Fantasy Vs. Reality In 500 Days Of Summer

There is a difference between fantasy and reality, but sometimes, it is difficult to differentiate what is real and what is fantasy. In the context of love and relationships, fantasy is believing in the happily ever after that movies and pop culture portray and believing that love and marriage only consist of meeting the person of your dreams and then everything else falls into place. Reality is realizing that real love is not the perfect happily ever after story the movies present, and realistic relationships consist of hardships and problems along the way. 500 days of Summer examines the difference between reality and fantasy and how sometimes, love and fantasy blend together, making it hard for Tom to tell what is real and what is fantasy. While Tom seems to have this

500 days of Summer uses fantasy in the film portrayed through Tom and the realistic, direct language of the other characters to reveal the contrast between the fantasy of love and reality. This demonstrates the romantic preconceptions that the media plants in our minds that can alter our understanding and expectations of love and relationships, which can make people less willing to undergo the hardships in relationships that the media does not portray once they face the reality that love is not as perfect as it is in movies.

Because of his childhood and experience with movies and pop culture, Tom has come to believe that the love depicted in movies is how love is in real life, establishing the role that fantasy has on his opinion of love and relationships. At the beginning of the movie, the narrator gives the audience background of Tom and Summer's childhood and their experience with love at a young age. The narrator explains, "Tom Hansen … grew up believing that he'd never truly be happy until the day he met "the one." This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music and a total misreading of the movie 'The