When I tell people that I hardly ever watch any movies, the most typical response is a reasonable one: "But you were a film major!" This is true. And it's not that four years of film classes turned me off the medium entirely. There are few things I enjoy more than sitting back and watching well-crafted characters partake in an engaging story on screen. My problem with movies is more about the structure of feature films in general. Generally, stories are told over the course of about two hours -- sometimes less than that, sometimes more. This means introducing the main characters, establishing a reason for the viewer to be invested in these characters, and using them to tell an interesting and entertaining story, all in a mere 120 minutes.
This just doesn't do it for me most of the time. Oddly, I find the timeframe both too short and too long. On one hand, the internet age(*) has made it difficult for me to sit in place for two straight hours watching a movie, unless I'm VERY invested in what I'm watching. On the other hand, I enjoy epic, complex plots, and often even three hours isn't long enough to tell stories like that.
(*) Along with my neck and back problems.
This is why I love television so much. It gives me the best of both worlds: Episodes typically range from 20 minutes for network sitcoms to 60 minutes for some HBO or BBC dramas. They're short enough that I don't lose interest over the course of a single episode. PLUS, a full season ranges from six episodes for BBC shows to 20+ episodes for American network programs.
The perfect example is a serialized show such as The Wire, which typically ran for about 12 55-minute episodes -- 11 hours to tell the stories they wanted to! And that's not even taking into consideration multiple seasons. Multiply The Wire by five seasons and that's 55 hours of material! A novel compared to any feature film, but digestible in smaller, self-contained chunks as well. Win-win. Perfect.
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I hate to tow the company's line, but it's so true that It's Not TV, It's HBO. They really ushered in what is now considered a Golden Age of television, even though the shows that started it - The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Oz (arguably), and The Wire (far and away the best of all) - are now over. Now it's all Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Office, the underrated Parks & Rec, and broadcast TV networks with surprisingly-robust lineups.
ReplyDeleteI agree with pretty much everything else. After something as epic as five seasons of The Wire, which is basically a sixty hour movie, going back to a two hour movie seems like watching incomplete characters and such. It seems especially ridiculous when there's talk about a Wire movie - how the hell can you make a two-hour movie out of sixty hours of prior material?