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Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Film and Television: The Migration of the Epic



“Television is better than movies.” This has become an incredibly popular point of view among people who write things online or otherwise, and it seems it’s every other week that a new thinkpiece or blog post comes out about how television has become the new medium for storytellers and movies are quickly being left in the dust. It’s never a debate I’ve been particularly interested in, if only because deciding which is better just isn’t that important to me. They are both great for different things, but if there has been a change in recent years it’s that their respective artistic aims have started to come closer together. Movies are still telling stories—and occasionally doing it in an intelligent manner—but television has turned out to be a viable outlet for auteurs to let their stories stretch out over a long period of time.

If there has been an unfortunate side effect on film, it’s that an entire genre is nearing extinction: the epic. This started to occur to me this past weekend, when I decided to watch Michael Mann’s Heat again just for the heck of it. (In hindsight, perhaps it was not the best idea to kill time with a three hour movie, but I got this piece out of it, didn’t I?) As the film went on, and as more and more characters were introduced into Mann’s dense Los Angeles world, I realized this is a movie that could never get made today. It’s not even that old, yet it’s length, scope and ambition feels like something out of another era. After it ended I tweeted that these days Heat would not be a movie, but a television series on HBO or AMC. Mann recently worked on David Milch’s ill-fated series Luck, and if he were to think up a Heat-like idea today I can guarantee you he would not take it to a movie studio. He would keep it on the small screen.


In many ways, the plot of Heat very much resembles a modern season of serialized television. There’s the “pilot” portion, in which the various characters and story arcs are introduced. The chess pieces are moved throughout the film’s duration, there’s a climactic event, and finally an extended dénouement in which the characters deal with the ramifications of said event. This isn’t necessarily the arc seen in all modern serialized shows—occasionally they can end with the climactic event and push the aftermath to the beginning of the next season—but it certainly rings true of several HBO shows such as The Wire and the first season of Game of Thrones, among others. Watching Heat, I could see all the makings for a rich, dense cable series. It would require some padding out, but I could argue the film as is needs a little padding out. Even at three hours, some things feel stuffed in.

Heat is just one example of an epic story that these days would probably wind up on television instead of in theaters. When I revisited Coppola’s first two Godfather films a while back, I had the same reaction: you couldn’t make these movies today. Even if you could, you probably wouldn’t even try. On the surface, The Godfather would also be perfect material for a cable channel like HBO or AMC. The first film is the first season, the second film is the second season, and then the showrunners could take it wherever they wanted to go from there. (I assume they wouldn’t jump right to Part III. Or at least, here’s hoping.) I wouldn’t necessarily argue that television is better than movies, but I would say that it’s starting to take away these types of films and this type of storytelling. Television has undoubtedly gotten better, and there are few people who would argue that it’s an inferior form of entertainment. (It probably never was, but that's another discussion.) The only people that still have this belief are the old-school film executives, and it will be interesting to see how the two merge once the new school completely takes over.

When I mention these select films that probably would be television series today, I’m not just listing them because of length. It’s more an issue of density. For instance, Michael Bay’s Transformers films are incredibly long, yet no one is arguing that they deserve a slot on Sunday nights next to Game of Thrones. Beyond the fighting robots and the trials and tribulations of Shia LaBoeuf, there is nothing there that would warrant a long-form serialized narrative. Heat and The Godfather, among several other examples I’m not listing, could work in this format because they are rich with interesting characters, narratives, and they take place in a fascinating universe that has the potential to grow and grow. The premises of many of today’s critically-acclaimed shows would seem to be great fodder for film in a past era, yet the creators went to television because they knew that’s where they could really let their story grow. AMC’s Breaking Bad is very Godfather-like in its themes, and when it winds up after 16 more episodes it has the potential to be one of the great modern feats of storytelling. In an alternate universe, they well could be saying that about an epic film trilogy called Breaking Bad, but in this one it wound up on television. And that's awesome.

As films begin to lose this type of storytelling, the general scope of most movies has been shrinking for quite a while. There are still great movies coming out all the time; the difference is that they tend to focus on a single plot or high concept instead of a massive universe worth exploring. Honestly, the only modern examples of this “epic” filmmaking I’m referring to might be Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. I guarantee you I am blanking on a few, but that may be all that’s left. I don’t particularly care if this is hurting the medium or not, because I think that’s irrelevant. More and more, I don’t care if a story is coming from a movie or a television show, so long as it’s the right medium for that particular story. Perhaps moving the epic over to television is not a bad thing, but rather the natural thing. Television is where these writers can fully explore the worlds and characters in their heads, and whatever is best for the final product is best for entertainment in general.

Meanwhile, movies are doing just fine. Films like The Social Network (to name just one) are still telling great stories, and they aren’t winding up on television. The consensus greatest film of all time, Citizen Kane, could never be recreated in any medium that isn’t film. On the flip side, try fitting David Simon's The Wire (the consensus gold standard for serialization) into a manageable cinematic package. As much as television has evolved, it’s still an incredibly different beast. To declare that it is eclipsing film as the best mode of storytelling does a disservice to both media. They are great at different things, and we’re now living in a glorious age where artists have the resources to tell their story in exactly the form they think it should be told. That is nothing but a good thing.

With all the “television is ruining film” talk, it’s interesting to think that there are people who actually feel the opposite. Back in February, television critic Ryan McGee wrote a piece lamenting that this new, more serialized television has actually taken away the importance of “the episode.” Essentially, he feels that an unhealthy emphasis has been placed on creating great seasons or great overall series than great episodes of television. The thought that perhaps this new breed of television may be harming the land it’s so ferociously colonizing is certainly intriguing. I mostly disagree with McGee—it’s strange to blame great shows for the select few who don’t know how to do this sort of thing right—but there is something to his mentality. Cable shows have unquestionably been focusing more on the whole than creating great individual moments and/or episodes along the way. To use a very modern example: entire episodes of Game of Thrones are devoted to moving the metaphorical chess pieces. It’s still incredibly enthralling, but it all works best once we look back at it post-finale. You could say the same about a million other shows. I'm just too lazy to list them here.

It’s certainly strange to think that The Godfather films and Heat—two beloved works, though one more so than the other—may not exist as movies if they came around many years later. I’m ecstatic that we have them as is, of course, but I am certainly curious as to what they would each look like as a cable television series. (Note to television producers: this is not a call for you to reboot them.) It just speaks to how much each medium has changed, how they continue to change, and what everything will look like down the road as more and more content starts to go the way of the Internet and beyond. It’s all constantly evolving, and those that complain about the state of art, film and television are usually ignoring all that is great about the way things are. Television isn’t killing movies; it’s opening up a whole new world of opportunity. So long as the product is good, I don’t care what size screen I see it on. 

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