A Rant: Films and Short Stories

District 9 has the same problem I have been noticing in a great many movies lately, in which the movies are just too long. Looking at what i have already seen 4 of the 20 movies I have seen that dragged on, and could have been better if edited down to the 90 minute mark. (Spider-man 3, Funny People, Avatar, and District 9) In the case of Funny People, I think the screenplay was at fault for the failure of Funny People's second half. The rest of these films are action packed thrill rides that just cannot awe me anymore.

Had the director, or the producers, edited these films and removed these excessive action sequences the movies would have been so much better, if only because the brevity would be a sweet relief.

Avatar would have been spectacular if everyone was killed when the tree burned down and the story ended there. Why? Because tragedy hits you harder than comedy does and we would not have had to endure the story for the next 45 minutes. It would be certainly less epic, but the world of Pandora (which was my favorite part of the film) would have been the obvious highlight instead of the drawn out super battle at the end.

That is just one example.

I want to finish this little rant on being concise by relating film to literature. Look at a novel. Films and novels are very similar. They both share stories but what we expect from each medium is different. A film is limited to at most three hours, because a film should be seen in one sitting. This means we have to be told a story in this time and we have to be engaged throughout it. A novel is different. Novels are fueled not only by the stories they tell but by the enjoyment of the words that form it. Very few novels can actually be finished in one sitting and the way they are made no one actually expects people to do that. Instead the novels are meant to be digested slowly at the digression of the viewer. This is why a 1000+ page novel is not a bad thing.

Now you might be wondering why I am ranting on about this and I'll tell you. My philosophy toward film is to not make it like a novel, where entire stories and motifs can be just forgotten and still be enjoyable. Instead movies should be made like short stories , with a microscope and a subtle attention to detail. Short stories are meant to be read in one sitting, like a movie should be seen in one sitting. Short stories are much more dependant on making each word count and each film should make every scene, and every shot count. Short stories cannot allow there to be filler.

What I am getting at is this: If you want to make a movie that is an epic 3 hour blockbuster, you had better make every minute count because every wasted minute is a failure.