Note: Please read previous post if you have not already.
So now that you have an idea of the three different story lines that screenwriters could have drawn from, let's see (in a little more detail) what they did use:
Lena: Finds out that Kostos got a girl pregnant and married her; she is (supposedly) devastated but that doesn't come across at all. Instead, she meets Leo at film school, starts casually dating/posing for him, rejects Kostos, and then is friendly (but not too friendly) to him at the end of the movie when she sees him in Greece.
Tibby: Pregnancy scare, holes up in her room, breaks up with Brian, wants Brian back, gets Brian back.
Bridget: No mention of Eric, goes to Turkey, gets "close" to the female archeology professor, realizes she wants a family but instead of returning home, she goes to visit her maternal grandmother to learn about her mom.
Carmen: is upset because all her friends have abandoned her this summer, her mom is pregnant, and they're moving, so she goes to theater camp with new friend Julia, who is jealous when Carmen gets the starring role and tries to date the guy that Carmen likes. Carmen almost sucks because of this, but then realizes Julia is a bad friend, doesn't suck, and is happy when she goes to Greece with the other three.
What they should have used for the movie, and the reasons why.
Lena, in the movie, is too far removed from the way she was in the first movie (remember, she's had two summers to get used to being beautiful and being without Kostos). Her storylines have been mostly passive, because she was dealing with inward stuff and growing inwardly. The storyline they should have used was from summer 3-- the one where she was drawing her family and learning about them, but still learning how to stand up for herself, too (by defying her father and still going to art school even though he told her she could not). The reason they should have chosen this is because it reflects the continued change of Lena becoming comfortable with herself and who she is, but also because it shows her learning about those around her. It also allows her to retain her characteristics from the earlier movie. Remember, human nature never fully cures itself, so we always go back to our flaws.
Tibby's role in the movie, because of the pregnancy scare was very limited to a pre-occupation with babies and a stubbornness in breaking up with Brian. I felt like this didn't capitalize on her well-established character from the first movie, and think they should have used the story-line from summer 2-- the one where she goes to film camp and tries to impress these friends by shrugging off Brian and making fun of her mom, but realizes how stupid she is in the end and turns it into Bailey's documentary. This storyline would have great continuity with the first movie, and also show how the things that occur in our past really do still affect us later on.
Bridget could have gone with any of her storylines, because they were all good, and all showed great insight into Bridget's character and human nature (in that we all return to our flaws). I think the Bridget/Grandmother story line is my favorite, but not the way they did it in the movie-- with Bridget still beautiful and very much the same. They couldn't have done the full story line because Bridget couldn't have quit soccer (and can you really make Blake Lively fatter?) Since they couldn't do that, the best one they could have done was summer 4-- but the complete one. They should have showed she was dating Eric, and she should have gone the whole way, with kissing the professor, to realizing how stupid she was, to realizing she missed Eric, to realizing she wanted to draw her father and brother out and going home and doing that. This story-line is effective in demonstrating Bridget's character flaws, but also shows her simultaneous fear and need for family and love.
Carmen's story was fine the way it was.
Recent Comments