There is a trend in recent years, although not prolific, that still gets on my raving titties all the same. That is when it’s decided by the powers that be to split a film into two parts because they deem it to have too much content for one film alone. They’re in the business of making money, so is this just an obvious attempt at making twice the money or is it giving the films the credence they deserve by fleshing the stories out?

With franchises, one must take note that the last book in a series is usually the largest, with the writer cramming in as much as they can for a spectacular finale. This was the case for Harry Potter and Twilight respectively and both franchises have had their conclusions split into two parts. While I enjoyed the potter films, the announcement of splitting the finale was one of disappointment and annoyance for me personally, because now we had to wait twice as long to finish it off. Yes, impatience. The condition most humans suffer from. I’m all up for fleshing things out but splitting films like this drives me bonkers and just stinks of a money grab which further incenses me from even bothering with it at all.

The last two Potter films were okay I suppose, but hardly anything that warranted dividing them up. If Peter Jackson can make some of the biggest box office numbers with some of the longest running box office films with the likes of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, then surely they could’ve finished Potter off with an almighty three hour extravaganza. That would’ve left fans leaving the cinema far more pumped and satisfied in my opinion. A marathon effort for a finale would be far more pleasing to me than two shorter stints with a long waiting time between them, giving me far too much time to ponder if it’s even worth bothering with anymore. If Jackson really wanted to milk it, he could’ve made six normal length movies of LOTR for the masses, though now were just getting ridiculous. In saying this, The Hobbit is being split into two parts which is odd considering the very light nature of the novel and also how short it is compared to any of the books in the LOTR trilogy. I guess this is becoming a trend but knowing what intentions the directors have are impossible. Is it merely to make more money, or are they concerned with telling the story in depth? Maybe it’s both. Even Kevin Smith is splitting his upcoming film “Hit Somebody” into two and he doesn’t even have the pull that someone like Jackson does, so that’s a pretty ballsy move. He better make sure the first part is kickass if he wants people to see the second.

Does the Twilight: Breaking Dawn novel have so much substance that it requires the final installment to be split into two films? My wife read the books and upon quizzing her about it, she mentioned that although the book is the longest of them all, they probably could’ve just made the film longer but she’s not adverse to seeing more Edward the sparkly vampire on screen. Uuugh. And therein lies my point. They got to the last film, the series is a moneymaking juggernaut for considerably small budgeted films, so what do they do? Break it into two parts. So now people have to endure the legions of Twihards for another year of arguing if it’s Team Jacob or Team Edward. Christ! But I digress, hacking upon Twilight is all to easy and quite shameless on my part. I understand that it wasn’t made for me though the films’ appeal deludes me somewhat. They’re all quite terribly made, with terrible effects, terrible actors and terrible source material. Let’s just forget the one of many anomalies of Twilight’s vampires not having the blood pumping through their veins to get a boner, let alone produce a half-breed child (bwahaha…that’s a good one) but really…… Robert Pattinson looks to be the only one with a hope of a career after these abominations are done with. Aargh, stop James stop! Onto other things….what is this article about again? Oh yes………

Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2 is a good example of when films shouldn’t have been split into two separate parts. Everybody loves Volume 1. Volume 2 however? Not so much. Had these two films been edited together to make one large film and cut out some of the fat evident in the second, the Kill Bill story as a whole would’ve been received much much better. With Tarantino’s unique style of mixing the story up so it isn’t at all linear could’ve served a complete Kill Bill film much better with the final fight being the one we all remember. You know, where The Bride slices and dices dozens of Yakuza in a restaurant. This would’ve had people loving the whole Kill Bill film as a whole instead of now saying that Volume 1 was awesome and 2 was mediocre. I believe this splitting of films can detract from the overall experience and puts way too much waiting time in between the story for the viewers which in turn can cause a lack of anticipation. One could argue that sequels do this but films in a trilogy have a good way of closing their particular parts of a story arc out to give the audience some semblance of satisfaction between films. Not just halting the story midstream with a “to be continued….” at the end. Even Back to the Future 2 and 3 are guilty of this but both were also made back to back, as are most finale’s that are split films.

Either way, I don’t like this path that some filmmakers are going down. I would prefer a longer film than separating the enjoyment along with the film into two equal parts. Maybe having a film that has a long runtime is not acceptable for cinemas as it limits the amount of showings, I don’t know, but I feel it can detract from the whole experience and can even cheapen a franchise’s impact on the viewers. This is of course all in my own opinion, but I’m interested to see what you think about it. Feel free to leave a comment below. I’d love to be proved wrong on this one but it all seems like another way to dupe the public out of twice the money for the one giant film.