As I write this, a new Mission: Impossible movie is launching in theaters. The film opens on Wednesday and not Friday because it’s summer, and why not? It will have a few extra days to dominate screens before Barbenheimer (yes that’s a real thing) comes out on July 21st. It coming out a few days early isn’t the biggest problem, nor is it why I’m writing this newsletter.
If you gaze upon the header image for the newsletter, it excitedly says Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning. That’s great! The seventh Mission: Impossible movie (gosh I love these movies), where Tom Cruise will do stupid things that haven’t killed him yet. The less great part is Part One. While the promise of a second part is quite thrilling, we’re only getting a part of the seventh Mission: Impossible. As I haven’t seen it yet, I’m only going to assume that we are getting half a story and we’ll see the other half in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part Two (*IMDB has a date of June 28th, 2024).
This isn’t exactly a new trend. As this list from Wikipedia details as far back as the 1930s, films were being shot in multiple parts due to production considerations. For a lot of these projects it was easier to have all the pieces in place and just keep the cameras rolling. Some of the more modern examples before we get into the 21st Century included Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980) and Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Part III (1990).
In the early-00s plenty of big-name projects did movies in parts whether it was Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, or even Kill Bill. For these projects, it seemed like a good business to film these all at once to cut costs and be able to tell an entire story. When the YA franchises like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Twilight attempted it a few years later it began to feel like a big cash grab. If you could squeeze one more movie out of your lucrative IP, why wouldn’t you? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was one of the longer titles in the franchise so maybe it could be justified, but Hunger Games: Mockingjay isn’t longer than most adaptations. It was hard to see it as anything else than a business decision. For audiences, it meant shelling out the cash to see the same story played across two movie tickets.
While I was thinking about this topic for a while, there have been plenty of compelling articles written about this trend. One in The Guardian was published around the time Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse came out (When it was initially promoted, Part One was very much a part of the marketing, it fell off entirely by the time the movie was released). The article points to the latest Spider-Verse movie heading towards a crescendo only to drop a find out what happens next time title card. The movie is a great achievement on its own (one of the best movies of 2023), but it’s only the first part, so it feels incomplete by its nature. It certainly doesn’t help that Vulture published an article from those who worked on Across the Spider-Verse summarizing there is no way that Part Two will make its Spring 2024 bow.
They’ve announced that Beyond the Spider-Verse will be released in March of next year. I’ve seen people say, “Oh, they probably worked on it at the same time.” There’s no way that movie’s coming out then.
Perhaps the case for splitting a narrative can be traced to the source. Recent two-parters like Stephen King’s IT or Frank Herbert’s Dune made a good argument for splitting into two. The associated movies have to adapt books that are literally tombs. Two movies mean that a story as dense as those can be completed accurately. I mean, just look at the ill-fated Dune movie of the 80s to see how more time would help flesh out that narrative. So it isn’t surprising that audiences will be treated to Dune Part 2 on November 3rd. (It’s funny that a second part to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune wasn’t guaranteed until the box office receipts for the first one were counted.)
So if splitting Twilight’s finale into two or splitting The Hobbit into three movies made your head spin, well Warner Bros. is splitting their adaptation of the stage musical, Wicked, into two movies. This is a musical that fits into a 2-hour and 45-minute window, including a 15-minute intermission. It’s painfully obvious that Warner Bros. wants to make double the return on its investment. For his part, Wicked director Jon M. Chu played along with the decision and made sure audiences knew that the film was too big to fit into one movie.
All of this is to say we have plenty of movies being split up into multiple parts this year including Spider-Man, Mission: Impossible, and Dune. Is it simply a cost-cutting measure to make sure we get the whole story, a way of squeezing as much money from an IP as possible, or both? When it comes time for Barbie Times Two (*working title) and Barbie, Barbie, and Me (*working title), it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a two-parter.
*The titles for Barbie 2 and 3 are of my own device, but I think they work.
Make it stop! In the words of Llewyn Davis, "I'm tired."