Love requires sacrifice, but it's worth it.
The Longest Ride is a 2015 American Neo-Western Romantic Drama film, based on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks. Directed by George Tillman Jr and adapted to screenplay by Craig Bolotin. The movie stars Scott Eastwood, Britt Robertson, Oona Chaplin, Jack Huston, and Alan Alda. Melissa Benoist also pops up in a small role.The plot centers on the love affair between Luke (Eastwood), a former champion bull rider looking to make a comeback, and Sophia (Robertson), a college student finishing her senior year while preparing to begin her dream job in New York City's art world. As conflicting paths and ideals test their relationship, Sophia and Luke make an unexpected and fateful connection with Ira (Alda), whose memories of his own decades-long romance with his beloved wife Ruth (with the young couple portrayed by Huston and Chaplin) inspire Luke and Sophia.
The film was produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox in April of 2015, and made roughly $63 million at the box office on a budget of $34 million.
Tropes in the film include:
- Adoption Is Not an Option: Averted. After Ira is rendered sterile and his wife Ruth chooses to stay with him they attempt to supplant her wish for a family by adopting Daniel, one of her students. It fails, and they don't seem to try again.
- Bus Crash: Following Ruth's death, Ira was visited by the now-adult Daniel's wife, who reveals that he died in the years in between their last meeting.
- Career-Ending Injury: Luke's repeatedly warned that if he continues bull riding, he won't just suffer this, he'll be crippled for the rest of his life.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Luke's reluctance to quit bull riding, despite the obvious toll it is taking on him, is because he has been doing it for so long and does not know what else to do with himself.
- Dented Iron: Years of bull riding have not been kind to Luke's body. Previously, he had taken a break after an accident on put him in a coma for several days. He also takes pain killers to dull the pain of previously broken ribs. Sophia and his mother both desperately want him to quit before he dies in the ring or is permanently crippled.
- Distant Epilogue: The final scenes of the film take place a year after the rest of the film.
- Gilligan Cut: Sophia's sorority sister convinces her to go with them to the rodeo. Sophia immediately says that she's not wearing the cowboy boots. Guess what the very next shot is?
- Green-Eyed Monster: The other ladies who are attending the bull-riding rodeo are clearly very jealous when Luke lets Sophia keep his hat.
- Happily Ever After: In the Distant Epilogue of the film, Luke and Sophia own a successful museum carrying Ira and Ruth's collection of paintings named after them. Sophia's also wearing an engagement ring, and Luke's wearing a gold wedding band.
- Hotter and Sexier: The love scenes between Sophia and Luke are considerably more erotic than previous Sparks' film adaptations.
- Hunk: Luke's quite the muscular guy.
- Immigrant Parents: Sophia, whose father was born in Slovakia, is the first Sparks heroine to have these.
- Informed Attractiveness: The first thing the ladies of Sophia's sorority say when they see Luke is that he's extremely hot. And it is Scott Eastwood.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Ira in the present is an elderly man who strikes up a friendship with the younger Luke and Sophia.
- Karmic Jackpot: When Luke decides to give up bull riding, he attends the auction for Ira's collection of art he and Ruth gathered over the years where Sophia is, too. He wins back her heart and sentimentally purchases the painting of Ruth...winning the entire $200 million collection of art.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: One where it's the man's infertility that causes the problems. One of the things that Ruth wants when she marries Ira is that she wants to have a family with him, and they're both happy to have one. Ira suffers an injury during combat, and said injury causes and infection that sterilizes him. He wants to end his relationship with Ruth so that she could have the family she wanted, but she chooses to live her life with Ira.
- Lonely at the Top: Luke's ultimate goal as a bull-rider is to ride the bull who gave him his worst injury for the eight seconds. He succeeds...and Sophia isn't there to share the victory with him.
- Lower-Class Lout: Luke thinks he is this when compared to Sophia, especially when they go to an art show together, and the appeal is lost on him. However, it's less this, and more Luke's insecurities and ignorance regarding art that end up embarrassing him at the event.
- Mr. Fanservice: The film goes well out of its way to show off Scott Eastwood's muscular physique. He gets several sexy shirtless scenes.
- Ms. Fanservice: Britt Robertson is easy on the eyes too. She even averts Nipple and Dimed during one of her love scenes with Luke.
- Parental Substitute: Ruth becomes a mother-figure to her in-need student Daniel. She even tries to adopt him, but fails when his birth parents refuse to let him go. However, many years later after Ruth's death Daniel's wife tells Ira that he fondly remembered her for the rest of his life.
- Secretly Wealthy: Ira remarks at one point that his family had a very successful business, but context clues indicate he and Ruth were upper-middle-class at best. However, Ruth actually had an extensive art collection, and following their deaths, the collection is said to be worth around a whopping $200 million, and includes includes work by Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollack.
- Shower of Love: Luke and Sophia have one. There's an even racier version of the scene in existence on the internet. Even the song for the scene is called "Shower Love".
