On August 9th, 2024, the heavily anticipated movie It Ends With Us debuted in theaters. So far, the film has made a global total of 115 million dollars in box office earnings. The film is based on Colleen Hoover’s hit novel, of the same name, and stars acclaimed actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. The film touches upon heavy and harsh realities such as domestic abuse and assault making it a subject of controversy amongst critics.
The movie revolves around a woman named Lily Bloom who “falls deeply in love” with a man named Ryle but soon finds out about his violent tendencies. This concept of having more representation for domestic abuse survivors is, in theory, good but what’s unusual is the way that the abuse is romanticized. Should an issue as serious as domestic abuse be profited off of?
The most bothersome thing about this is the way that the story is written as one where you end up rooting for a victim and her abuser to reconcile. No one condones abusive relationships but the story itself invokes a sense of support for a dangerous situation. The problem is with the way the story is developed. Audiences fall in love with their relationship so much that when the relationship turns violent, they are tempted to overlook it in the name of love. This is not okay, especially for young girls who don’t know better. The issue of domestic abuse is serious and dangerous, not some Box office hit to fill the pockets of wealthy producers.
6.9 million copies of the book have been sold. This means that almost 7 million people in the world have read this story. Now imagine the non-readers, those who only watch movies, there has to be an equal or even greater chance of people seeing the movie. Let’s say it’s equal and 14 million people have watched the movie. There are 12 million people subjected to domestic abuse each year. The gravity of the situation is that more people are seeing this movie and accepting it as reality than actually knowing about those 12 million stories.
This one story that only partly shows the reality of domestic abuse cannot be accepted as an ideology about domestic safety. We need to be able to raise awareness for this issue in a way that chastises abusive relationships not romanticizes them. Hollywood should aim to acknowledge the real story, not the one covered in flowers and painted with false realities.
