Yahoo Lifestyle All the Ways the ‘It Ends with Us’ Movie Made Changes From the Book
Colleen Hoover’s popular novel about navigating love and breaking the cycle of abuse, It Ends With Us, has come to the screen thanks to director/costar Justin Baldoni, leading lady Blake Lively, and costar Brandon Sklenar. The good news for fans of Colleen Hoover’s novel is that the movie really didn’t change all that much.
The story is the same. The characters are the same. Most of the events happen in the same order, but we’ll get to that. It Ends With Us is the story of Lily Blossom Bloom, who realizes that she is in an abusive relationship with a man named Ryle that’s not unlike the ones her mother and her childhood friend/lover Atlas’s mother were in. She discovers this while starting a new business selling flowers and reconnecting with the grown-up Atlas–a source of comfort for her and a source of tension for her marriage. There are Easter eggs to scenes in the book that didn’t make the cut. Even the epilogue is the same, which means we may get a sequel. It Starts With Us, anyone? Here are the major (though they’re really minor) changes I noticed.
The flashbacks indicate that more time has passed.
In the book: Lily opens her flower show as a college graduate.
In the movie: Lily quit her job to follow her dream and open the flower shop.
Personally, I hate the fact that an actor I grew up watching in coming-of-age movies and teen television shows plays the older version of a character in a movie, like, at all. I’ll be crawling into an early grave ordering flowers for my own funeral, thank you very much. But I do think the fact that Blake plays the older Lily and another actor, Isabela Ferrer, plays high school Lily indicates that more than four years have passed since she last saw Atlas.
Atlas and Lily’s “breakup” is unclear.
In the book: When Lily’s dad puts Atlas in the hospital, he promises to come get her but they never see each other again.
In the movie: We see that moment, but there’s no promise and it’s not clear that it’s the last time they saw each other. You would have to have read the book to know that.
Why didn’t Lily look Atlas up when she moved to Boston, before she met Ryle? Why did she think her mom would recognize them if their relationship was a secret? The movie doesn’t answer any of these questions.
The restaurant has a different name.
In the book: Bibs for “Better in Boston”
In the movie: Roots, like plants!
Both names are because of conversations Lily and Atlas had as childhood sweethearts.
The “Ellen Diaries” are not in the movie.
In the book: Lily’s teenage diaries are addressed to Ellen DeGeneres because she's a true millennial and a huge fan of the comedian’s daytime show.
In the movie: We see teenage Lily watching The Ellen DeGeneres Show after school, but the diary is not seen or mentioned.
In the movie, flashbacks tell the story of her relationship with Atlas and her abusive father instead of her reading her diary. There’s also a Finding Nemo stuffed animal in a later scene. That’s a reference to a moment in the book where Atlas and Lily watch the Pixar classic and adopt “just keep swimming” as a mantra for overcoming their own adversity.
Lily and Ryle’s marriage is rushed but not *that* rushed.
In the book: They get married in Vegas on a whim.
In the movie: They get married in Boston after Ryle’s sister Alyssa gives birth and he proposes in the hospital. Chaotic in its own way.
This section goes a little faster in the movie, which is pretty normal for a book adaptation. Ryle finds Atlas’s hidden phone number and pushes Lily down the stairs almost immediately after they get married in the movie—a little time passes in the book. In the book, Alyssa’s baby is born after Ryle and Lily get married, not before. That kind of thing.
Ryle’s tragic backstory is revealed in a different way.
In the book: At his sister Alyssa’s insistence, Ryle tells Lily that he killed his brother Emerson when they were children. The accident is similar to what happened to a patient that Ryle lost on the night he and Lily met on the roof.
In the movie: Lily asks Alyssa to tell her what happened to Emerson.
Honestly, if you haven’t read the book, that moment in the movie kind of makes it seem (for a moment) like Ryle made up the story on the roof. But it’s never addressed again.
When Lily gets out, she really gets out.
In the book: Ryle leaves the country for a fellowship and the pregnant Lily returns to their home.
In the movie: She gets her own apartment and moves out. While Ryle still wears his wedding ring, they are separated before she asks for a divorce.
She does wait until the baby is born before officially leaving him and springing that “as a father of daughters” lightbulb moment on him.
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