Hollywood Has a Two-Part Problem

Forget the writer’s strike or the latest actor’s strike, Hollywood faces a bigger problem: two-parters. Every other movie this year abruptly ends in the middle of a scene, forcing audiences to wait another year or two for the conclusion. It’s a frustrating tactic designed to extract more money from our pockets.

Fast X started the summer trend, abruptly cutting to black during a final action sequence that shows Dom and his kid facing a wall of flames. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse surprisingly rolls the credits after building up to an epic finale, leaving viewers waiting until at least March 2024. This week, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One splits Tom Cruise’s latest adventure into two massive films, needlessly dragging it out.

What the hell, Hollywood?

Imagine watching Titanic for two hours, only to have the credits roll just before the ship hits the iceberg. Sorry, you have to wait another year to see the really good stuff.

I remember the shocked audience reaction to The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring when it ended without a definitive conclusion. The camera pans up, revealing that Frodo and Sam’s adventure has just begun. However, The Lord of the Rings saga consisted of three separate novels that came together to form one giant story. Peter Jackson condensed a 20-plus hour narrative into 10 hours without any issues.

Dead Reckoning is entertaining, but it lacks enough substance to justify a nearly three-hour runtime, let alone another movie. I sense that Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie drafted a wish list of action scenes and realized it was too much for one film but not enough for two, so they padded Part One. It’s evident in the excessively long action sequences and the surplus of expository dialogue and redundant character beats that slow down the production.

Similarly, Across the Spider-Verse could have cut about 20 minutes without missing a beat. And regardless of Vin Diesel’s ego, no Fast and Furious movie should exceed 90 minutes.

This isn’t a new phenomenon either. The Hunger Games and Harry Potter each split their last entries into two, allowing more room for action in the second part but burdening viewers with a meandering first half overloaded with exposition. There are certainly more efficient ways to tell a story. If The Godfather can deliver its sprawling narrative in under three hours, the creative team behind Fast X has no excuse not to do the same.

Of course, this tactic likely stems from Hollywood’s attempt to compete with the streaming craze. Television shows are just as guilty of stretching a tiny story across three or four seasons, sometimes even longer, until the creative well runs dry. This allows the creators to avoid the underwhelming conclusions that moviegoers have endured in endless waves of lackluster third installments for decades. By stretching out franchises indefinitely, there’s always the promise of better things in the future. Obi-Wan Kenobi might have disappointed, but there’s always Season 2 to look forward to, right?

Similarly, a two-part film ensures that the first half will rake in a tremendous amount of money and leave viewers eagerly awaiting the finale. Even if the second half doesn’t perform as well as the first, as was the case with Hunger Games, the studio still makes a fortune. Catching Fire Parts 1 and 2 had a collective production cost of $285 million (before marketing and distribution) and grossed $1.413 billion at the worldwide box office. Financially, the tactic makes sense.

However, artistically, it falls short.

Would you prefer to have two decent Dead Reckonings or one incredible Mission: Impossible film? Quality should take precedence over quantity.

Personally, I appreciate concise storytelling. Some of the greatest films of all time have a runtime of around two hours without sacrificing character, story, or action: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, ET, Casablanca, Rear Window, Mad Max: Fury Road, Jurassic Park, Aliens, and more. Sure, one could split Raiders into two movies, filling the first part with more action and unnecessary dialogue, but would it improve the film?

(As a side note, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, and Denis Villeneuve are the only directors I trust to deliver a quality blockbuster lasting over two hours. Others need not apply.)

Hopefully, this isn’t the beginning of a new trend. Next summer’s lineup is packed with sequels like Mufasa, Twisters, Captain America: Brave New World, Furiosa, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, among others. While I understand the studio’s desire to make money, there’s only so much artistic value these IPs can offer before they become obsolete.

As the old adage goes: more isn’t always better.

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