Is splitting movies into multiple parts a bad thing?
So I guess it’s that time of year again, the time of year when we talk about splitting movies into multiple parts. Now before we go on, I just want to mention that this topic was covered much better in an episode of an editorial show from Escapist magizine called “The Big Picture”, if anyone wants to check it out and leave me to my rambling.
The reason that I included that link was because I really do agree with most of what was said in that video. Splitting a movie into multiple parts isn’t inherently bad in my opinion, like all movies, it very’s with the material they’re covering and who’s covering it.
However, I kinda feel like we’ve already overdone it. At this point it feels like no one’s doing this for the content of the story they’re telling, and they’re just doing it to stretch out a franchise as long as possible to squeeze every last drop out of our wallets.
But of course we all know that. We were all there when Harry Potter started this trend, I guess we all agreed that we’d let it happen just this once, and we then proceeded to bash the heck out of anything that followed.
Now that’s not entirely fair. I happen to be in the camp that like The Hobbit movies. I’ll admit that there’s absolutely no reason to make three of the things, but I think they manage to pad the run times well, and fix some of the problems from the book. A lot of books that are split into two parts do manage to fill their running time with more content that probably wouldn’t have made it in if it was just one movie. But that doesn’t help if LITERALLY EVERYONE IS DOING IT! This is kinda the part that annoys me the most.
The Divergent series has already decided to split their last book into two parts. Why? To be honest, the first movie kinda sucks. A lot. I bet you anything the third Maze Runner movie is gonna be in two parts. Why? Sure the first movie was pretty good all things considered, but sure as heck doesn’t mean the second one is. You know what the really annoying thing is? The fact that 90% of these kinds of movies are the last book in some YA series. To me, this is the lowest form of pandering. You know that kids are golng see your movie in the first place if it’s popular enough to get a movie. “Do you really need to split that last book into two movies?”, I ask. “Why yes we do,” cry the studios. “Well speaking as a YA myself, I’m sick of it! I was in the camp that liked this at first. But now it’s become so obvious that your only doing this with YA books that you’re only doing this to get more money!
So I must ask, can’t you just be content?
“Nope! We need as much money as possible. How else are we going to make more of your favorite books into big budget, all the money onscreen, exciting movies?”
“What the heck are you talking about? Are you even looking at most of your movies nowadays? The only YA movie I’ve seen in recent memory that looked remotely like what you just said was Mockingjay maybe Catching Fire. It always seems like you barely give the movies you want to kickstart new franchises a decent budget. And it doesn’t help that they pretty much look the same, almost always have the same plot, and usually are following source material more poorly written then a 3rd grader’s English paper.”
Yeah, I’m a little annoyed by most YA movies that don’t have the words Hunger Games on them at the moment. The only two part movies that I’m looking forward to are the ones that have a super hero label on them. They’re the only ones that have enough source material and creative liberties to make a good two parter. So here’s to you Infinity War and Justice League! You’re probably the only ones that are going to survive the almost certain tidal wave of two parter’s about to hit us.
Again, I don’t inherently hate two-part movies. If they’re going off source material that deserves two parts, great. I can’t wait. But I’m already sick of how just every franchise is already jumping at the chance to make twice as much money. If these studios spent half as much time making two good movies instead of one great one, they’d easily make just as much if not more money.
So studios, if anyone’s reading this, why don’t you try something new for a change? Why not stop making movies with built in fanbases, and just try something new for once? Why not? We might get something awesome.
Boy, that Bob sure is a fast-talking chap, isn’t he?
Here are my thoughts:
Taking the Vodcast as my starting point, I would like to throw the issue of “universe building” (Marvel, DC, etc.) out of this discussion, as they are not the same as splitting a book into two films. Even though there may be some cultural changes that are at the root of both phenomena, I would argue that “universe building” is an entirely different kettle of fish. No-one can deny that each of these Marvel films is a self-contained unit, with mere references to each other, while with the two-parters (Harry Potter finale; Hunger Games finale, Twilight finale) we always have one story ripped into two parts.
I would also like to exclude The Hobbit trilogy from the discussion. While I don’t like it anywhere near as much as the LotR trilogy, I think we need to accept that Jackson has not only put the Hobbit on screen, but crammed a lot of stuff from the Silmarillion, etc. into this trilogy. So it would be difficult to say that he took a small book and spread it over three films – that whole Hobbit thing would warrant a detailed discussion of its own.
That leaves us with the “true” split films: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Hunger Games: Mockingjay – I have only seen the former two.
Like you (and Bob) say: these two-parters can be a good or a bad thing.
I would like to push one criterion into the foreground: is the book in question so big and so full of content that it is impossible to do it justice by trying to cover it in only one film.
If we cannot answer this question with “yes”, than we often do not have to look far for the real motive for a two-parter finale: money
In short: the issue against which we should judge the decision to split a film into two parts is “need vs. greed”.
I am not really in a position to judge, because I have not read any of these books in these three franchises. But I have heard people say that the Harry Potter book is so voluminous that the two-parter was justified.
As for Twilight, I can only say that there is so much excessive stuff that could have been cut from both the wedding and the honeymoon in Breaking Dawn, part 1, that everything else would probably have fitted neatly into one single film.
Is that necessarily a question of greed though? I could also imagine that the producers really thought they “owed” their female teen audience all that lengthy fluffy dress-and-shoes-and-hairdo wedding malarky as well as the seemingly never-ending honeymoon. It is a bit like Bob said: maybe producers fear the backlash if any vocal section of the fan-base feels something (or someone) “important” from the book has been omitted in the film.
Apart from “need”, “greed”, and possibly fear, there may be one other reason for studios to do these two-parters: the believe that that is the way these things are done now. It may be the default thinking by studio executives; not even questioning the validity (or viability) of the two-part-scenario for the franchise in question. Maybe somewhere in there is also a hidden another fear: that of showing weakness. It may be possible that studios believe that if they send off their franchise with a “mere”, “ordinary” one-part finale, they somehow show that they do not care for the franchise, or that they have no faith in their product?
Now, leaving the reasons for the two-parters behind, I would like to get to the problems. Problem one can be described easily: is there really a need to leave a one-year-gap between two films that so undeniably belong together? Remember, these are not parts of a trilogy we are talking about, like Star Wars, these are two films the first of which is entirely incomplete without the second. And as they are filmed in one go, they should more or less be ready to be screened anyway (post-production notwithstanding). So why not a much shorter hiatus? 4 months, or even a mere 2 months? Make your audience go from one part into the next taking all the excitement with them. Not wait endlessly until they have cooled off and the excitement has completely died down. That’s just my opinion…….
The second problem is that some directors seem to think that with these two-parters it is okay to just split them somewhere and simply end part 1 just like that. “Sorry guys, 95 minutes are up, see you in 12 months”. That is no way to treat an audience.
I’ll paraphrase (and probably butcher) an argument I heard recently on the Silver Screen Snobs podcast:
If you have a TV show, even one that tells one continuous story (Breaking Bad, House of Cards, etc.), the writers – despite the need to keep things up in the air and to keep storylines running through the season or even from season to season – are nevertheless always aware that they have to also tell a story (or part of a story) that feels complete within the frame of one single episode.
And this is precisely what directors absolutely need to do in the case of these two-parters. Yes, it is ONE book, with ONE story that is being told over the course of two films. But talented and well-paid script-writers and directors can and must be expected to be able to deliver a product that allows the audience to leave the cinema with some sense of completion. Even if only half the story has been told so far, that which has been told should still feel like an arch – beginning, middle, end, all of it.
—-> in short: No matter if it is “only” part 1, you still need to tell a self-contained story
I think we can all agree that this is difficult to pull off, but it is nevertheless something we can and must demand. I guess there are enough instances where this has not happened; I have heard people complain that Mockingjay did not deliver on that front. Twilight: Breaking Dawn, part 1 – despite the criticism I have levelled against it – has at least done this one thing right: it ended in a way and at a moment that provided a self-contained ending for this particular film, for a certain part of the story. Watching it you felt a sense of completion, while still wanting more (i. e. wanting to see part 2).