Nothing is quite as satisfying as seeing the book you’ve loved for years adapted to the big screen. Seeing the action play out, scene by scene, reminding you with every minute of just how good the book was and maybe even inspiring you to go back and read it again. Even when you know that the movie will be a complete flop, you still have to see it. That is where the problem lies. Your necessity for this movie, whether it be out of genuine hope or hopeless loyalty, is an opportunity for money to be made, a weakness for the film industry to target, their weapon: the four part trilogy.

Trilogies are not the only areas to be affected, however, all types of movies have been split from what could have been one good movie into two, even three, films. Splitting one film into multiple is not a new concept, but never before has it been so prevalent in big budget blockbusters, and with so little justification other than the maximization of profit. Film adaptions such as Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Hobbit, and now Divergent have made the decision to split one book into more than one movie.

Now this is not always a bad idea, take one look at the final book in the Harry Potter series and you will understand why David Yates, the director, thought it best to split it into two parts.  However, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was one of the rare occasions, if not the only one, when this decision seemed to benefit the viewer just as much as the studio producing the film. The book had enough content to make two good movies, and most likely too much content to make one good movie. The key difference is that the content of the book made the movie, instead of the movie making the content as it does with arguably all of the other films on the above list.

The film industry today seems to have taken greed to a new level, the producers of these movies know that they will succeed regardless of how good their movie is simply because of the title, so instead of forming a coherent plot (or even keeping the one from the book) many have branched off and wasted the potential for good. They may be entertaining, but these half-films are the signs of a worrisome and frankly annoying trend, one that, hopefully, will end before the fourth part.