It may sound like this post will be about sequels, but we all know sequels rarely live up to the hype. Rather than a rant on sequels, this is a rant on the stupid, pointless, really really bad trend of splitting a single book into two movies for the sole purpose of making more money. I should say at the outset that I haven't seen many of the films mentioned in this post, but I will make it clear if I have or have not seen such movies.
Tomorrow Insurgent (film two in The Divergent Series) releases into theaters. I haven't seen Divergent, but I did read the book and actually really liked it. I didn't like it enough to read the others, but this is irrelevant. My point is the NEXT year around this time they will release Allegiant Part 1 as just another in a long line of book finales split into two movies. Other recent films guilty of this are The Hunger Games with Mockingjay, Twilight with Breaking Dawn, The Hobbit with all three parts, Harry Potter and The Avengers.
Before we go on I want to deal with three of these titles that I forgive somewhat for their errors. I will first extend a pass to The Avengers. I am not aware of a super concrete story line that will be split in Infinity War. If I'm wrong about this, please correct me. The way I see The Avengers is simply making 4 movies not 3. I don't have a problem with this but DON'T call it a trilogy!
Next I'm going to overlook The Hobbit, because I genuinely believe that story needed more than one movie. That said I still hold strongly that two would have been the better choice by Peter Jackson, but I'll let that slide a little bit.
Finally I forgive Harry Potter because splitting Deathly Hallows where they did makes PERFECT sense and actually made for much better movies than if they made it all one flick. If you have read DH, you will no doubt remember that the first half of the book is Harry, Ron and Hermione going around attempting to find horocruxes and doing a lot of camping. The second half is an epic battle at Hogwarts that rages for hundreds of pages and kills everyone you hold dear. The reason it worked to split this book into two movies was because the book was a solid 700 plus pages to start with and the story lent itself to a spilt. This would not have been beneficial to any of the other HP movies, but in this case I really believe made both Part 1 and Part 2 better movies. It also should be noted that they released Part 1 and 2 only a half year a part, whereas the current standard is a full year of gap. I think this helped HP's success as a split film.
Now on to the other 3 cases where this practice is just bad. Firstly Twilight: Breaking Dawn. I haven't seen any of the Twilight movies or read any of the books, but I do know buzz around movies and it was completely and utterly dead by the time Part 2 rolled around. At that point the world had faced 5 Twilight flicks in as many years, as well as vampire bombardment on other fronts and were justifiably sick of it. Twilight had been sucked dry and no one cared any more.
On to Mockingjay. I didn't see the movie, but I read the book and it was the most boring book ever! I honestly can't remember if I finished the book, because the first half was so painfully boring I think I stopped midway. This is the fault of the source material (and the fact that Collins probably should have stuck with only the one HG books). But the fact remains, Lionsgate knew the first half of Mockingjay was even more boring than the first half of Hunger Games and STILL went ahead and made it its own movie. That was a big mistake in my opinion. HG was decent, Catching Fire was really good, and Mockingjay could have been a good ending. But I don't think anyone will care by this fall when it finally ends.
The same follows for Allegiant but I think even more so. The reviews I've heard for the last Divergent book range from unsatisfying to unbelievably awful. Whatever this means for the story, I don't know, but the charm has warn off. Hunger Games came close to having the fan base like HP, but Divergent is not even in the same league. This means fans don't care, won't see the movie and won't read the books. Insurgent can ride a little on star power and the moderate success of the first film, but this isn't everything. A huge part of all this is source material, and these series don't stand on the solid ground that served HP.
While there is more money to be made under this method of splitting books, in the end if you don't do a REALLY good job with the final chapters, you cheapen the series as a whole. Hunger Games will be forgotten in 20 years, and that is partly due to the poor treatment of the books. All in all I want this trend to stop because it is disrespecting good books and decent movies.
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