“Takes It Out Of The YA Genre”: It Ends With Us Movie Aging Up Book’s Characters Defended By Director

Warning: This article contains mention of domestic abuse.

Summary Justin Baldoni explains why he aged up the characters in It Ends With Us.

Baldoni aged up characters in It Ends With Us to appeal to women of all ages.

The book on which It Ends With Us is based is highly controversial.

It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni explains why he chose to age up the film's lead characters. Baldoni, best known for his work on Jane the Virgin, is the director and main star of the upcoming film It Ends With Us. The film is an adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel of the same name, which was popularized on the TikTok subcommunity, BookTok. In the novel, the lead characters of Lily and Ryle are 23 and 30, respectively, which is at least a decade younger than their on-screen counterparts, portrayed by Blake Lively and Baldoni.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Baldoni now explains why he chose to age up the characters for It Ends With Us. The director first reacted to the backlash surrounding the It Ends With Us casting, noting that "there's always going to be opinions," and he welcomes discourse surrounding the adaptation. In terms of why he actually changed the characters' ages, he realized that "the type of movie [he] wanted to make was not about a 23-year-old girl." Instead, he wanted It Ends With Us to tell a story for "women of all ages." Check out the full quote from Baldoni below:

When you have a book that is so in the zeitgeist, especially on a platform like TikTok and Instagram and social media, you're always going to have online chatter. There's always going to be opinions. It didn't really bother me because the fact that they were talking about it was a beautiful thing. If nobody talks about your book adaptation, then I feel like that's more of a problem. Then we should be worried. I just knew from the beginning the type of movie I wanted to make was not about a 23-year-old girl. I wanted women of all ages to be able to see themselves, and aging up the characters, I think, really helps it become a universal story, and it takes it out of the YA genre. I believed, from the beginning, that Blake Lively is aspirational to young women and would never be seen as too old once they saw the movie.

Why It Ends With Us Is So Controversial Explained

Its Ends With Us Was Accused Of Romanticizing Abuse

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It Ends With Us' casting is not the only thing that makes the film adaptation controversial. Released in 2016, the Hoover novel on which Baldoni's film is based had already received a fair deal of backlash. The main reason for its controversy is based on how the novel portrays domestic abuse. In the book, Lily is abused by her father, and then falls into a cycle of abuse again during her relationship with Ryle. While some praised the book's abuse depiction, others felt that the way It Ends With Us portrays abuse humanizes Ryle far too much.

Related Blake Lively’s 2024 Romance Movie Can Fix The Biggest Criticism Of The Book It's Based On The 2024 movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us has the potential to fix the book's biggest criticism because of this one detail.

Part of this over-humanization is related to the fact that It Ends With Us is marketed as a romance novel. Readers felt that this marketing further glorifies Ryle's actions, as Lily's struggle with the cycle of abuse should not be tied up in more mundane relationship problems. This aspect of the novel's marketing does not appear to be amended entirely for the It Ends With Us movie, as the film's IMDb genre description still lists "romance" as one of its genres.

At the same time, Baldoni's recent quote makes it seem like the director has positive intentions when it comes to making changes to his adaptation. By changing the characters' ages, the actor-director sought to divorce It Ends With Us from the "YA genre." The YA space is one wherein problematic relationships could be easily glorified by its audience, so by removing the movie version from this genre, Baldoni takes one step in trying to make It Ends With Us less troubling and controversial.

Source: EW