Ah yes, the brand new chick flick of 2016 where girls are eagerly anticipating the best date of their lives – hopefully with that someone special. Since my boyfriend is in Australia, I guess that won’t be happening for me, and I’ll be watching it with my brother sometime next week. Mmmmm, romantic!
But, I already know how the story ends.
You see, just like the movie The Fault in Our Stars, there is actually a book. And if you have read the book, like I did over a year ago, then you wouldn’t be thinking that Me Before You is a typical rom-com-chick-flick. Because….
*spoiler alert*
Will Traynor still decides to die anyway.
And then you see girls everywhere balling their eyes out and saying that the movie is crap, it was sudden, unexpected..blablabla.
You know, I actually liked that ending. Like I genuinely thought it was genius for Jojo Moyes to do to. Here’s why.
• It was not cliché. It was horrible yes, but it wasn’t cliché. I mean, put yourself in the shoes of Will. You can’t move anything apart from your head and fingers. And as much as he loved Louisa, being alive only meant that it was going to be a very difficult road ahead not just for him, but also for her. Imagine being 80-years-old and taking care of your paralysed husband. Sure, you can hire help but that’s a discussion for another day.
• The ending was very relatable. This kind of unimaginable situations actually do happen in real life, regardless of whether you’d like to believe it or not.
• It is a sad ending with a silver lining – Louisa was privileged to be loved by someone like Will Traynor, someone who was cold as ice at first, and then warmed up to her. He basically taught her to be brave (which relates to what I’m going to say next).
And not that I’m spoiling it for everyone further, but there is a second book *gasp*. And guess what it’s called?
Me After You.
Whether you have heard of this book or not, you can kind of already tell that Will Traynor disappears at some point. The second book came out last August (a month after I left UK, which means I waited for a while because Malaysia gets things a little slower than the rest of the world). My boyfriend surprised me with it in February when I was pretty busy and stressed out with work that I forgot about it. I know, he’s as sweet as a peach! It was as gorgeous as the first book but I shall not reveal it’s contents here.
So girls. Learn to appreciate the fact that Will enjoyed the last 6 months of his existence. It was probably the best he’s ever had. This is life, and we all lose people at some point. We cry because we feel sad that Louisa has lost someone she dearly loves, and we can relate – heartbreak sounds familiar anybody? Happy endings don’t always have to end, well, happy. It may not be ideal, yes. But there’s no reason why Louisa should still have an unhappy life *cues Me After You*.
Learn to accept that it’s okay for movies and books to have endings like this. We live in a world where “happily ever afters” displayed by the media is treated as an exemplary way to live our lives. That’s not how life is though, is it?
Even J.K. Rowling had to kill some people off in the Harry Potter series. It just happens.
It. Just. Happens.
x
