Oh lord. This did not need to be a two parter. Man, I miss movies being well contained 90 minute stories.
The whole Broadway show can be done in a 2 hour-ish performance live, there is no justification to stretch this to two movies other than corporate greed milking every IP to the limit
Unless its a planned trilogy with 3 strong stories that could semi-standalone (short of context being lost without the other installments) then any movie that needs more than 2 hours should just be a mini series. You wanna tell a 4 hour long story about the Wizard of Oz? Fine, stick it on Netflix and anyone who wants to binge watch it can to make it “feel like a movie” and those who don’t will have 4 - hour long episodes.
They wouldn’t make 4 episodes, they’d make 8 and half of them would be filler episodes.
Just saw part one. As I had suspected, they would’ve been hard pressed to get both acts into one film.
A Broadway show can get away with a lot more compression. There are no establishing shots on a stage. And Wicked, as a musical, moves. The movie didn’t overstay its welcome, it didn’t waste much time. But it still easily filled its runtime.
Making the two acts into two films was a good call. Though I suspect the second film won’t be as good as the first, since I’ve always preferred act 1 of the Broadway show.
It’s really clear to me that the cast and crew weren’t lying when they said they love the musical and wanted to do right by it.
Just you wait…
- 2024: Wicked (Part 1)
- 2025: Wicked Part 2 (Part 1)
- 2026: Wicked Part 2 (Part 2)
I’m still bitter about Spider-Man. Had no idea it was a part one until it ended. Maybe we just create whole movies with the 2+ hours we are using.
Ah fuck you reminded me of the ending of Spiderverse. Probably at least 2 years away still…
I don’t think they were even making part 2 when they ended it that way. Made it so much worse.
I was so psyched for that movie, but when I found out it was a part one, I lost interest and still haven’t seen it
It completely killed any narrative cohesion or pay-off by just ending. I remember thinking “it’s been a really long time… how are they going to wrap this up?”
Turns out the answer is “don’t wrap it up”. It truly makes me not recommend it - though I had other issues with it aside from just that absurd decision. Rewatch the first again, instead.
I agree the split in half angle was horribly handled but the movie wasn’t totally ruined. ::: spoiler Narratively across the spider-verse was gwens story. It started with her and ended with her and miles was the backdrop for much of what happened spoiler ::: . I’ve seen the movie 3 times and I still love it. I don’t think the take away is movies should be shorter because it had so much amazing visuals and story telling and really ramped up the expectations for the next one. The take away is don’t lie to your audience pretending it’s a single movie. Also don’t lie and say the next one is coming out in 8 months, it’s been 2 years lol. They were never gonna make that deadline.
The second spider-verse movie, I think. No mention of it being a trilogy but the story clearly ended setting up a third movie.
Those movies were already too long, IMO. The shortest of the two is 114 minutes. My son really liked them, but we had to break up each movie into more than one session.
I really don’t care anymore … when a new movie is announced, I really don’t care to do anything special to go out and see it. I just forget about it and wait a year or two and watch it as a stream on one of the services I already pay for.
It usually works out. If the movie was crap, everyone will tell me, I’ll read about it or see low review scores for and just never bother watching it ever … or it’s released on Netflix, Disney or Amazon and I watch it there a year or two later.
If it has great reviews and not available anywhere, then I just wait a year and rent it for $5 and watch it at home.
There’s more than enough content to last a lifetime, I’m not spending any more money to watch the latest greatest movie as soon as it comes out.
Just make it long with an intermission.
Lots of old musical films did that. Like Oklahoma!, Fiddler on the Roof, and Hello Dolly.
