MovieChat Forums > After Everything (2023) Discussion > Such a pretty movie, with maybe the most...

Such a pretty movie, with maybe the most blatant misogyny in storytelling I’ve ever experienced


They erased the MAIN CHARACTER from the story. They erased Tessa, the character who we were supposed to be invested in since the first movie.

They gave away the story to Harden, who has only been the “interesting love interest” up until this point. We never follow his perspective, we’re not supposed to. And now they let him write the book “After”, and we get ONLY his perspective as he has his whole redemption journey in Portugal with some other girl…….without Tessa!

This girl in Portugal has seemingly been created specifically so that we don’t need Tessa to be in the story.

Tessa has been reduced to flashback snapshots memories in Harden’s mind and she only actually shows up at the end of the film just to be Harden’s trophy.

Heck, Tessa’s revealed profession at the end…..which is wedding planning….has absolutely zero to do with everything we’ve learned if her in the previous movies. It’s like they didn’t even try to really write for her, she just needs to fit in the little romantic final scene they want for Harden.

This is worse misogyny than Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey…..heck even 365 Days. Atleast all those films stuck by their main heroines and didn’t let their journey’s get taken over by some dude.

reply

I completely agree. I don't understand why they took Tessa out of the final chapter in this journey that we have been on for 5 years. Their story together is why we were invested in watching these movies; and to take her out of the final one is a big kick in the teeth. We're supposed to believe that they spent two years apart without hardly any communication, and Tessa not giving a crap of Hardin's feelings this whole time. Then suddenly they're in the same place and declaring their undying love for each other and getting engaged. It was all very rushed and unbelievable and I would have much rather had a whole movie with Hardin chasing Tessa like old times sake. Basically, if they didn't have to attend that wedding, Tessa would never have reached out to Hardin.

reply