An open opinion letter to studio executives pleading to end this horrible trend. Splitting movies across several parts detracts from our overall enjoyment and we say: no more!
Are you Quentin Tarantino? Have you dreamt up a violent, blood-curdling revenge story that wasn’t based on a kids book? Can you reassure us that each part will feel like a self-contained story and still have samurai swords? If you answered “no” to any of these questions, then you have no business even contemplating splitting a film into two or more parts.
Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2 were novelties; each had a very distinct theme and tone from ancient Japan to spaghetti western. They felt like different movies, yet were taking us to a single conclusion. The material was captivating and learning about the character’s backstory felt necessary to understand the motivations. Two parts made sense.
They didn’t make sense in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. They didn’t make sense in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. They sure as hell didn’t make sense in The Hobbit and they won’t make sense in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. So, stop it!
Take your eager fingers off of the “Cha’ching” button on your calculator, and perhaps ponder the possibility that we – the audience – might prefer one movie of tolerable quality as opposed to two or more movies that are about as well structured as a stripper’s bra. You might even want to consider acknowledging that, as ignorant and misinformed as the viewing public are, we tend to remember the bad films more than the good ones.
“Have you seen the new Hobbit movie?”
“Yeah, it was too long, didn’t go anywhere, and didn’t need to be split into 3 films,” said everyone, everywhere.
Call us cynical, but we understand the reasoning perfectly well. It’s not so you can tell a bigger, better, more involved story. It’s because you can effectively make two movies for half the price and still ensure that you get more profit than is typically seen from a sequel. And if your franchise is approaching the end, you can squeeze that little bit more out of the general public.
If studios insist on following this paradigm through, then the consequences will follow. Much like 3D and other fads that companies employ to rack up profits, the consumers will eventually tire and opt to spend their money in different ways. Dissatisfied cinema-goers will only increase the levels of online piracy and the public will be void of sympathy when the same tactics studios invoked ultimately perpetuate their own downfall.
In the meantime, I propose that we do away with the current inefficient system where we wait for you to produce half of a substandard movie then gullibly let you rob us each time, and instead just hire a couple of guys to go around and start tipping us upside down, then nicking the change that falls from our pockets. This way, we don’t need to sit through three hours of plot-irrelevance (which allows us to do something more productive with our time, like finding a book to read that isn’t young adult fiction, because we know if we do read it and like it, you’ll buy the rights and ruin it too). And you can focus your energies on other endeavors like investing in technology that streamlines the process of attaching nuts and bolts to our anuses, because you just know how much we enjoy getting screwed.
Part 2 of this article to come next month.
You can follow Richard on Twitter and learn that you can be offended on a variety of platforms.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.