The Trouble With: Splitting Books

I hate to sound like a cliche, but I'm really starting to think that Hollywood has run out of ideas. Not because they keep remaking the same shit over and over again even though nobody asked for it. Really the reason is that they are taking the ideas that are already in place and splitting them up as much as they can. The best example is when they split up one book into multiple movies.

The first example of this happening is the final Harry Potter book, which was split into two movies. The first movie covered a good chunk of the parts of the story that needed to be wrapped up, while the second part focused mostly on the battle for Hogwarts. There are those fans out there who think that they should have just stuck to one ridiculously long movie, but as for myself, I thought splitting it was a good idea. Deathly Hallows is one of the longest books I've ever read, and quite frankly, I'm astounded that I managed to get through it at all. So when I heard that they were splitting the book into two movies so they could fit in as much as possible, I was on board with it. Okay, part of me thought it was just another way to squeeze every penny possible out of us, but considering how much I thought they screwed the pooch on Half-Blood Prince, I was glad to see that they were at least attempting to stay true to the book and include as much of the lore as they could. Again, the argument could be made that they should have just made it one long movie, and while I can certainly agree with that to an extent, I still think they did a good job.

Then Things Got Out of Hand
Soon after, it was announced that Peter Jackson was doing something similar with his upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit, and again, I thought it was a strange journey to take, I had also heard that this was their attempt at including parts of Tolkein's other novel The Silmarillion into the story as well. Additionally, they were also going to include the bits about the Necromancer and where Gandalf was during his long absence. Again, I could easily see the dollar signs in the studio's eyes, but I went with it.

Then this happened...

Oh well, at least it's the last on- wait a sec... What's that at the bottom of the title? Part 1?!!

Yeah, I know of some fans that liked seeing more than one movie, but for the most part, people agree that the first one has way too much padding while the second one has way too many montages of things that probably took more time in the book than in the movie. Okay, so two franchises who know what they are doing decide to do the split treatment, so Twilight wrongfully believes that it can do it as well. Okay, so as long as this is the end of it, we should be fine.

Okay guys seriously, this is getting old. These books aren't even that long. You could read them in an afternoon if you wanted.

God damnit Jackson! You were my argument in its defense!

Lionsgate To Split Final ‘Divergent’ Sequel ‘Allegiant’ Into Two Films 

Who the fuck invited you guys?!

Compare that to this summer's Days of Future Past. That movie attempted to take a story arc that covered several issues of comics and condense it into a 2 hour movie. You heard that right, it only took two hours to tell the whole story. And you want to know the one phrase I keep hearing when people talk about X-Men Days of Future Past?

"I thought they were gonna need to split it into two movies, but they managed to cover everything pretty well in a two hour span"

That's right, the one time where people almost preferred the split, and they managed to satisfy the fans with only two hours. It may be just me, but if anybody is doing something right, it's the guy whose movie made a ton of money AND had a score of 93% on rotten tomatoes.

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: It's okay to just do one movie. And if you feel that strongly that your material absolutely needs to be stretched out like a hind and quartering victim, then you should just do the Martin/Kirkman route and hand it over to a TV station to be turned into a series on TV. All things considered, it's working out for them.

Here's the real trouble with the splitting of books: You know you're gonna see it. You just know it. I know it. And I'm right there with the rest of you, I can't judge. I'm a total sucker for the Hobbit trilogy and even though I liked the first one and thought the second one was meh at best, I'm still man enough to admit that I'll go see the third movie. I mean, I gotta see the battle of the five armies! I can't wait to see Smaug burn Laketown. Oh and how about Gandalf going up against Suaron? That was cool! See? I'm in the same trap as the rest of you. Hunger Games fans are gonna say the same thing. Twihards said it, but they don't know what they are talking about half the time so it really doesn't matter. I guess the Divergent crowd will probably say the same thing. Let's face it guys, the studio has us by the balls on this one. And they know it. I would propose a solution but the solution is simple: we just stop going to see the second and third parts no matter how much we want to. Eventually they'll get the message. And then they're gonna ignore it and keep doing it anyway.