TV or Movies?

INTRODUCTION

If I was to say you could only watch TV shows or movies for the rest of your life, what would your answer be? For me its movies and if this was 10 years ago I would believe you would also choose movies but now I see audiences gravitate towards TV shows more. With the rise of Netflix and binge watching giving us 12 hours of pure ecstasy and with the quality of these shows improving we see TV becoming more popular. However can TV shows replace movies? Let us look at two big point for TV that is always used against movies.

LONG FORM STORYTELLING

When it comes down to TV shows the main argument for it and against Movies is the writers have time to expand and develop their characters while movies averagely have 2 hours to do the same. However I see that as a weak argument. Let's take TV's greatest show Breaking Bad. It had 5 seasons, with season 1 having 7 episodes, 2-4 having 13 episodes and the final season having 16. And with the help of a website it calculated that fans spent 1 day, 23 hours and 32 minutes watching Walt's slow descent from humanity. Now let's compare that to Drive, a Nicolas Winding Refn film. A movie with similar themes of a slow descent from humanity.

Drive is 1 hour and 40 minutes long and just like Breaking Bad is slow and lets scenes ferment. With Breaking Bad having a budget of $3 million per episode and Drive only having $15 million for the whole movie, surely Breaking Bad is far greater than Drive? Well that's down to the audience but Drive tells the same character story Breaking Bad does. Sure both go their different ways and tell a characters humanity slowly fading differently but both achieve the same outcome. As the audience we get more back story for Walt which is needed to give him empathy and for us to route for him even when he does some despicable acts and with Ryan Gosling appropriately named Driver, his mysterious background is what attracts us to him. At first we see he drives robbers to their mark and makes the escape. But as the movie gradually shows us more we sympathies when we see his lighter side with Irene. His average apartment and having three jobs we know he doesn't earn a lot so we want him to succeed.

Both Walt and the Driver start on their own personal high ground, obviously Walt starts higher but they both have good guy morals however with circumstances intervening they both fall from their perch. At the end of Breaking Bad and Drive both get their ultimate due and we question who they really are. Leaving unanswered question about our character, the main one what happened next?

Long form storytelling is and will always be an advantage. More time with characters means we can understand their situation. However movies can achieve the same emotional outcome even with far less time. Films such as Taxi Driver and Inside Out achieve emotional levels that replicate those on TV. It's not about how much time you have, it's about how you use them.

CREATIVE FREEDOM

There is no doubt that movies are becoming very studio involved with whole departments of suits deciding what goes in and out the movie. Marvel, Warner Brothers and Disney all have department for their movie universes and whatever they say goes. But is that the same with TV shows?

There are some freedom barriers but not on the same scale. In many cases TV shows do have far greater freedom than movies, however, this is due to Movies watering down their content to make money while TV shows just need high ratings to be successful and the best way for that is controversy. TV shows that don't hold back on violence or politics are deemed better and more people watch them. I think this is because we want the truth when it comes to such agendas. The brutal nature of House of Cards shows us a dramatized workings of the White House but looking at today's American politics has become more real and more interesting.

However it depends on who you are in the industry, if you are a TV director there isn't much creative freedom because the show writers essentially run the whole thing and it's them that dictates the style and feel of an episode. On the other hand that is different to films where the director runs the show (sought of) while the writers don't get much say, an example would be Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, which had been written by Joel and Ethan Cohen.

In movies such as Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad and Fantastic Four it seems that the comic book genre is hit the worst with Studios intervening and that's due to comic book movies still being the hot property in Hollywood. Studios spend up to 200 million and need 1 billion to make it financially successful in their eyes. So these films must cater for every demographic to get the most for their buck. This plays no bearing in TV comic book shows, Netflix's Daredevil to CW's The Flash have been received with critical reception by fans and critics. Is it down to more freedom? It could be the case because Ant-Man though having average reviews and not deemed a bad movie is a bland and boring superhero film. With someone like Edgar Wright, Ant-Man would have had its identity and no doubt would have been a far superior movie but Edgar Wright left due to creativity conflicts and what did Marvel do next? They appointed a 'yes' man to take over.

I believe that TV does have more creative freedom to tell a story. Imagine Game of Thrones as a movie and how many cut backs would have been made or how many add-on to accommodate the biggest market at the moment China. For writers TV is where to be and for directors Movies is where to be but it all depends on who you are. A Chris Nolan movie would never be altered by the studio nor would a studio ever touch a Scorsese flick. In essence it's all about building a reputation.

QUALITY

Quality is what these two mediums will be judged on because no audience cares about backstage squabbles, all we want is a good product. And when it comes down to it Movies and TV shows both have the good and bad, and both have benefits and disadvantageous. Could I see Breaking Bad as a good movie, no, and could I see Mad Max: Fury Road as a TV show, absolutely not. Why? because they both understood their medium and stuck with the element that was given to them. Breaking Bad had the option to be one season or 10 seasons but the writers new when to stop and how long to take. The same with Mad Max, it new it had a limited run time so they made a fast paced simple movie and the atmosphere in the cinema cannot be replicated on TV. It's up to the audience to decide which is better but for me we should celebrate that at least there's something good to watch everyday.