Every one has heard of Harry Potter. Every kid (even adults) in the world will be familiar with the Potter-verse – the books published from 1997 to 2007. The first book was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (or in UK and India it is known as Sorcerer’s stone). The last book was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The final movie aroused the most attention globally … lets look at how they handled the last book, splitting it into two parts that seems to have kicked off a trend which I call The Potter Effect.
The last movie of the Harry Potter series was split as Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows- Part 1 & Part-2. It was not only done to earn more money but also to give the Potter-fans more material to love. As a result the series became the highest grossing movie series in the world. But was this actually a good idea? In some ways yes. The second movie, according to me, was not very good. I preferred the first. I, being a huge Tolkien fan, don’t like the HP series very much. But the splitting the book into two movies exposed its many flaws.
Now, inspired by the success of Deathly Hallows, Twilight Breaking Dawn was also split into two movies. I am a hard core hater of Stephanie Meyer and her books. I wouldn’t get caught seeing this movie. Instead of getting profits only form one movie, the hope is to double it by splitting it into two. Given that the books were fairly large and have a lot of content, it was a good choice.
But now, Mockingjay has been split in to two movies too. That worries me, as the book was barely 350 pages long. Suzanne Collins wanted the series to be a trilogy. It was a story with three acts. But now, due to this decision, it’ll have four acts. How would they end Part one? Would it end like a TV show. Bad decision ! Perhaps this is taking the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy‘s concept of a trilogy in 5 parts too literally !
Recently, The Hobbit too has been split in to two movies- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey & The Hobbit: There & Back Again. And the worst part is that they are deciding to make it a trilogy, by splitting the last one again into two. The book is only 300 pages. How are they going to split it into three movies, which are to be inter-connected ? The viewers have to wait for the better part of the year for the next part. It would increase the profits perhaps, but extend a great story to test our patience . I’d have preferred if they made only one movie and not three. Though, the content would be less, we’d have more fun. When it comes to Tolkien and Peter Jackson, is there really a problem of people not going for it? The money they would get easily, but they’d quite likely be sacrificing good ratings.