It is becoming an increasingly popular idea to make popular fiction into movies. This is something the average book reader will appreciate. There are thousands of books in existence, with thousands of wonderful plots that can, with the right people and tools, be made into a wonderful movie. So, we’re seeing the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Fault in Our Stars, and so many other books being turned into his blockbusters.
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However, an increasingly popular dilemma that a lot of book readers are talking about is the dreaded trend of turning a one book masterpiece into a two or three movie money squeezer. Quite a few trilogies are making it onto the big screen: The Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and there are rumors for Divergent. However, it has developed into a mass of confusion as to why certain books, mostly the last in a series or saga, is being made into more than one (and at worst, three) movies.
Regardless of the argument that ‘a lot of things happened in the book’, so we can ‘kind of see why they decided to make the movie into a multiple movie deal’, we all realize that producers are simply hoping to eek out the last bit of money from every poor sap who’s read the book and is obsessed (which is quite a few of us). They are even taking advantage of just the average movie-goer and hoping they can create a good enough trailer that will entice them to pay 10.50 a ticket to see this movie. They don’t realize until the end that they’ll have to wait until next year to understand the rest of the story.
In Twilight’s Breaking Dawn, the movies were terrible enough without the added horror of making the last book into a two part epic. Mockingjay is being made into two movies. A good majority of people love that book series, but there is a good deal of information that could have been cut into shorter scenes to fit into one movie. Then, of course, there was the fact that they made the Deathly Hallows book into two movies. Each book beforehand, some of which were jaw-droppingly long, found their ways into a single movie platform.
The, there is the Hobbit, which is being made into a three part trilogy, which is based off of one, approximately 300 page book. There simply cannot be enough information that needed three movies, especially when most Hobbit fans can agree that two movies would have sufficed. Not only can certain, nonessential pieces of the story be left out, but in the case of the Hobbit, certain pieces of the story were added in that were not in the original novel.
This was only done so that people who had seen the epic Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and not read the books, would appreciate how much the Hobbit movies alluded to the other Trilogy. However, there would definitely not be much alluding, considering it is indeed a prequel. Nothing that happened in the Lord of the Rings trilogy books has yet happened in this book.
Despite the wonderful cinematography, acting, and directing, we’re left wondering why the extra movies, and the extra costs to make the movies are necessary. Casting all money issues aside, shouldn’t they be more concerned with making a movie that is most similar and relevant to the actual novel? Evidently not. We are slowly moving into a time where treasured media, and the techniques used to make such media, are being tossed out the window. Of course, there are exceptions. But on the whole? Companies are obviously more concerned about consuming money than its consumers.