• FrederikNJS@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It’s an adaptation of a book. And there’s a lot of stuff going on in that first book. Most people are not up for a 5 hour movie.

      • FrederikNJS@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Sure! That version from 1984 now also occupies a comfortable spot with a 6.3/10 rating according to IMDB, while the 2021 movie is longer in runtime and only tackles half of the book, while enjoying a 8.0/10 rating…

        So sure, you could have condensed the whole book into a single movie with the same runtime… But it does come at a cost when the books have so much world building to do.

      • stillwater@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I don’t think Lynch would agree considering his attitude about that movie since release.

    • Maple@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Maybe not, but why not just make it a series at that point? Or end it in a way that has some closure, with potential for a future movie. Like we’ve done for decades.

      • FrederikNJS@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I agree with the series sentiment. But a movie like this also really craves the spectacle of being in a movie theater and the budgets that movies are allowed.

        I have yet to see a movie theater show any series, and have also never seen a series shot in imax with dolby atmos. Correct me if I’m wrong.

        And since this movie is adapting the book quite faithfully so far, I can safely say that this is the closest thing you could have ended it on with a sense of closure… Ending it earlier would have turned to first movie into a complete fizzle with only a bunch of world building, and ending it later would have opened up much more conflict without resolving it.

        In my opinion big theater movie is the only format that does the book justice, a series would have cut it’s budget and visual quality too much. And given the limitations of the movie format (such as runtime), I don’t see how else you would handle this book, there’s just too much world building and material to resolve the movie in any other way.

        I’m personally very curious to see how they resolve the second part… Because it does not look like something that’s easy to adapt to a movie. And I’m absolutely stoked about how faithful the first movie was.

        • Maple@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Personally I would have been fine with reduced visuals if it meant that they give it space to breath for that worldbuilding in a series format, but to each their own I suppose.

      • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can’t just split a movie up into a series. Every episode has to have its own structure and should have some progression. Splitting up a book into two movies with their own structure is a lot easier than doing the same with 6 or more episodes.

        Just look at the Marvel shows. If they had been movies, maybe two-parters, some could have been pretty good stories. This way there’s lots of unnecessary downtime and distractions, without a logical through-line.

        • Maple@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Of course you’d plan to structure the episodes in a way that made sense to the format.

          And what evidence do you have in saying splitting a book into movies is easier than doing so into episodes? Just because there are more episodes than there are movies does not equate to difficulty. If you planned for it, it would make just as much sense as a movie.

          • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Of course you’d plan to structure the episodes in a way that made sense to the format.

            But you’re adapting an existing story which already has a beginning, middle and end. It’s much easier to split this up into two than 6+ if you want to keep to the original story. It’s different when you’re creating a new story from scratch specifically for the format, which is not the case here.

            And what evidence do you have in saying splitting a book into movies is easier than doing so into episodes? Just because there are more episodes than there are movies does not equate to difficulty. If you planned for it, it would make just as much sense as a movie.

            It’s more difficult because there are more opportunities to fail, and you have to get more things right. You can’t just focus on each episode, you also have to make the whole thing together a good experience. Doing so for two movies is much easier than 6+ episodes.

            It boils down to a simple truth: making something smaller good is easier than making something bigger good. A movie is bigger than an episode, but it’s smaller than a series.

      • Roboticide@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There is potential for a future movie. People have been suspecting they’ll do a trilogy if not more. There are a lot of books.

        The books are just long and substantive, hence Part 1 and Part 2.

        • Maple@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Which you’d think would be perfect as a series, give each topic and episode the room it needs to breath.

          • Roboticide@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I mean, not necessarily, especially with how utterly shit many show adaptations have been lately. You can count the good ones on one hand while the bad ones keep piling up.

            They tried a Dune show once too, and it didn’t do super well. Not sure who has the TV rights to it now, but clearly WB has the movie rights and exercised them.

            When done well there’s nothing wrong with a good movie, let alone a series of movies. Dune has been handled very well so far too, in my opinion.

            • Maple@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I don’t disagree with you. What I’m saying is that I prefer movies not to end on a huge cliff hanger, I feel as though we are going to see a lot of movies be cancelled in the near future due to the SAG/AFTRA strike, meaning that we are going to have a lot of very incomplete stories.