Tuesday, May 09, 2006

24: The Movie? Seems like a Bad Idea to me.

There have been rumors about the making of a 24 movie for quite some time, but now Kiefer Sutherland has confirmed that one is in the planning stages. I for one think this is a bad idea, simply because of implementation.

One of two things are going to happen:

a) they film 90-120 minutes of real-time action

or

b) they condense a whole day into about 2 hours.


If you've ever watched 24, you know that while a lot of stuff takes place in a day, each episode or two when taken as a unit contains a lot less story and action, as transportation is an important part of the formula, so option a doesn't seem like it would work well given those constraints.

So that leaves us with option b, which again is problematic, as the premise of the show is 24 hours IN REAL TIME which would totally defeat the idea of it being a movie. It is a similar premise to releasing a live album that was in fact entirely recorded at a studio over the course of three weeks. The gimmick is what makes the drama, it is as simple as that. I mean, even 2kGames got the gist of this seemingly obvious point when it made the game.

Either way, it seems that a movie would be far less successful than the television show as a vehicle for the characters involved, and I wish that the producers and actors involved could see that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Totally agree with you. The movie is a bad idea. Unless it's 12 2-hour parts and I don't think I'm willing to fork over that much cash for something I'm currently getting for free.

MC said...

My other concern is the fact that it takes about 9-10 months to film a series of it, and where are they going to find the time to do this movie.