Opinions about movies and TV series
I miss the days when movies were great. I don’t see this much anymore. There are some good films, even a few great ones, but most of the extraordinary entertainment is now in the former of TV series. Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead etc. These TV shows are now in the mainstream and doing great.
If you think about it, when you watch these shows it is like watching a really long movie. You have seasons, which have anywhere from 12 to 16 episodes each, more or less. Creators can do more with this than a short two and a half hour movie--and let me tell you, two and a half hours is pretty darn long for a movie compared to the old days when they were on average an hour and fifteen minutes.
I read in an interview with a writer that it's hard now to have just one or two writers on a movie script. Usually it gets passed through a many writer's hands before it's finished. And mostly all the good writers that worked on the great movies from days past have moved on to writing for the TV shows because of this reason. That's probably why you see a lot of these series taking off the way they do. They have more freedom to be creative where movies are over-scrutinized with too many hands are in the cookie jar.
There are people who still enjoy the big screen, and don't get me wrong there are many movies I do enjoy. But it just isn't like the past where you saw a preview and couldn't wait to get to the theater to see that awesome blockbuster movie. The excitement seems to be gone at least for me.
Saw, which made a ton of sequels, sort of gave me that excitement. You knew what you were getting; it came out around a certain time--Halloween, perfect for that movie--and reminded me of when I was a kid with Tales from the Crypt airing every Saturday. Of course Saw came out yearly, but still gave me that feeling I remembered from the old Saturday horror shows.
Another good thing about TV series is you can binge watch them. You can wait until the season is over and go back to your TiVo, or buy the season on DVD or digital download and watch the whole thing as though it were one long movie. Or even wait until the whole entire show is over and get all the seasons and watch them back to back. This is great for people who don't want to wait for the next episode in suspense. It reminds me of when I started Harry Potter about three or four books in, so I got to go right to the next book after I finished the prior one. And it was great until I hit that fourth book and had to wait for the next. True Story. Poor baby, right?
Novel adaptions can be even better on a TV series basis. I haven't watched it yet, but case in point is Stephen King's Under the Dome. I don't believe a meager two and a half hours will do that book justice. I'm almost 75% through with the book and know it can't work as a movie. You'd have to cut out so much.
Now a short story would probably do great as a movie, and it's been done. Stephen King's 1408 had been ported over pretty darn well if you ask me.
Guess we'll have to wait and see what happens out there in the industry to see how things turn out. Will movies start to get better again, or are these major TV series the new movies? Until then, I'll be catching up on The Leftovers—and I don’t mean the ones from Thanksgiving.
WCM
If you think about it, when you watch these shows it is like watching a really long movie. You have seasons, which have anywhere from 12 to 16 episodes each, more or less. Creators can do more with this than a short two and a half hour movie--and let me tell you, two and a half hours is pretty darn long for a movie compared to the old days when they were on average an hour and fifteen minutes.
I read in an interview with a writer that it's hard now to have just one or two writers on a movie script. Usually it gets passed through a many writer's hands before it's finished. And mostly all the good writers that worked on the great movies from days past have moved on to writing for the TV shows because of this reason. That's probably why you see a lot of these series taking off the way they do. They have more freedom to be creative where movies are over-scrutinized with too many hands are in the cookie jar.
There are people who still enjoy the big screen, and don't get me wrong there are many movies I do enjoy. But it just isn't like the past where you saw a preview and couldn't wait to get to the theater to see that awesome blockbuster movie. The excitement seems to be gone at least for me.
Saw, which made a ton of sequels, sort of gave me that excitement. You knew what you were getting; it came out around a certain time--Halloween, perfect for that movie--and reminded me of when I was a kid with Tales from the Crypt airing every Saturday. Of course Saw came out yearly, but still gave me that feeling I remembered from the old Saturday horror shows.
Another good thing about TV series is you can binge watch them. You can wait until the season is over and go back to your TiVo, or buy the season on DVD or digital download and watch the whole thing as though it were one long movie. Or even wait until the whole entire show is over and get all the seasons and watch them back to back. This is great for people who don't want to wait for the next episode in suspense. It reminds me of when I started Harry Potter about three or four books in, so I got to go right to the next book after I finished the prior one. And it was great until I hit that fourth book and had to wait for the next. True Story. Poor baby, right?
Novel adaptions can be even better on a TV series basis. I haven't watched it yet, but case in point is Stephen King's Under the Dome. I don't believe a meager two and a half hours will do that book justice. I'm almost 75% through with the book and know it can't work as a movie. You'd have to cut out so much.
Now a short story would probably do great as a movie, and it's been done. Stephen King's 1408 had been ported over pretty darn well if you ask me.
Guess we'll have to wait and see what happens out there in the industry to see how things turn out. Will movies start to get better again, or are these major TV series the new movies? Until then, I'll be catching up on The Leftovers—and I don’t mean the ones from Thanksgiving.
WCM
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