Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” short film was released on November 12. The short film features Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien and is directed by Taylor Swift. It is safe to say that the short film changed my life and everyone around me because I can’t stop watching it and bugging people to watch it with me.

Many people have compared Sadie and Dylan’s relationship, a reference to Taylor Swift’s relationship with her ex Jake Gyllenhaal, to the relationship of the main characters in the book, now show, “Normal People.”

This comparison honestly offends me because “Normal People” is probably worse than watching paint dry, but also because the similarities aren’t even there. “Normal People” has similarities to Swift’s most recent albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore,” but the “All Too Well” short film paints a completely different relationship, a completely different story.
The relationship in “All Too Well” would be better compared to Penny and Russel’s relationship in the movie “Almost Famous.”

The power dynamics in both of the relationships are prevalent in their ends. Both Penny and Sink’s characters have less of the power in the relationship. Penny is a “band aid” for Russel’s band, and she ends up being given away during a game of poker to another band for a case of beer. Russell never truly cared about Penny, he was just using her because she loved and cared for him and he knew he was able to control her.

This is the power dynamic in “All Too Well,” showing 20 year old Sink and her 30 year old boyfriend, the same age gap between Swift and Gyllenhall when they dated. “All Too Well” shows how O’Brien’s character often dismissed Sink’s character’s concerns and manipulated her so she thought she was in the wrong.

The endings of the short film and the movie are also similar because they show the regret of both the male characters. In “Almost Famous,” Crudup’s character tried to get Penny’s address so they could reconnect again, but he failed in the end.

The viewers actually don’t know if Penny and Russell ever end up back together, but it’s safe to assume that she moved on and tried to embrace who she really was. This is very similar to the short film when it shows O’Brien’s character watching Swift become successful but still wanting her. Even though she had moved on and grew to become a new person, his character would forever be attached.

“Almost Famous” is a better comparison “To All Too Well” than “Normal People,” and for the people who got lost in translation thinking the opposite, the similarities are more than clear.