Poster // Wayfarer Studios via IMDb
By: Sam Simons
Media Writer
The following article mentions themes of domestic violence and abuse.
This article contains spoilers!
Reflecting on this summer in film, there has been a fair share of new movies – mostly sequels to vie for the title of blockbuster of the summer. Specifically, films such as “Inside Out 2”, “Despicable Me 4”, “Deadpool and Wolverine” and “Twisters” have brought in huge box office returns. Now, the same can be said for the book-to-movie adaptation of “It Ends With Us.”
“It Ends With Us” is based on the 2016 book written by Colleen Hoover, which took off in 2021 thanks to BookTok. If you are unfamiliar, BookTok is a section of TikTok where creators can recommend their favorite books to others and spark conversations. It is the Oprah’s Book Club of today’s generation. Authors like Hoover have risen to fame and their book sales increased massively thanks to BookTok, making authors like her household names – for better or worse.
Now this all sounds like a feel-good success story; however, reading in between the lines is important as we consider whether BookTok is helping struggling authors or making authors feel entitled. Also, the name Colleen alone doesn’t have the best track record as we are still recovering from the toxic gossip train caused by Colleen Ballinger, so this might have been a sign.
It can be said that BookTok has influenced people to get into reading, which is supposed to be a good thing! However, it can also be said that BookTok has also influenced people to buy a book simply because it is popular, and not because they genuinely wanted to read it. BookTok has contributed to reading no longer being a hobby, but a microtrend. People are treating books almost as an accessory that they will eventually get bored of and put on the shelf to collect dust – or worse, simply throw it away when the next trend comes along.
Popular authors like Hoover are banking on their success from BookTok, so they pop out more books like pizzas to feed their fans. Essentially, this model feels like an assembly line, and calls into question the intentions of popular BookTok authors. Are they writing new books and creating new projects that they genuinely are passionate about, or is it because they want a check?
Now moving into the storm that is “It Ends With Us”. The protagonist’s full name is Lily Blossom Bloom, so guess what her career path is? A florist, naturally. Her love interest, who we later find out physically abuses her, is a neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid.
Then there’s Lily’s first love, Atlas Corrigan, who comes back into her life to turn her world around – very subtle. As a whole, “It Ends With Us” is about Lily’s journey to end the cycle of domestic violence and abuse. When Lily was growing up, she witnessed her father abusing her mother, and as an adult her relationship mirrors her parents’.
Before she was an author, Hoover was a social worker, and referenced the difficult times she encountered in some of her novels. In writing “It Ends With Us”, she drew from her own experience of growing up in a household of domestic violence that carried into her adulthood. Therefore, you would think that Hoover would truly write this book as a way to advocate for domestic violence victims – but while the intention is there, the results don’t show.
The way that Hoover depicts domestic violence is fluffy and romanticized. Hoover released a coloring book about this story, which comes off as tone deaf (or with the coloring book, maybe color blind?). Furthermore, in most of Hoover’s novels, the abusive behavior is brushed off and excused. Ryle is depicted as a good-looking guy that makes readers ‘ship’ him with Lily and ignore the fact that he abuses her. With Hoover’s young, impressionable fan base, this creates a harmful message that it’s okay to be in a relationship with someone who abuses you as long as they are gorgeous.
The film did make some improvements from the book, but also changed some details. In 2019, Ryle’s actor Justin Baldoni opted for a film adaptation of the book to be produced through his own production company, Wayfarer Studios. In early 2023, the cast came together, and Blake Lively was cast to play Lily Bloom. This was a controversial choice, because Lily is a 23-year-old college graduate, whereas Lively is 37. This changed the power imbalance present in the book between Lily and 29-year-old Ryle.
In terms of the costume design of the film and Lily’s style, fans didn’t like the fashion choices that were made. In the book, Lily is described to have a quirkier aesthetic, and this is also seen in her flower shop. However, her style in the film is less about her having fun and showing her development, and instead aims for shock value only.
For a florist, she is dressed more like a carpenter, and her nighttime wardrobe is flashy, which doesn’t fit her average-income lifestyle. In interviews, Lively stated that she wore some of her own clothes, as well as some of her husband’s clothes and her best friend and model Gigi Hadid’s clothes.
Aside from this, one of the most notable improvements in the film was the end. At the end of the novel, Lily forgives Ryle and the two co-parent their daughter. In the film, Lily leaves Ryle and raises her daughter on her own. This choice came from Baldoni, who consulted with a domestic violence organization and decided that the original ending didn’t depict the accuracy of the realities of abuse. (God bless Justin Baldoni.)
The film’s press tour has also been poorly received. Baldoni not only served as an actor in the film, but also was the director and a producer. Similarly, Lively was involved in the marketing for the film as well as making rewrites for scenes. When it came to the press tour, there was a notable difference in how Lively discussed the themes of the film compared to Baldoni.
In his interviews, Baldoni makes the effort to discuss and bring awareness to the serious themes of this film, as well as what his intentions were in directing and producing it. Lively, on the other hand, seemed to make every interview a discussion about anything but the important storylines in the film.
Unfortunately, that’s not all, as Lively has used the press tour as an opportunity to promote her hair care line. It’s like everyone except for Baldoni has learned nothing, and they don’t seem to grasp the nature of the film, and quite frankly, it doesn’t seem like they care too much either. Baldoni has been absent from a number of group interviews, and in light of allegations that he created a toxic atmosphere on set, fans speculate that he may have had a falling out with the rest of the cast.
With all the attention toward “It Ends With Us” and especially with this press tour, will it ever end? As annoying as it is, there is a sequel book – “It Starts With Us” – and since we are in an era of everything being made into a sequel, it’s possible that a second film could be made. If this is true, hopefully the chaos that came from “It Ends With Us” can be taken into heavy consideration and a start in a better direction than it’s in now.