(500) Days of Summer Analysis - A Misunderstood Masterpiece

Few screenplays are as misinterpreted as Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber’s 2006 (500) Days of Summer. A rom-com with little genuine romance and a comedy that turns the lens inward rather than pointing at others. So why is it so widely misread? In recent years, the film’s reputation has taken a nosedive, with critics accusing Summer of being a shallow female lead who fits the manic-pixie-dream-girl trope. But with a fresh look at the screenplay, this is an absurdist inversion of these accusations. 

Why aren’t meta, introspective satires like this made anymore? Quite possibly because writers and producers are afraid that subtext is dead, pointing toward today’s case study as evidence. Let’s break down the screenplay, compare it to the film, and explore what makes it such a singular experience.

THE BEGINNING

Look at the first three pages - before the story even starts, things are already not as they seem. A standard disclaimer quickly contradicts itself, setting a contradictory yet humorous tone. This isn’t just satire; it’s a signal that we can’t take everything at face value. 

Right off the bat, if you read this as venomous rather than magnanimous, you may start off on the wrong foot. This introduction shapes your read - just like in life, first impressions are vital. I believe this prologue encourages readers to take the writing at face value, overlooking subtext that instructs you to do the opposite. 

When crafting your own work, think about how you set up your audience. Even if you believe you’re crystal clear, leave no room for doubt. It’s an unfortunate responsibility of the writer: if you can’t fully control interpretation, you must at least minimize misreadings.

A key element of this story is its non-linear structure. By revealing the ending upfront, then unraveling how we get there, the script transforms a familiar boy-meets-girl tale into something more layered. Spanning 500 days, the narrative constantly jumps back and forth, recontextualizing events as it unfolds.

OPENING IMAGE

We start on Day 478 of 500, near the story’s end. By showing us where Tom and Summer land, the script gives us a destination - but with 22 days left, the outcome isn’t set in stone. There’s still room for surprises.

Summer’s wedding ring and Tom’s adoration tells us we’ll have a happy ending. Right? RIGHT?

SET UP

From the very beginning, Tom’s misinterpretation of media and social cues is highlighted, making it the first thing we learn about him, reflecting his habit of interpreting reality to fit his ideals rather than the opposite. He’s introduced as a hopeless romantic, someone who ‘grew up believing he’d never truly be happy until he met his... soulmate.’ Summer, in contrast, feels entirely the opposite.

A product of divorced parents, Summer is portrayed as someone without sentiment, willing to cut ties with what she loves rather than get attached. These character traits shape how they navigate their romance.

The narrator further underlines ‘You should know up front, this is not a love story.’

On Day 240, near the halfway point, we meet Tom’s best friends, Paul and McKenzie, along with his precocious little sister, Rachel. She serves as the voice of reason, here to analyze what’s happened to her brother, who’s still reeling from being abruptly dumped by Summer.

Tom had blinders on, ignoring any cracks in the ‘relationship’ - a term Summer doesn’t fully subscribe to. He rebukes the idea that there are plenty of fish in the sea.

Day 86, Tom confesses to Paul that he’s head over heels in love with Summer. 

Day 1. Tom and McKenzie work at New Hampshire Greetings, a discount Hallmark greeting card company. Their agreeable boss, Vance, introduces his new assistant, and we meet Summer for the first time. For Tom, it’s love at first sight. For Summer, it’s just Monday.

In the days that follow, word of Summer’s arrival spreads through the office - rumors, assumptions, and hopes. Neither Tom nor McKenzie makes an effort to learn who she really is. Tom is happy to let his idealized version of her develop, and he’s disappointed by any news that contradicts his dream girl concept. 

INCITING INCIDENT 

When Summer joins Tom in the elevator, she hears The Smiths playing through his headphones.

When Summer mentions Tom’s favorite band, it sparks his full-blown infatuation. Here’s a girl who ticks all his strange boxes. From Day 8 onward, Tom’s a worm on a hook.

DEBATE

From then on, Tom walks with a newfound spring in his step. Going to work suddenly feels exciting, despite his lack of interest in the job. Summer quickly notices his attention and makes small talk, asking if he’s always wanted to write greeting cards. He confides that he studied to be an architect.

This subconsciously establishes a secondary goal for Tom. While his relationship with Summer drives the screenplay, beneath the surface is the long-term, personal ambition of succeeding as an architect.

Day 11, Rachel succinctly states what Tom is failing to see; 

This is a perfect example of why the common reading of the film is flawed. Those who haven’t seen it in 15+ years may gloss over the edges and miss the fact that the writers make the theme so clear even a child could grasp what Tom cannot.

In some distant flashbacks - omitted from the final film - we see Tom fall at every hurdle in prior relationships. Ex-girlfriends constantly have their heads turned by other people or grow tired of Tom putting them on a pedestal. 

On Day 22, Tom feels like he’s hit a dead end. The traps he’s set for Summer don’t bite, which he takes as proof she’s uninterested, maybe even prudish. But when McKenzie invites him to a karaoke night that Friday, the chance of Summer being there convinces him to give it one last shot.

BREAK INTO TWO

Personal and professional boundaries are blurred by alcohol consumption and the vulnerability of badly singing in front of your peers. Tom starts pressing Summer about her relationship status, and she clearly outlines her views on relationships and what she’s looking for.

After a messy night of poor karaoke and awkward advances, a drunken McKenzie tells Summer that Tom likes her. When she asks what he means, Tom quickly clarifies he means just as friends. With that settled - Tom and Summer are platonic companions - we’re perfectly set up for Tom to completely disregard both.

FUN AND GAMES

Summer immediately brings this status into question by kissing Tom. 

Tom’s world brightens, every moment feeling like a blessing. He’s in love. Paul visits, eager for all the juicy details of Tom’s so-called conquest. Tom begs him to keep quiet about his supposed ‘stalking’ of Summer, but his pleas go ignored until Summer appears. Paul quickly realizes his mistake and awkwardly tries to backtrack.

On Day 198, we see Summer ‘snap’ for the first time. It’s not an angry outburst, she simply tells Tom not to be so judgmental when commenting on strangers. For Tom, though, this is possibly the first sign that Summer isn’t the perfect girl he’s imagined - because his idealized version of Summer would never call him out on his behavior.

On Day 31, Summer, in contrast, is much more willing to comment on strangers' public displays of affection. Tom’s making her laugh, and everything still feels hopeful. But then she brings him back down to earth, practically bashing him over the head with her directness. 

She lets him hold her hand under the table, but that’s the limit of their outward relationship. Tom barely hides his disappointment - he hears and understands her position but chooses to ignore it. The entire ‘fun and games’ section revolves around Summer erecting walls and Tom trying to tear them down.

Tom believes the boundary is shattered when they sleep together, seeing it as the removal of all obstacles Summer has placed in his way. He considers sex a romantic act, two becoming one - a deeply intimate physical symbol of their connection. But, as Summer has repeatedly made clear, she doesn’t share that view. To her, sex is just fun, no strings attached.

Day 388, Tom wallows in a deep depression. The idiosyncracies he once loved about Summer, he now claims to hate.

Back on Days 35-51, Tom and Summer spend all their time together. The more she aligns with his interests and views, the deeper Tom falls in love. He shares his thoughts on various architectural features of the city (San Francisco in the screenplay, LA in the film), inviting Summer into his passion - whereas before, he was apathetic about his career. We establish the bench from the opening image as a favorite thinking spot for Tom. 

Despite their symbiotic relationship outside of work, Summer still asks Tom to enter the office ahead of her to avoid being seen as a couple. While acting like a girlfriend in every way except name, she refuses to cross that line, and even the thought of strangers perceiving her as someone’s girlfriend crosses her personal boundaries. 

Through various vignettes, we see the fun exploration and clumsy awkwardness of a fledgling relationship. When Paul asks about their status, Summer’s answer falls out of Tom’s mouth. For now, he’s happy to betray his own opinions. 

When Paul finds out Tom burned Summer a CD, he believes it’s crossed a line. He insists Tom needs to have that conversation urgently to ‘lock it down.’ Despite Paul being in a steady relationship since school, Tom needs the judgement of his closest, most trusted confidante - Rachel. As always, she has a frank and direct approach to the matter. 

This suggests that, subconsciously, Tom knows he’s wrong for assuming he has the right to elevate the relationship. But without a safety net, the fear of Summer meeting someone else will eventually outweigh his doubts.

When he opens with ‘Summer, I’ve gotta ask you something’, she delays him. He acquiesces. She knows what’s coming, which pushes her away. Tom is noticing the attention Summer garners from others, and longs for attention in turn from her. 

Days 272-286. Tom reads self help books on ‘How To Get Over Him’ and follows the steps to the letter, without any success. He has created a world for himself that revolves around Summer, and he can’t move on until he tears it down and starts fresh.

MIDPOINT

Day 145. Out at a bar with Tom, a stranger starts hitting on Summer. Tom, powerless, watches as she tries to politely turn him down. Rejected, the stranger gets aggressive, implying Summer is too good for someone like Tom.

Not realizing it, ‘Douche’ has broken Summer’s golden rule - he’s interpreted her as Tom’s girlfriend. That goes beyond the pale. Tom, meanwhile, jumps at the chance to defend what he sees as his girlfriend’s honor. Everything becomes official with a punch to the chin.

Despite getting his ass handed to him, Tom walks away from the beatdown feeling like a million bucks. He and Summer both see it as a step forward in their relationship, but they feel completely different about it.

She effectively breaks up with him, putting a firm end to whatever their amorphous relationship is. He claims ‘Sometimes you really don’t make any sense.’ 

At this midpoint, let's briefly reflect on where we stand. Summer isn’t perfect, but she’s been clear and upfront about her expectations. Tom, on the other hand, keeps knocking on a locked door, convinced his view is the right one and deserves to overwrite hers. We want Tom to succeed because he’s our point-of-view character. If we had a single scene from Summer’s POV, her perspective would likely win in a tug-of-war for the audience’s affection.

BUT. Tom has worn his heart on his sleeve here. He leaves, saying that he’d rather have nothing than whatever this half-relationship is. The ball is in Summer’s court. 

BAD TO WORSE

Summer misses Tom, but if she had no intention of taking things further, she would let sleeping dogs lie. Instead, she shows up at his apartment, reopening old wounds and implying an escalation. Instead of a clean break, she does the one thing worse for Tom - she allows some nebulousness back in. Tom tries to apologize by realigning his position, but we already know he’s fundamentally incompatible with this point of view.

Tom tries a new approach. He convinces himself that Summer can’t commit because she’s never had a serious relationship, realigning himself as a savior figure - the one to show her how she deserves to be treated. She stops him in his tracks by listing her extensive dating history.

Day 302. Paul and McKenzie set Tom up on a blind date with mutual friend Alison. A mess, Tom can’t stop seeing Summer everywhere. He overshares, describing his brief ecstasy with a stranger, rewriting Summer as a succubus who led him on. Alison is bored to tears, then baffled when she learns Summer was never even an official girlfriend.

We enter a rapid-fire documentary interview section where various characters share their thoughts on love. It humorously highlights how everyone’s perspective differs, culminating in Tom’s silence. In contrast to the strong, provocative opinions of others, Tom’s thesis on love has been eroded beyond recognition.

Day 101. Tom is crushing it at work, coming up with snappy slogans for the greeting cards and making waves. Everything he feels is dialed up to eleven.

Day 222. Tom and Summer run into his mom, Sarah, and stepdad, Martin. Tom panics, bracing for the inevitable question about their relationship status. Summer feels betrayed as Tom’s version of events doesn’t align with her reality.

While happy to drag Summer around to satisfy his interests, Tom grows exhausted by activities he considers ‘low-brow,’ like seeing action movies or going clubbing. On the dance floor, he’s struck by the feeling that Summer isn’t dancing with him but with everyone in the club. He cannot make her belong to him. 

This is a recurring motif: Summer feels guilty for sticking by the mandates she’s made clear.

Day 251. Tom’s work performance has plummeted, and Vance calls him in. While he’s not firing Tom, Vance makes it clear that he needs to snap out of the doom and gloom if he wants to keep his job. He redirects Tom’s energy into sympathy, commiseration, bleakness, and despair.

Day 383. Just as it seems Tom is ready to turn things around and move on, he finds Paul, McKenzie, and Rachel hosting an intervention. They have news about Summer and want to break it gently before he hears it from someone else. We don’t immediately learn the details, but Tom’s reaction is enough to send him into a depressive stupor, not leaving his bed for days.

BREAK INTO THREE

Tom lashes out at his co-workers and loses his job. Desperate to blame something or someone, he points to the media, capitalism, anything he can blame for forming a ‘false idea’ of love in his mind. 

His concept of love, a core part of who he is, has been shattered. Now, he's entering a new chapter, ready to face his problems head-on instead of running from them.

FINALE

Day 383. Tom refuses to accept that Summer is engaged to someone else. He can’t fathom how she could meet someone so quickly and have them change her view on monogamy so drastically.

Day 399. At Rachel’s Bat Mitzvah, Tom’s family can’t understand why a handsome guy like him doesn’t have a date. He sits alone, lost in thoughts of Summer, still reeling from recent events. He can’t even bring himself to celebrate his sister’s milestone, making it all about himself. 

Her finger on the pulse, as per usual, Rachel perfectly sums up what we already suspect to be the case. 

Day 240, the day Summer dumped Tom. We start seeing things in a new light. What once seemed like moments of distraction now hint at a deeper sadness. Summer gets coy when asked about a work event from the night before. Suddenly, we're left wondering - did she meet someone new? Tom misses the obvious red flags, oblivious to the storm that's coming.

You must hit rock bottom before you can bounce. In the low-to-mid 400 days, Tom starts channeling his frustrations - redecorating his trashed apartment and soon becoming absorbed in sketching buildings - his passion for architecture reignited. He becomes obsessed, studying hard, sharing his portfolio, jogging, and spending time with Rachel. By Day 478, Summer is married, and Tom is no longer thinking about her.

Summer finds Tom at his favorite spot, overlooking the city. It’s his place for reflection, and her presence feels like an invasion of a space he never should’ve shared. The atmosphere is tense at first, but gradually, things begin to thaw.

She’s glad to see him working on himself, aspiring toward something greater than greeting cards. He still can’t understand how she’s married, but she tells him simply - ‘I woke up one day and I knew… I knew I could promise him I’d feel the same way every morning. In a way that I... I never could with you.’

The facade of acceptance slips, and Tom pushes back, realizing that their respective views on love have completely reversed. It feels unfair that she can now benefit from the very thing she took from him. But for the first time, she puts him in his place. She explains what happened, how he was unfair to her, but how ultimately, Tom was right about love and she was wrong. 

We see the opening image revisitied and recontextualized; Tom is still in love with Summer but the wedding ring on her finger belongs to someone else.

CLOSING IMAGE

Like a phoenix from the ashes, Tom is reborn when he meets Autumn, a woman competing for the same architecture job that he’s interviewing for. While the film opens with the terminus of his relationship with Summer, it concludes with the impetus of a potential relationship with someone new. This cyclical nature is reflected in the seasonal names of his love interests. 

This doesn’t imply that Tom hasn’t learned; he has grown. He’s no longer the person he was, having been profoudnly shaped by his experience with Summer.

His day counter resets to (1). 

CONCLUSION

It's worth revisiting the movie with the understanding that both main characters lack a true grasp of what love is. Their perceptions are shaped by external influences, a slow, passive osmosis of ideas, rather than grounded in firsthand experience or philosophical understanding. They exist at opposite ends of a flawed spectrum, each believing in a version of love that is more about societal expectations than genuine connection.

This complexity is rare in film, particularly in rom-coms, which typically offer neat character arcs, Hallmark-style themes, and happy endings. Summer and Tom are both flawed and selfish in their own ways. The common reading seems to be that feeling sympathy for Tom means Summer was inherently in the wrong. Suggesting that Summer ‘dodged a bullet’ by marrying someone else implies that Tom was a bad person rather than misguided. Neither is necessarily true. There are no villains here, which is what makes it compelling. We're often trained to pick sides, and that tribalism distorts our understanding of the nuance.

The screenplay lacks a crucial element that the film adds: once Tom is ‘out’ with Summer, he wallows in what never was for a long time. The film rectifies this by having them attend the wedding of a mutual friend, an additional twist that gives Tom (and the audience) a renewed sense of hope - something the screenplay doesn't provide. This feels like a glaring omission.

This, paired with the film’s excellent ‘expectations versus reality’ scene, allow us to more closely align with Tom’s deepest desires - while flawed, they offer us a greater insight into the mechanisms of his mind. 

(500) Days of Summer is a bold, daring rom-com, and arguably one of the most impactful in its genre. It signals the end of rom-com supremacy, offering a denouement to the genre. The film critiques the flaws of loving an idea of someone - which is all a fictional retelling can ever really be - and in doing so, critiques the very fabric of the medium itself.

That said, it's worth examining why the subject matter is so frequently misread. While one could argue that the screenplay makes its messaging egregiously clear, it's telling that so many missed it. Perhaps the chemistry between the leads, the presentation, or the direction diluted the message - but this cannot be a criticism of the original text.

While I’d love to give it a full 5/5, I think a 4.5/5 will have to suffice.