people knew about the plot of the movie because it is based on the book written by Colleen Hoover. Fans of the book were very excited for the movie and when the trailer was released, people became interested. During production, a lot of people were very invested in how the movie would come out. Out of all the fans, the ones who had read the book had very high expectations. The fans that only watched the trailer didn’t know what to expect. Once the film came out, everyone had mixed feelings about the entirety of it.
A good chunk of people loved the movie. Watching it, you can see the different forms of abuse that the main character Lily Bloom went through. The gaslighting and manipulation that was portrayed throughout the relationship Lily and Ryle, her partner, had was shown through Lily’s flashbacks. These flashbacks showed us how her parents’ abusive relationship made her feel that life was a never ending cycle. This cycle continued by Lily understanding that abuse was a form of love, leading to her later being in an abusive relationship of her own. Another thing the audience could find relatable was having to end things with your first love. We see flashbacks of Lily and her first love, Atlas, and through these watch their relationship unfold. They both had major trauma and were healing as well as growing together. But this trauma caught up to them, causing the two to end things and never see each other again. That is, up until years later, where they met once again at a restaurant he owns. After many visits there with family and friends, Atlas witnesses the abuse that Lily is going through in her relationship with Ryle. Once Lily had enough with the abuse and manipulation, she found comfort in Atlas, especially since he knew about her past. With that comfort, Lily was able to provide for herself. She realized that her relationship with Ryle wasn’t healthy after she discovered she was pregnant. Once she had her baby, she told Ryle that she wanted a divorce to end the cycle. The movie and book proves that we can end cycles like these and move on with our lives. The movie did a great job portraying the book, and many people are hoping for a second movie based on the next novel in the series.
On the other hand, while many people appreciated the movie, many book readers argued that it did not live up to their expectations. The movie’s promotional material instantly set off concerns. The promotion that emphasized the friendships of the film detracted from the awareness that the film was trying to raise about domestic abuse. The casting was subpar, especially because the characters are meant to be in their early to mid twenties. Some of the characters seemed too old to be playing the characters they were supposed to, which took away from the naivety of Lily’s character when she was facing domestic violence. Along with the casting comes the distracting floral wardrobe. When these characters are portrayed in the book, many people envision a youthful and trendy clothing style, which is absolutely absent from the film. The movie adaptation also felt rushed, with a story line that drags and fails to fully address the important issues of domestic violence, and would’ve worked better as a TV series.
The film adaptation missed several significant aspects of the book that added to Lily’s story. In the book, Lily often writes letters to Ellen DeGeneres in her journal which Ryle later finds out about, and in the movie DeGeneres is only mentioned in a flashback. Atlas’ restaurant in the film is called Root, while in the book it’s called Bib for ‘Better in Boston’, and Lily has a meaningful magnet on her refrigerator with that title. The magnet is significant because Ryle, in the book, concludes that Atlas gave it to Lily and he gets jealous, leading to a big fight between the two. Another big miss in the movie from the book is the subtlety of the Finding Nemo theme which acted as a symbol of hope between Lily and Atlas since they both suffered through rough childhoods, and would constantly say the infamous quote from Dory, “just keep swimming.” The movie’s ending slightly differs from the book’s ending in that Atlas and Lily’s dialogue is cut short and only leaves an inkling of hope for the two.
Justin Baldoni, who played Ryle in the movie, was very taken with the book and originally proposed adapting it into a film. He entered the film-making process with only the intention of directing the project alongside the book author, Colleen Hoover. But, Hoover saw him as the best fit to play Ryle and offered him the part. The tension between the cast and Baldoni was noticeable at the movie premiere in New York, when Blake Lively took photos with every other cast member, except Baldoni, who was directing. Although Hoover and Lively took the stage to present the movie at the premiere, Baldoni did not join them, despite having a big part in the movie as a whole. Baldoni also did the majority of the press interviews on his own, while his cast members did interviews alongside each other. During these interviews, when asked about Baldoni, the cast seemed to steer the questions in a different direction. While Baldoni has not addressed these allegations, he has shared some insight about making the film, expressing the difficulties he encountered while managing acting and directing.
As more information was released, we see that during the writers’ strike, Blake Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, was writing the script and was leaving Baldoni out of all the final decisions. Some fans were upset after they found out that Reynolds and Lively were writing the script without having any type of knowledge of the book. People thought that Hoover would back up Baldoni, but she was only backing up Lively because Lively and her husband were funding the film. This gave Lively a lot of hate, especially since during interviews Blake Lively was mainly promoting her hair care instead of showing what the message of the movie was. Viewers were very upset with Lively after she was asked what she would say to someone who was facing domestic abuse. This is because she gave a very insincere response, saying “I will give them my number.” Another interview Lively is facing hate for is when an interviewer congratulated her after seeing her baby bump and Blake Lively said the same thing back. After this interview, we found out that the interviewer is infertile. From this, Blake Lively is getting backlash and has now gained the title of a mean girl.
Despite these allegations, the movie has become a major success, earning over 100 million dollars at the box office. As fans have had mixed feelings about the movie, the fans are very eager to see the sequel: It Starts With Us. Now that the movie has been released, the sales of the book series have increased. All in all, many people have become fans of the It Ends With Us franchise because they were moved by the message.
