Sunday, July 15, 2012

This movie trend I can’t understand

So a couple of years ago, the Harry Potter franchise made a decision to split the last book in the series “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” into two movies. It’s a fairly thick book with a complicated plot, so it made sense to me.

Like millions of other people around the world, I saw both halves, and shockingly enough to me, I liked them both, even if they rather dramatized the ending and the epilogue was super cheesy. I’m not sure they understood how they were starting a trend in Hollywood.

Just a short time after “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” came out, the Twilight franchise decided to get in on the action by splitting the fourth movie into two parts, Breaking Dawn parts 1 and 2.

I think this was a stupid decision because of the four books in the series, “Breaking Dawn” is the one I thought was the very worst! And so much of the book was taken up with how many times Edward and Bella could have implied sex. I’m grateful she wasn’t graphic, but still. Neither did I want to see that happening on the screen again and again.

This week two more major book to movie adaptations announced their decision to split the movie into two parts, “Mockingjay” and “The Hobbit.”

Okay, I think this party is over so everyone should get out of the pool. Now.

My beef with this being the case for “Mockingjay” is that I thought it was the weakest and most violent book in the Hunger Games trilogy. I didn’t like it very much so why in the world would I want to see two movies about it?! I don’t! And if the complicated plots of each of the Lord of the Rings books can make it into one movie each, then the Hobbit should also. Not to mention Tolkien has chapters that are about 10 pages of people singing at times. Do I really want to see that on the big screen?! Not so much.

Come on, directors, tone it down, quit indulging yourself and make these into one movie rather than two. Yes, we may not like the finished product as well, but, it’ll cost us a whole lot less.Not to mention, I’d rather not feel like a pocketbook who’ll pay for twice as much for movies because you can’t fit it into one.

I love high-quality books with a strong plot and believable characters. Occasionally, I like the movie version of said book. But, I don’t like it when they feel the need to put so much detail in that I should now have to pay twice as much to see it. It feels like nothing but a shady moneymaking scheme to me by a challenged Hollywood.

Okay, stepping away from the soapbox now . . .

2 comments:

Julie said...

Ew. Mockingjay should NOT be 2 books. It was a horrible book. Good point about The Lord of the Rings...even though they are extremely long movies, there was a relief that you only have to watch 3, not 6.

Unknown said...

Actually, the announced the Hobbit would be two books two years ago. Since before they started filming really. The first movie will have an entire second story line form some of his other works.