“It Ends With Us”: Pure Drama On and Off-Screen
Based on the novel by Coleen Hoover, It Ends With Us focuses on a woman who suffers from domestic violence.
Summary
Lily Bloom is about to fulfill her lifelong dream of opening her own business when she meets the perfect man, Ryle Kincaid. The fairy tale begins to crack when our protagonist starts to see an undeniable resemblance between her relationship with Ryle and the ones her parents used to have.
When the situation becomes harder to sustain, Lily has to make a difficult decision about the kind of life she wants to lead.
Fan Fiction-Core Content
I’m not a Coleen Hoover fan, and I have not read the book, so I’m unsure how true to the source material the new project is. Therefore, my criticism will be directed only at the film.
For starters, it’s possible to detect a lot of what I call “fan fiction tropes” in this film. Maybe this is because the last two generations spent their teenage years reading fanfics full of spelling mistakes instead of real books, and some of those people went on to work as screenwriters.
Some of the things I’m about to mention are not confined to fan fiction, but the resemblance was killing me the entire time I was watching.
Manufactured Uniqueness
First, we have a female protagonist who is very “unique and different”. And how do we know that? Because she has lived through more traumatic situations than anyone in the world. She also happens to be attractive and has a distinct fashion style that tends to be clownish, but is unique. It kind of replaces her personality; in most cases, she does not have one. In this film, our protagonist has a passion for flowers, so her wardrobe contains clothes in all the floral patterns in the world, which she combines with dubious taste.
And of course, she has a unique and different name: Lily Blossom Bloom. That’s her name, and she loves flowers. What a magnificent coincidence!
Love Interests Can’t Be Poor
The love interest needs to be attractive, dirty rich, and also traumatized. It can’t be a guy with a normal job and good mental health, that’s not romantic. So Lily meets Ryle, a rich and good-looking neurosurgeon with a tragic past. Lily’s other love interest, Atlas, used to be poor, but now he runs the most famous restaurant in Boston. Lily has an excellent eye for guys, as you can notice.
Manufactured Meaning
The dialogue makes you roll your eyes. A huge effort is being made to sound deep and emotional, and the characters have a lot of pointless conversations to achieve that effect, but it does not work. To write something deep, you first need to have something deep to say. Which is mostly not the case.
All of that being pointed out, as a film, It Ends With Us is pretty regular. It’s entertaining enough to pass an afternoon, but it’s not something special. I doubt it will be remembered as a great movie.
Justin Baldoni’s direction is fine. I must say that the pacing of the story felt slightly strange. It covers years in the life of the protagonist, so sometimes I was not sure if things were going too fast or too slow. Everything is too teenage-level dramatic to be believable.
The performances are nothing to write home about, but overall, they’re okay.
Domestic Violence and Abuse: An Accurate Representation?
In my opinion, he treatment of the topic is very surface-level. The situations the protagonist goes through are not portrayed in such an intense way. They even leave some room to question the magnitude of the problem. Maybe this is intentional—to portray it from the victim’s perspective, who tries to justify what’s happening and believes it’s accidental. One way or another, it takes weight away from the issue.
The main reason I don’t like this type of films is because I feel they are very manipulative. They don’t really commit to the subject they allegedly want to talk about (in this case, domestic violence), but use it as a means to attract attention. It’s like those cheap dramas where the protagonist has an incurable disease that were so popular in the 2010s. Writers like topics that look cool and edgy, but they are not interested in exploring the complexities of those difficult situations.
In It Ends With Us, we don’t see an escalade of violence, we don’t feel the protagonist is really in danger. Of course, if you have ever been through something similar (as lots of people have), the few scenes that show some violence are going to get an emotional reaction out of you. And that is exactly what the film wants: to buy you with just that.
On the other hand, if you have not experienced something similar, what you see on screen leaves you pretty indifferent, something that would never happen with a good story. When a film is excellent, it forces you to be engaged in the character’s problems. It doesn’t matter if it is something you have not lived through, it makes you feel as if you have. It Ends With Us does not achieve that, not even close.
Blake Lively’s Controversial Promotion
Blake Lively is the wife of Ryan Reynolds, the one and only Deadpool. As Deadpool & Wolverine and It Ends With Us had close releases, the promotion for both films kind of overlapped, and the couple was participating in them as a team. So since July, we’ve seen them together at every event, looking perfect and being funny. The marketing was working; people like their relationship a lot, and for a film like Deadpool, a chaotic promotion was very suitable. However, everything changed when It Ends With Us was released in August.
Lively was selling the film as a romcom, calling people to “wear their florals” to go to the movie, trying to pull off a “Barbie marketing”. She also took advantage of the momentum of the project to promote her brand of hair products, and alcoholic beverages. Some people started to call her out on social media, accusing her of being disrespectful and out of touch.
To my amusement, this turned into a huge deal online, and new things started to come out that leave Lively in a bad position.
Justin Baldoni vs. Blake Lively
Once It Ends With Us was released, people started seeing that Lively and Justin Baldoni, the director and male lead of the film, were promoting the project in a totally different light.
While Lively was talking about fashion and hair care, Baldoni was interested in highlighting the situations of domestic violence portrayed in the film and how important it is to address this topic. And they were not showing themselves together at the events. In fact, Baldoni seemed to be promoting by himself. And just like that, we have reached a Don’t Worry, Darling type of PR crisis.
The reason they don’t get along is not clear, but apparently it has to do with creative differences that appeared on set and during post-production. Lively was adamant about releasing a different cut of the film than the one Baldoni had prepared, edited by the same person who was responsible for Deadpool &Wolverine. Allegedly, Ryan Reynolds also stepped in to write scenes for the film, so it seems the production was a constant fight for control between Baldoni and Lively. It is important to point out that it was Baldoni who purchased the rights to the novel, and who hired Lively for the part. The project was his.
Rumors coming from Lively’s side accused Baldoni of making the actress feel uncomfortable while shooting romantic scenes and also “fat-shaming” her, in a clear attempt to make him look bad. But in an unexpected (and very convenient) twist, some old videos have resurfaced online of Blake Lively being rude to interviewers, earning her a major cancellation. From that moment on, everything went downhill.
Box Office Reception
In the three weeks since its release, It Ends With Us has made $242.624.000 at the global box office. It was quite an impressive achievement for a film that, according to The Numbers, had a production budget of $25.000.000.
Bad publicity aside, the project is already profitable and keeps doing great. Blake Lively’s career, on the other hand… is too early to tell.
In conclusion, It Ends With Us is not a great film. It’s not the worst I’ve seen this year, but if you have not watched it, you’re not missing out on anything. In fact, I’m having more fun following all the drama than I had in the theater. That should tell you everything you need to know.
