Five movies, that’s, like, ten hours of looking at Eddie Redmayne’s punchable face? No thanks.
What came after. The whole splitting one book up into two or even three (or in this new case, five) movies. I’m aware LotR is three books. I’m not talking about that. That was covered in the “Let’s not only make a movie for each and every book…” part, which it applies to and, IMO, is at least somewhat reasonable.
What came after doing that, however (the “but let’s start even making two or even THREE movies for one book!” craze" part of that post), was the Deathly Hallows being divided up into two movies, The Hunger Games book being divided up into two movies, the Hobbit being divided up into three movies…etc.
Do you get what I’m saying now? : p
The book is not really a novel, it’s more a bestiary. You can turn that into any story, or as many stories, as you want.
I was confused by what I bolded in my previous post, where you said LotR “seemed to be the start of” what you’re complaining about - splitting a single book into multiple movies. Since it didn’t do that, I don’t see how it could be the start of that trend. But if that’s not what you’re saying, fine.
What LotR did start was the trend of making multiple big movies in a series without first stopping to see how the first one did. At the time, that was considered quite risky, to Hollywood.
Except that, even with LotR to set the example, Hollywood still doesn’t do that much. All of the one-book-split-to-multiple-movies have been following on after highly successful single-book movies earlier in the same series. The more apt comparison for that is probably the Matrix movies, where the first one was so successful that they made 2 and 3 at the same time.
Or, before that, Back to the Future 1 and 2 were shot concurrently, based on the success of the first one.
Yea, it might be interesting. I can’t really thing of a modern case where a studio said they were going to make 5 movies based on an original story (maybe the new Star Wars movies?) Who knows if they’ll be good or not, but it seems like a neat experiment.
What you bolded was this sentence: “it seemed to be the start of the “Let’s not only make a movie for each and every book, but let’s start even making two or even THREE movies for one book!” craze.”
This part of that sentence: "it seemed to be the start of the “Let’s not only make a movie for each and every book…” DOES apply to LotR. “a movie for each and every book”.
Do I need to explain further or do you understand what I was trying to say now? Haha. : p
Put more simply, my post was trying to say:
It went from making a movie for each book (LotR) to making two or three movies for one book (DH, HG, Hobbit).
To me it reads that way, but maybe I didn’t make it clear. I’m sorry.
The Hobbit had at most 4 hours of movie in the story, so I fully agree there. Shameful and poorly done money grab. Lord of the Rings, was still a little short even with the 12 hour extended editions.
The last 2 Harry Potter movies was borderline, mostly as #7 or part 1 was slow and boring. The others you listed were as silly and poorly done as the Hobbit sadly.
I guess technically the Godfather might have been the first book split into 2 movies and it was done perfectly of course. So it can be done correctly.
If we’re going there, then The Neverending Story was based on the first half of the book. I suppose that if the first one had been a big enough success, they could have made a sequel based on the second half of the book, but they didn’t (there was a Neverending Story 2 movie, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t based on the book).
Then again, though, the second half of the book would have been a lot harder to make a movie of, and it wouldn’t be remotely the same sort of movie that the first one was.
We’re good.
My final opinion? I want to see good movies. Splitting a huge book into multiple movies may make sense. Combining a few short books in a series into a single movie may make sense. Padding movies just to stretch them out usually makes poorer movies (like the Hobbit).
But in this particular case, that isn’t a priori what’s happening. It may be that JK is actually out of ideas and the movies suck. But it isn’t a case of taking a pre-existing story and padding it to a much longer movie, like many other movies are.
I only saw The Neverending Story 2 once, around the time it was released, but the only things that stuck in my mind about it were taken directly from the book (which I didn’t read until years later). There’s an evil sorceress, the story involves Bastian making wishes but each time he does he loses a memory, and near the end Bastian realizes that he’s down to his memory of his father and his memory of his mother. So the movie was at least loosely based on the book, although I couldn’t tell you at this point how many liberties it took.
ETA: It was apparently legal problems with author Michael Ende that delayed the sequel; the first movie was a commercial success.
There’s actually a third installment in the series that never made it to wide release in the US. (Weirdly, it featured Jack Black as a school bully.) I’ve never seen it, but a friend of mine in college had and said it was astonishingly bad. The linked Wiki article states that the third movie was not based on the book at all aside from the characters who were carried over from the earlier movies.
Or Superman and Superman II in the '70s (though that plan didn’t really work out the way they planned).
Richard Lester had already shot The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers back-to-back before making the Superman films.
Quite right, and I should have remembered that one.
He didn’t tell the actors though, they wound up suing him since they thought they were only going to be in a single film.
Well, the Salkinds produced it (and Superman), and they’re the ones responsible, not Lester.
Basically what they’re suggesting is five movies set in the same universe, which is not really any different from Marvel deciding to make multiple movies in its superhero universe. All of the studios are trying to establish film franchises or series of interconnected movies.
Really this is akin to Disney committing to the new Stars Wars Trilogy and multiple other movies set in the universe knowing that the market will more than support the franchise. It is not a book adaptation.