Summary

• The Vow is a loose adaptation of a real-life story, with the film taking creative liberties with the characters and settings.
• The real-life couple did not contemplate divorce, unlike the characters in the film who decided to get divorced.
• Despite negative critical reviews, The Vow was a box-office hit and sparked renewed interest in the couple's book, which became a bestseller.

The 2012 romantic drama film The Vow stars Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams as newlyweds Leo and Paige, whose relationship is threatened by the repercussions of a horrific car accident, which leaves Paige with no memory of her relationship history with Leo, who appears to her as a complete stranger. The film follows their journey to rediscover their love for each other. The Vow is based on the real-life story of Kim and Krickitt Carpenter, whose marriage, like that of their screen counterparts, was forever altered by a car crash, in which Krickitt suffered severe brain damage and was left with absolutely no memories of her husband. Like Leo, Kim tried everything to make his wife remember him, without success.

Kim and Krickitt recounted their ordeal in a 2000 book, No Greater Love, which was completely disregarded by the film’s creative team, specifically screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, who never met the couple. The screenwriters completely reinvented the characters for the purpose of achieving maximum dramatic effect and proving that fiction is more interesting than reality. However, despite the creative liberties that were taken with The Vow, the film was a box-office success upon its theatrical release and has recently experienced a massive resurgence in popularity through streaming.

The Vow Is a Loose Adaptation of the Real-Life Story

Virtually every aspect of the real-life story on which The Vow is supposedly based was reinvented for the film, including the film’s setting, Chicago, where Leo works as a music producer, while Paige is a sculptor. The real-life story took place in New Mexico, where Kim Carpenter was a longtime baseball coach. Kim’s relationship with Krickitt began with a series of phone conservations in 1992 when Krickitt was working as a sales representative for a sportswear company in California, where Kim eventually proposed to Krickitt in 1993. Leo and Paige’s first encounter took place outside a DMV office.

Kim met Krickitt’s family before they got married, while Leo never met Paige’s parents until after the car accident. Paige, unlike Krickitt, was estranged from her parents prior to the accident, due to their disapproval of Paige’s decision to quit law school to become an artist and Paige’s anger over her father’s extramarital affair with a friend of Paige’s. The massive head injury that Krickitt suffered was disfiguring and left her in a coma for several weeks. In the film, the most telling physical remnant of the car crash is a scar on Paige’s forehead. The director of The Vow, Michael Sucsy, thought that the sight of Rachel McAdams with a shaved head would be too uncomfortable for audiences.

The Real-Life Fairy-Tale Romance Ended in Divorce

One of the biggest differences between The Vow and the real-life story is related to how the characters approach the subject of divorce. In the film, Leo and Paige, after being unable to navigate the obstacles that arose from Paige’s amnesia, decide to get divorced. Leo agrees to the divorce both because of Paige's inability to remember their relationship and her seemingly renewed feelings for her former fiancé, Jeremy, who clearly wants to rekindle their relationship and eventually marry Paige.

Unlike Leo and Paige, Kim and Krickitt Carpenter didn’t seriously contemplate divorce in the aftermath of the car accident and were instead committed to making their marriage work and remaining loyal to their marriage vows. After renewing their wedding vows in 1996, Kim and Krickitt remained married through the film’s 2012 theatrical release, for which Kim and Krickitt were included in the film’s marketing campaign.

However, in 2018, Kim and Krickitt, who had two children, announced that they were getting divorced after approximately 25 years of marriage. The divorce was triggered after Kim admitted to having an extramarital affair.

The Vow Was a Box-Office Hit

While The Vow received generally negative critical reviews upon the film’s theatrical release, it nonetheless became a box-office hit. After debuting in the top spot at the domestic box office in its opening weekend of release with a gross of approximately $41.2 million, The Vow finished its theatrical run with a domestic total of $125 million and a worldwide total of nearly $200 million. At the time of its theatrical release, The Vow was one of the highest-grossing romantic films of all time. Moreover, the success of The Vow marked a turning point in the career of Channing Tatum, for whom The Vow established Tatum as a box-office draw.

For Kim and Krickitt Carpenter, the film’s popularity sparked interest in their 2000 book, No Greater Love, which was repackaged as The Vow: The True Events that Inspired the Movie in tandem with the film’s theatrical release and became a New York Times bestseller. While the book is now long out of print, the film has maintained a loyal audience following over the past decade and has found renewed popularity through Netflix, where The Vow recently became the streaming service’s most-watched film.

Stream on Netflix