Two! Two! Two times the fun?
Now here’s a question for the ages: Would you rather sit through an incredibly long movie, or pay to see the same incredibly long movie in two sittings? Movie studios seem to be discovering the benefit of the latter—approximately the same financial output for everything except marketing, and double the ticket sales—and it seems we may be seeing more two-part films soon. In an interview with the MTV Movies Blog, director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) says that the Hobbit film will be split into two halves and released separately. Note the specificity of his language there: He doesn’t say The Hobbit will be two movies. He says it’ll be one movie split in half.
It’s not the only one. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has also been proclaimed too long, too detailed, and too important to viewers (not to mention studio execs) to be confined to one sitting, and will be released in two segments six months apart.
The split-film option is a risky one. One one hand, viewers (and probably filmmakers) love the little things: the details and the small moments of a favorite story committed to film. A filmmaker with twice as much time on his or her hands is, in theory, able to go twice as deep. Multiple-installment films are good for the fans, and may attract new fans along the way, what with their tendency to suck people in.
On the other hand, split movies drive some people crazy. Case in point: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End, which fit together as one very long and very convoluted narrative, but which pissed a lot of people off by throwing off their sense of “ending.” Maybe a known quantity—a movie where everybody knows what’s coming and at what point in the story the break occurs—lends itself better to splitting up, just because the audience doesn’t feel so abandoned. Or maybe it’s just drawing a familiar story out too long for the sake of making twice the profit.
Readers, what do you think? Two-in-one, or just…two?
The Hobbit, Guillermo del Toro, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, two-part movies, prequels, sequels
October 9th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I am much more comfortable with this idea than with the original one of making a movie of The Hobbit and then making a second movie cobbled together from all those other Middle Earth histories/notebooks/whatevers. In truth, I’m happy to let Guillermo del Toro do whatever he wants just so long as I get to see his version of Smaug.
I remember reading somewhere of other that Kill Bill was another long movie that got split in two in order to double the profit. I don’t think either of those stands on their. Vols. 1 & 2 need to be watched back-to-back in order to work.
I will argue tooth-and-nail that while Dead Man’s Chest does not necessarily have a stand-alone plot, it does have a stand-alone arc, and is therefor it’s own movie. It’s own FULLY SUCCESSFUL movie. Haters need to stop trying to convince themselves that there’s something wrong with it and start wondering what’s wrong with themselves.
As far as the Deathly Hallows goes…I don’t know. I’m not sure there’s enough going on in that book to fill ONE movie, much less two.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Its.
Not it’s.
Dammit.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Yes, I’m just wondering where they *would* break The Hobbit to make anything like two story arcs. Or would they just stop somewhere? I agree with Brady that two-parters are fine *as long as* they have their own story arcs. Like cliffhangers on TV.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Personally I love the continuity of simultaneous filming: When you bring together the right pieces, (actors, story, milieu, writing, etc.) I’d rather you go ahead and tell more story with them before you scatter them all to the hit-or-miss winds.
I definitely salute the two-movie treatment for Hobbit rather than the cram-it-all slapdashery of one.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Heather, on Cinematical they posited the theory that Hobbit 1 will end with the death of Smaug, and that Hobbit 2 will focus on the Battle of the 4 Armies (5 Armies? 3? I haven’t read the book since junior high). That sounds like it makes sense to me, especially after the problematic polyended Return of the King. Except that I don’t really remember that much happening between those two events.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:12 am
Brady, 5 armies. Kind of weird they’d focus a whole movie on it as it’s not that long in the book, but moviemakers do like battles, as witness the rest of LOTR. The one thing that happens between the death of Smaug and the battle is Bilbo finding the arkenstone, which is important plotwise, obviously, but not a long scene.