First of all, if you’ve not read Part 1 then what the hell are doing!?
Last time, we looked at Harry Potter and Twilight and saw how they're nothing more than cash-grabbing bandits à la Aladdin minus the charm or awesome monkey pal. Moving on, it’s time to conclude what was started: bashing Hollywood for no reason whatsoever other than a deep-rooted feeling of bitter resentment and injustice.
We’ve tried doing multi-part projects on WITATaS before which failed miserable under the oppressive cocktail of work and laziness. But not this time, now is a time of change! Much like in the first film up for discussion…
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| Ever one for a game, Mr. Burns gave people 4 guesses as to what was in his cup. |
The Unknown: Mockingjay
The sub-heading does as good as job as any paragraph of mewling opinion could here: it’s a complete unknown.
But let’s speculate, for what’s more spiritually delicious and nutritious than mindlessly blathering about things that may or may not happen/have happened. That’s the religious way after all.
The first Hunger Games film released to tumultuous applause, a landslide of money and general pleasantness and warm-feelings. It was respectable not only for its insistence on not dumbing down and sticking closely to the deeply unsettling premise of its seminal textual source, but for also working so well as an adaption. Rather than straight up re-telling Katniss’ adventure, the film explores the story from a different perspective, namely ours. We became the crowds of people at Panem watching these children slay each other, we became the animals baying for the blood of minors. The Hunger Games book is a very personal recollection of events told exclusively through the eyes of Katniss’ herself, the film however tells the same story from a wider social perspective, working in tandem with the book as a parallel experience and re-defining what an adaptation can achieve.
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| She couldn't believe it, 2014 is agesss away. |
The second film – Catching Fire – is well under way with Mockingjay Part 1 due 21st November 2014. It can only be hoped that the following adaptations follow the stellar example set by the first, there definitely being enough strength in the source texts to craft similarly affecting experiences. However, the split with Mockingjay is rife with potential underhandedness.
For those who have read the book you will understand the sentiment that there doesn’t seem to be a clear mid-way split within the text in which to conclude the first movie. Deathly Hallows had a similar issue and decided to quite arbitrarily end with the demise of an entirely neglected (in the films anyway) fodder character. This spells trouble. Mockingjay as a complete entity is perfectly suited for the cinema screen: it has a beginning, middle and end with characters new and old reappearing, disappearing, growing and debasing up until its well-constructed climax. It does not however have a beginning, middle, pretend ending, new beginning, an extra bit of middle jammy goodness and then the real ending.
As it stands, the whole construction reeks with the festering stench of capital gain. If Mockingjay can continue with the trend initiated by Hunger Gamesthen this may not be too much of an issue, instead allowing the film to offer audiences further insights into the wider universe of Panem. Cynicism will have to be penned in until the film’s actual release of course, but our old buddy Grandiloquent Guffmuncher is looking awfully pleased with itself over there scoffing a sandwich of gold and broken dreams.
The Hope: The Hobbit
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| Grandiloquent Guffmuncher in later life: Meth, not even once. |
When The Hobbit was originally reported as being two films not even your gran was surprised. And she doesn’t know what a television is. When it was then later announced that the second film was going to be split, questioned were raised. ‘It’s only a 300 page book,’ the Internet cried, spilling its milk, ‘how will it make 3 films flerpity herp derp?’ How indeed.
Peter Jackson likes things to be long and hairy: Lord of The Rings and its Dwarves, King Kong and…King Kong. And this hasn’t changed for The Hobbit. Clocking in at 169 minutes The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey may be the shortest of Jackson’s Middle-Earthian marathons to New Zealand but it’s definitely still within his modus operandi. What it also testifies is something that all of the other films mentioned so far have missed: how to make the split work.
As covered in this review, An Unexpected Journeyis clearly not just the first 100 pages of The Hobbit. With one eye on the source text and another on The Return of the King’s expansive and brain-aching appendices, it is indicative of the wider Grand Designs-esque project that The Hobbit trilogy is hoping to complete. Not content with just telling the earnestly beloved tale of Bilbo and his troupe of merry hairy half-men, Peter Jackson has something far more ambitious in mind. The possibilities are plentiful and while references may be slight, almost irritatingly so, they are abundant enough within An Unexpected Journey to send fanboy’s into drooling fits of pleasure while still creating intrigue for the rest of us mortals.
This article on denofgeek explores Jackson’s potential options best (and with frightening accuracy!).
While money is definitely still a consideration – when is it not after all – this dedication to the wider diegesis of the source text is commendable. Through marrying The Hobbit to the appendices Jackson is effectively summarizing the entirety of Middle Earth on the big golden screen. So for all those millions of fans of LotRwho discovered the series through the films their experience of Tolkein’s ostensibly quite oppressive and lore-heavy world (not ordinarily good for the movies) could yet be complete. The effectiveness of such an endevour remains to be seen, but judging by Jackson’s previous accomplishments and the charming, rip-roaring adventure of An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit is one series well equipped to best make use of Hollywood’s newest moneymaking WMD.
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| The Apocalypse - a clown's last revenge. |
Across these last two articles or so we’ve looked at how Hollywood is so Hollywood, desperate to squeeze every last drop of delicious nutritious milk out of the cash cow before it gets kicked in the face. In the past we’ve had technological pandering – ‘digital re-releases’, 3D and all that gimmicky bunch – and now we’ve got The Hollywood Split. A term that will definitely pick up beyond this article and permeate the cultural zeitgeist. For definite. #HollywoodSplit people, let’s make it a thing.
Although easy to joke about, this trend is unsettling, primarily as an indication of the oft-lamented creative cull occurring within the Hollywood studio system as previously discussed in conjunction with Star Wars.Instead of looking to create new IPs and new experiences, it ever seems that case that, on top of depending upon adaptations of other medias for its content, films are shreding these adaptations to the bone, tearing off every dollar it can before dumping the flagellated carcass on the scrap heap. It is definitely something to worry about and the number of split final-part movies is exacerbating this issue.
Overall, while Despicable, Dodgy, Unknown and Hope may sound like an X-Rated Snow White adaptation, they neatly summarise the growing trend that is The Hollywood Split. Keep an eye out for it. Much like the seven dwarves, it likes to mercilessly chase after children, imprison them and make then clean up its house (seriously, Snow White is f****d up).
Happy New Year everybody! Let's look back at 2012 and laugh at everyone else's complete and utter failures at life:
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.
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