The Hollywood Split Part 1 - OR - Breaking Deathly Dawn's Hallows

The Hollywood Split isn’t the newest dance craze (although it really should be). Nor is it a botoxed fruity desert. It is instead an expression geniusly coined by WITATaS to sum-up a recent and increasingly common cinematic trend.

It starts with a book, as most good stories do. Which is turned into a film, as most good books are. Which is turned into a series, as most good films are. But then, unhappy with the (likely) multi-billion dollars or so gross earnings for the series up to its engorged denouement, studio execs think to themselves: ‘Hey, do you what’s better than a billion dollars?’, ‘No, Flatulent Nipplebean I don’t, what is better than a billon dollars?’, ‘Why, another billion dollars of course, my dear Grandiloquent Guffmuncher!’ Then they laugh a haughty laugh as the world burns in the fury of divine righteous judgement.

Prostitution is far more pervasive than you realise.

Harry Potter started it and its baton has been picked up by an increasing queue of children’s literary favourites waiting for admission into Blockbuster-ville. First Twilight with Breaking Dawn, then The Hunger Gamesannounced a two-movie split for the concluding book Mockingjay and most recently Peter Jackson perplexed Bagginses and Tooks everywhere by announcing that The Hobbit would be not two but three films. The most obvious reason, as with a depressing majority of cinematic decisions, is money. More of it principally. Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2, as well as triggering asphyxiation, hunted down an extra $1.3 billion for the drooling maws of Warner Bros. Breaking Dawn Part 2 is on much the same track.

Now there’s nothing wrong with making money. Anyone who goes into a business not looking to come out a little shinier on the other side has got the wrong end of the heavenly ordained Capitalist-dominion stick. But the issue with The Hollywood Split is twofold: (1) the sheer untamable greed and desire for more and (2) its justification. Nowhere will you find an exec holding up his pudgy little paws and saying ‘I like the cash.’  That would be unabashed and - depending on your disposition - respectable honesty, a word with less circulation than the phrase ‘strong female protagonist.’ Instead, the marketing and PR vultures spout on about ‘artistic integrity’ – a phrase as concrete as an ant’s fart – and ‘staying faithful to the book.’ The sheer baseless lie of the whole phenomenon, the insistence on it being something more than it is, is what makes The Hollywood Split worse than a split lip on a cold winter’s day, than a groinal split on your favourite pair of jeans. Not to mention it’s the embodiment of the dire lack of originality in bigger budget productions.

So let’s take a look at two of the four films mentioned above, Harry Potter’sJason with it’s eager Augernauts.  Who’s in just for the money and who (if any) have more respectable dreams?

The Despicable: Breaking Dawn

Rudolph was never quite the same after those steroids.

A lot of the issues – and there are an awful lot of issues – with Breaking Dawn Part 2 are covered in this review. And they’re all relevant again here. So, where to start…

How about with it’s fetid pacing draped lazily over the barest bones of a narrative derived from the fact that there was no more narrative for it to follow from the book? Or how about it’s insipid cardboard cutout characters filled with all the personality and intrigue of a damp leaf resultant of the fact that they had nowhere else to go following Breaking Dawn Part 1? Yes, Part 2 was the worst (or should that be best) summary of some of the most despisable money-grabbing techniques of cinema. It’s a film that exists solely for the point of existing and served less than no purpose both in terms of cinematic expression and the progression of it’s own deigesis. Its only purpose was, it seems, to make its long-time fans squeal with delight while throwing fistfuls of cash at the cinema-screen to be hoovered up later. Something at which it succeeded with remarkable proficiency. And we can all be sad/self-hating for that. 

There’s also something cowardly in that fact that it waited for Harry Potter to go first before making its announcement, like waiting for a friend to check the temperature of the swimming pool before greedily jumping in. There is absolutely no way in hell, heaven or any other plane of probably fictional existence that Part 2 was created to better express the story of it’s papery brother. There simply is not enough story there to validate over four hours of broody, turgid cinema with the majestically crafted cop-out of an ending adding the glassy icing to world’s worst cauliflower-flavoured cake.

The Dodgy: The Deathly Hallows

'Holy s**t! What happened to Rudolph?'

Not as bad as Breaking Dawn Part 2 this one, but in terms of money-making monsters Breaking Dawn would have to look to Scrooge McDuck in order to find some semblance of a moral high-ground.

As mentioned before, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was the instigator, the Rocky to cheesetastic montages, of this modern trend. In the grander context of the Harry Potter film series, Deathly Hallows Part 2 was the prime cut by a significant margin as this review attests. With a frenetic pace, incredible set-pieces, well-pitched character growth and general ‘not boring-ness’ it was a highlight of it’s own canon and of the year 2011 in cinema. And that’s precisely the problem.

The finesse and sheer quality of construction of Deathly Hallows Part 2is testament to the excellence that a Deathly Hallow films should have had, far removed from the wallowing, vacant and superficial void that was DH Part 1. Nothing really happens. And everything that does happen could easily have been surmised in one half hour or so segment at the beginning of a unified Deathly Hallows film, rather than stretching out to a whole film of the world’s most dreary camping trip. Road Trip this ain’t.

There are efforts to fan service granted and the film goes out of it’s way to ensure no stone is left unturned and no scene is left unfilmed. But this a mistake in cinema. Films and books are, and this may be surprising, very different beasts. They evoke us in different, equally commendable ways and therefore must be pitched in similarly different forms. One of the primary delights of a book is its ability to weave in and out of a billion active parallel sub-narratives, dipping in and out of them as everything comes together to form a well-fitting suit. Such a technique in cinema on the other hand, unless handled with utmost care and skill, can create an ambling, tonally jarring and ultimately boring experience. It is much the same with DH Part 1; a lot of what is seen could quite as merrily not be seen. The Harry Potter film series was previously sadistic in its glee at cutting out various sub-narratives and curios (House Elf Liberation Front anyone?) so it’s odd and a little suspicious that Deathly Hallows, the book that could have best benefitted from such treatment, was treated differently.

A billion dollars worth of suspicious

He only does it when they watch, their anguish gets him going.

While originally planned to be one article The Hollywood Split grew and grew into a monstrously long tirade against something very few people will actually care about. Such is the Internet. With this is mind, there’s going to be 2 parts! Please try and contain your excitement. We’ve seen the worst of the trend this week, the real damnable and shamefaced attempts at pick-pocketing your hard-earned pennies. But it’s not all bad news! Next week, in part 2, because 2 follows 1, we’ll look at some of the more commendable disciples of Hollywood’s newest money machine.

Until then: peace, goodwill and a merry (insert religious festival of choice) to you all!

PART 2 IS NOW A THING THAT EXISTS! Go read it with your eyes and the bits of your brain that control your eyes:

http://smariman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-hollywood-split-part-2-or.html

Oh, would you like a hyperlink instead? Well okay you greedy dickens, but I spoil you.

Like the brilliant camera man in the video, start your festivities with a laugh:

As a final note, please follow me on Twitter: @smariman. You'll get told of updates and new posts as soon as they happen as well as the odd desperate attempt at being funny, entertaining and likeable. Such is life.