Multi-Part Films: Good Idea? (Part One)

An increasingly growing trend in Hollywood, and the film industry in general, is the steady rise of splitting films into multiple parts. We have seen massive franchises such as Harry Potter, The Hobbit and The Hunger Games adhere to this practice but is it a good thing? Is it a creative tool to give the filmmaker more time to flesh out characters and plot? Or is it a cheap money-grabbing scheme from the suits?

 

If we were to argue that splitting films in multiple parts is a creative decision, then we would have to consider the source material that the director/producers are deriving from. Big franchise films these days probably clock an average of 2 hours running time, which in regards to the format, is still considered a large proportionate of time. So, your first big problem when adapting a novel such as The Deathly Hallows is being able to fit all of its plot and character development into a snug 2 hour slot in a way that doesn’t totally slaughter the pacing of the film. The simple answer is what we got, a 2 part finale to the Harry Potter franchise.

 

But that doesn’t solve all of your problems. When you are adapting a novel into two parts, you would naturally cover the first half of the novel in the first film and so on for the second part, except a novel doesn’t usually give you a fitting, suitably exciting conclusion to its first half – instead focusing on setting up characters and plot points, stuff that will pay off in the actual conclusion of the book. My biggest problem with Mockingjay Part One was that it was fucking boring for the most part, ladled with a forcibly exciting finale that wasn’t even written in the book. Basically, when adapting one novel into 2 films, your part one is going to suffer drastically from being all build up with no immediate pay off.

 

So, how would the multi-part films fare when they aren’t being adapted from set stories and books? You only need to look as far as Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, a film originally scheduled for a single four hour theatrical release that was split into 2 parts released within weeks of one another. Being an original creation, I feel that neither film suffers from the multiple release format with Tarantino able to give each film their separate identity, whilst fundamentally telling the same story. Importantly, the first film has its own narrative structure that doesn’t feel forced or hackneyed with the big build up to her showdown Crazy 88 and O-Ren.

 

The big problems that come when adapting a novel into multiple films is when that novel isn’t actually very long and the filmmaker starts to pad with unnecessary scenes that repeat what we have already seen or are there just to pander to a director. I genuinely enjoy The Hobbit films but I can’t help feel that there is way too much padding and splitting a book as short as The Hobbit into three films was never a good idea – there is probably enough plot for 2 movies that would include a nice link back to Lord of the Rings but with three films we get un-needed cameos from Saruman and a back story for Legolas that we neither asked for or wanted.

 

I do appreciate the need to adapt certain stories into multiple films, with their scope and length too much for one film to handle, but I feel that it’s becoming the norm for these franchises to automatically assume that it is necessary to split the story up so much creating a fractured and awkward movie experience. Seriously, Mockingjay does NOT need 2 parts – that is 2 hours of my life I ain’tgetting back.

The Hobbit: A cautionary tale

‘The second and third ones [Lord of the Rings films] were a mess...Whatever was subtle, in the first movie, gradually got lost in the second and third. Now with The Hobbit, one and two, it’s like that to the power of 10.’

Who would you attribute this quote to? Perhaps, someone who dislikes fantasy as a genre? A star Wars fan? No? Well then, perhaps an imbecile that knows nothing of film and of what makes a good film and trilogy? No? It certainly must be someone who is at odds with the Lord of the Rings trilogy? No...These quotes come directly from a Telegraph interview in May of 2014 with Viggo Mortensen. Yes, that’s right, Aragorn said this.

However, this is nothing new, this interview took place months ago, and most people are aware of his criticisms of not just the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, of which he featured, but the soon to be fully released Hobbit Trilogy. The question is ‘why?’ Why is the Hobbit trilogy seen to be, not just by Viggo but by many fans, a damn sight poorer than the Lord of the Rings Trilogy? The answer can be found at the opposite end of the spectrum that Middle Earth is on, with Star Wars.

The original Star wars Trilogy inspired a generation and created a fan base like there has never been before. Then there were some more Star Wars which inspired a new generation to go and watch the originals instead, because the prequels were pretty poor. This is essentially being mirrored with everything Middle-Earth. Original Trilogy, skyrockets fantasy onto the big screen, creates big following, prequels come out etc. You get where this is going.

The point of making this comparison is really to emphasise how history really has repeated itself, and how lessons were not learned. Firstly, it the most obvious point of comparison is how stretched both the Star Wars prequels and The Hobbit Trilogy seems. The Hobbit was only one book, and while Lord of the Rings was also one book, the difference is that Lord of the Rings was already split into three convenient arcs, all three of them being novel size, whereas The Hobbit is just one slim novel. So, no wonder that is a common complaint, despite how adamant Peter Jackson continues to be about the necessity of three films. It can be shown that the Star Wras prequels also made this mistake, simply, in how Topher Grace (Yes, Eric from That 70’s show) re-cut all three of the prequels into one two hour long film which has been better received than each of the originals were.

Then we have the old chest nut of revisiting covered ground, and refusing to let something die. Peter Jackson was never intended to direct the Hobbit films, Guillermo Del Toro was the man who was going to direct, and he even wrote a large portion of the screenplay. But when Del Toro departed from the project, Jackson couldn't help himself. On the face of it, this would seem like the best decision to make, but when you spend several years crafting and adapting something so unique, you are creatively spent, and it certainly shows in the Hobbit films. Comparatively, George Lucas had clearly run out of ideas with Star Wars; taxes, embargos, whiny teenage soon-to-be Darth Vaders, and an around uninspired plot. George even decided to fuck up Indiana Jones as well, just for good measure.

Finally, we have the use of CGI. Oh boy, does George Lucas Love himself some CGI, that terrible, terrible, Jar Jar Binks shaped CGI. But the thing is, George Lucas didn’t stop with having awful CGI in the newer prequels, no sir, he went back and remastered the original films, several times, to include this shit CGI, and a host of other shit things as well. And with that, we come full circle, as Viggo Mortensen’s criticism were mainly based around Jackson increasing use of CGI, and how it make the film lose ‘subtlety’.

I suppose this is somewhat of a cautionary tale; to not make overly long prequels/sequels, to not let directors cover old ground as it stunts creativity, and to limit the amount of CGI used in films. Just the fact that I could have been talking about Transformers there, should provide sufficient reasons to heed these warnings.

Conor M.