Why The Justice League Should Be a Two Part Film It's a trend that we've seen steadily growing within the film industry. Why make my audience pay $10 once for single movie when I can cut the film in half and charge them $10 twice? It can either be described as marketing genius or a blatant attempt to snatch money from our pockets. But either way, one cannot argue with the results.
When the
Harry Potter and
Twilight franchises did this with their final installments they each put two films within the top 100 highest grossing films of all time earning roughly $2.2 and $1.5 billion at the global box office respectively. Even though
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End do not contain Part 1 and Part 2 in their titles, one could argue that they followed the same pattern: they told one continuous story and ended on a cliffhanger. Both films sit within the top 20 highest grossing films producing roundabout 2 billion in global box office dollars. The most recent example is that of
The Hobbit Trilogy. Whereas few think that this story could have been told successfully in one movie, many more criticized the decision to turn Tolkien's shortest novel into a three-part series.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey did quite well for itself reaching just over $1 billion at the box office globally. No doubt the next installments will perform comparably.
The lucrativeness of this method cannot be questioned, but what are the other benefits? Well the most obvious advantage is the extra room for plot. Even though it could be argued as being over indulgent to fans of the source material, having more time for character development and exposition can help bolster a movie. No prospective film could benefit more from this attribute than the inevitable Justice League film adaptation. I say inevitable because this film is all but announced given the obvious direction that WB/DC is headed. And with recent developments, it may turn out that the
Batman vs. Superman title is just a smokescreen for
The Justice League being released in 2015. Hey, a guy can dream right?
No matter when it is released, making
The Justice League a two part film would allow for the inclusion of more heroes because there would be ample time to introduce these characters without a preceding solo movie. Hypothetically, the heroes could spend the first installment fighting their own minor skirmishes separately (with the possibility of a cool team up being thrown in) before deciding to unite near the conclusion. Then,
Justice League Part 2 can start right away with 160 minutes of the JLA kicking butt and taking names without having to worry about any exposition. Imagine the last 30 minutes of
The Avengers stretched over an entire film. That can be achieved by making a two-part Justice League film. There is plenty of source material to choose from so as long as it is well written, separating the story into two films should not be redundant and tiresome.
I would speculate as to what the plot of a two-part Justice League movie would be, but frankly I'm not a fan fiction writer and I'm sure many of you have better ideas. Please let me know what you think. Thanks for reading and thumbs up if you liked the article.