Comments on: The Tyranny of 120 Minutes: Why No Long Movies?

By: LifeArtist

LifeArtist — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:06:25 +0000

Anything over two hours, forget it. I may as well make an appointment with my orthodontist.

By: Gab

Gab — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 06:50:21 +0000

Wrather: By “literary aspirations,” do you mean how “faithful” to the books the different production teams wanted to be? If so, I can see why one would desire separate the two book/film series; but I’d still argue that this sort of proves my point that length in an adaptation depends a great deal on how much is included from the source material and how similar or dissimilar that depiction is. Now, that adherence to the original can and probably IS directly related to the goal of the movie (are they trying to make a page-by-page visual, which would most likely mean a longer film, or are they going for the gist of the chapter, enabling a shorter film?); but that doesn’t mean it has to be exact to be good, OR off to be bad (since not everything translates well to the screen and not every addition made up by screenwriters is a poor one). Anyhoo, we can agree to disagree (although I’m not sure how much disagreement there is… seems more like different angles, I dunno…).

And I do agree about Columbia/Sony not caring about _Spiderman 4_ being good, so I guess perhaps I’m confusing “vanity project” with “shameless attempt at profit” in my evaluations of it/them, as well as directors and such in general (since I find it hard to swallow that Lucas’s “vanity” has nothing to do with earning $$$- sure there’s ego, but why commercialize it so much if it’s about making it “for me”?).

By: Matthew Wrather

Matthew Wrather — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:58:59 +0000

As to the post itself: I take issue with the idea that well-known directors–or even just ones with good credits–are uniformly geniuses and expert craftsmen who flourish artistically in an environment free of the constraints of their employers or the market. “George Lucas Disease” sums the problem with this proposition up pretty well.

By: Matthew Wrather

Matthew Wrather — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:54:14 +0000

The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter have different literary aspirations and target demographics. That’s what accounts for the difference, not a difference in the philosophy of interpretation.

Also, Columbia, which is owned by a large, multi-national conglomerate (Sony), is not pushing for a fourth Spider Man movie because they expect it to be good.

By: Gab

Gab — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:25:39 +0000

Stokes, I must disagree about the story “demanding it” for LotR, from a purely objective, non-fan pov. Yes, a Tolkien purist would say every element had to be there, but lots of other books get developed into movies all the time and don’t run three hours long in the theater cut. The fifth _Harry Potter_ book was the longest to date when it was released, and it ended up being the shortest movie- and sure, the Harry purist in me was kind of ticked that some of the cool stuff I liked was taken out or very changed/barely alluded to, but the film-goer in me thought it was a great movie and liked it for what it was. I guess what I’m saying (I’m trying not to sound like a troll/orc/whatevs) is that, at least with film versions of books (or graphic novels or anything else already done on paper, while we’re at it), it depends on 1)how much is absolutely essential and unchangeable for the plot, and 2)how what does get included is modified for the screen- and if it’s adapted well enough, the screenwriter(s) can make it shorter and still have it be of high quality, even if very different from the original text. I guess it comes down to how “true to the text” the film version ends up being.

But I like what you spell George Lucas Syndrome out to be. Can a film company suffer from it, or does it have to be an individual director/producer/whatever? I mean, the pushing for _Spiderman 4_ by the execs at Columbia, even though the actors were extremely against it at first, makes me think Sam Raimi isn’t the only one with a complex involved there…

By: stokes

stokes — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:26:40 +0000

I don’t know how bad Jackson has it, though… King Kong was a pet project of his, a script he’d been working on for years and years. It’s possible that when people told him it was too long, he listened to them, but eventually said “Look, I’m making this one for *me*.” In other words, that he treated it like a vanity project. George Lucas syndrome, then, is when your entire creative output becomes a vanity project.

By: stokes

stokes — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:23:24 +0000

LOTR was long because the story demanded it. I understand people grumbling about the length, but anything you removed from it would make it worse. I’m talking about the theatrical release here, though. The extended edition… well, by and large it was an improvement. LOTR was an amazing film, and the extra footage was also amazing, although you can usually tell why it was cut. Not everything long is bad.

But not everything long is good. Watching King Kong, I worry that Jackson has let the overwhelming success (financial AND aesthetic) of LOTR go to his head. The fact that he had to shell out his own money for Kong tells me that, at some point, a studio flack took Jackson aside and told him “Look, these scenes here should be cut.” And Jackson ignored it. He thought he knew better.

That’s George Lucas disease: the belief that everything you make is good, no matter what anyone else is telling you, no matter how overwhelming the evidence that you’re wrong. It’s not about editing necessarily: the problem with The Phantom Menace isn’t it’s length, it’s that it was even made. But movies/books/double-CD-albums that are overlong by a solid %30 are the most frequently observed symptom.

By: Gab

Gab — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:07:30 +0000

Stokes, what’s “George Lucas Disease” precisely? Is it just an editing thing, or is it also about selling out a franchise? Just to get it out there, I don’t think the editing Lucas does is bad, so much as the very scripts he works with (“Only Siths speak in absolutes!” for example) and his total inability to come up with anything new (I’m waiting for some sort of animated series based on Luke’s training days with Yoda).

About PJ- The main complaint I heard (and still hear) about the LotR movies from non-Tolkien fans or nerds of a different color is the length- stuff along the lines of, “It was good, yeah, but soooo long.” When “King Kong” came out, a number of them postulated to me that maybe Jackson just doesn’t know how or refuses to edit efficiently. As a LotR fan, it’s hard for me to make that distinction between the trilogy and the remake, since I’m willing to sit and watch all of the extended versions of LotR in a row, but I wanted to get up and leave after the first hour-and-a-half (not even two hours) of “King Kong.” But I see the merit and basis of the argument, and it makes sense. So I’m curious as to *why* you, Belinkie, Stokes, et. al. think PJ’s movies are so long.

By: stokes

stokes — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:23:58 +0000

Peter Jackson’s King Kong should have been shorter by a solid hour. I worry that Jackson might be suffering from the early stages of George Lucas disease…