George R.R. Martin has been very clear about wanting to have a movie that showcases his work. But most authors are in this camp: "please Hollywood make a movie from my book." But as can be seen with Game of Thrones, the story is too long, too involved, and has too many characters. I've heard from plenty of Harry Potter experts that have said the same thing about the movie adaptations: too much stuff was cut out. Well, television would solve this by making each book a season unto itself.
Another more recent example is Star Wars: the Force Awakens. I read on io9 that there was "going to be a scene in the movie where Leia acknowledged that her former colleagues in the senate were just as likely to want to have her killed as they were to ignore her." All of this is talked about in Claudia Gray's Star Wars book called Bloodline (which is all about Leia Organa). Assumedly, the book is there to show us that Leia really did have a bad relationship with the New Republic. Here's some text from the book:
Leia settled into her chair, picked up her napkin — and stopped.
Something was written on the paper streamer on her plate. Actual writing. Virtually nobody wrote any longer; it had been years since Leia had seen actual words handwritten in ink on anything but historical documents.
But today, someone had left this message on her plate, only one word long:
RUN.
Leia shoved her chair back, instantly leaping to her feet. “We have to get out of here,” she said to the startled senators at the table. “Now. Go!”Don't you think that something like what's written above to provide context for the movie should have been in there? But then that opens up a whole 'nother can of worms. How much is too much information? Writers and readers hate the dreaded "information dump" but the thing is, when we create entire universes, we also create a lot of information.
So I guess what I'm saying is that most science-fiction and fantasy should just be abandoned by Hollywood so that television producers can pick these stories up, because television has the time to disseminate information. Leave stories like Seabiscuit to be adapted into movies. No information dump needed. But complex stories like Star Wars should be told in weekly installments of one hour each.
What do you think?
Really good friends of mine stick almost exclusively to television shows for that very reason - more development of plot and character.
ReplyDeleteHowever, considering almost all of the top world wide grossing films fall into the speculative fiction category, if Hollywood stopped making them, what would everyone go see? Seabiscuit?
People mostly watch Star Wars for all the action and that's best done on the big screen. I can see people watching a TV series too, but it wouldn't probably be near as successful as the movies.
ReplyDeleteStar Wars is doing just fine on the big screen. Not every sci-fi or fantasy universe is necessarily big enough to support a TV series.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I told you a couple days ago about Amazon's Man in the High Castle. The book of that is only about 250 pages and it could easily be a movie. But the good thing with a series is it can explore the world of the book in ways a movie really couldn't--unless Peter Jackson adapted it and then it'd be 10 3-hour movies.
DeleteI totally agree with you. I actually love a well-done show a lot more than a movie because it has the room for a lot of the intricacies a movie can't fit. Some people don't have the attention span for all that detail. They want boom boom boom action. These people do NOT tend to be book readers...
ReplyDeleteI guess some of them are thriller readers, and nothing wrong with that, but you know what I mean...
DeleteYou make an interesting point. In many ways "Downton Abbey" is an offshoot of the movie "Gosford Park," but Downton is so much better because there's time to flesh-out many of the characters, making the story far more compelling.
ReplyDeleteI've said this for years. If it was a short story, it'll make a great movie. If it was a novel, you need the hours a TV show provides. Maybe only a season, but that's at minimum 10 hours (Orphan Black), but could get you as many as 22.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you but that's what frustrates me so much about shows like 'Legends of Tomorrow'. They have the ability to take their time but instead waste that advantage on exposition dumps. I really hope they learn to slow down.
ReplyDeleteTV's disadvantage is cost constraints but also that many networks expect every 42 minute segment to tell a complete story. It's why Arrow has a 'villain of the week' when it would be much better told at a slow pace. It is for this reason that networks like HBO, Netflix, and even Syfy (I can't believe I'm saying that but the Expanse and 12 Monkeys are much better than anything shown on broadcast) have passed ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC in terms of quality.
Boy am I late stopping by your blog! Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, you make a good point about TV vs. movies for sci fi and fantasies. I think TV is finally really coming into its own as a great vehicle for storytelling precisely because cable and networks are finally telling long, complicated, involved stories, and actors must love the way they can develop their characters.
For me, movies are at their best when they're more about grownup and real world problems, like Bridge of Spies or Zero Dark Thirty, and I've found myself tiring of many (but not all) sci fi stories on the big screen precisely because they too often rely on razzle dazzle instead of in depth story telling.
I agree that TV is a better medium for those stories that need time to give those critical details. Wow, Harry Potter, if it had been a TV show....
ReplyDelete