From TV Screen to Movie Theaters

Movies and television have usually been enemies, like the Capulets and Monagues, or the Hatfields and McCoys.  Movies were America’s biggest entertainment industry until the 1950s, when television entered people’s homes and offered them entertainment without having to leave their abodes.  Movies countered by providing formats that TV couldn’t replicate, like wider screens and bigger budgets.  But TV’s accessibility couldn’t be beat; people went from seeing a movie nearly every week to going a couple of times a year.

Eventually movies decided that if you can’t beat TV, you could replicate it.  I haven’t identified the first movie based on a television show, but at some point the generation of kids raised on TV became movie studio executives, and suddenly big budget movies based on TV shows became ubiquitous (Car 54 Where Are You?  Seriously?).  That tradition is getting a 21^st century twist with the upcoming release of Veronica Mars, a movie made possible in part by fans contributing to Kickstarter.

Filmmakers have taken a variety of approaches when converting a television show into a movie.  Some have appropriated the title of a familiar show then completely ignored the original material.  The greatest offender in this category is also one of the most successful film franchises, the Mission Impossible series.  The show featured a group of individuals working as a team under the direction of mastermind Jim Phelps; the first movie was about a lone agent played by Tom Cruise single-handedly attempting to clear himself of treason, only to discover that the real culprit was [SPOILER!] Jim Phelps.  The movies are entertaining, but bear only a superficial relationship to the concept of the TV show.

Another example of a big budget movie that more or less re-wrote the central premise of the series it was based on was Wild Wild West, which turned Secret Service agent Jim West into an ex-slave played by Will Smith.  The movie played as a comedy, which is odd because the original show was an action-adventure series with comedic overtones [interestingly, two TV movies with the original cast also treated the source material as comedy, replacing villain Miguelito Loveless (who was played by dwarf Michael Dunn) with his “son” played by Paul Williams, who was just short].

An ingenious way to get past the lesser quality television shows being converted into movies is the parody route.  This was used to make The Brady Bunch movie tolerable and considerably improved the recent reboot of 21 Jump Street.  The film parody of Dragnet gave Dan Ackroyd one of the best vehicles in his career.  

Another way is to be faithful to the original, but pump it full of bigger stars and better effects.  This was successfully done with The Untouchables, but the extra money did nothing to improve the quality of Lost in Space.

Rare is the TV-based movie that improves on the source material, beyond merely spending more money.  The Addams Family movies were well-cast (I thought Christina Ricci deserved a supporting actress nomination for the second one) and cleverly written.  The Fugitive condensed the multi-year story of Doctor Richard Kimble into an exciting two hour movie.  The J. J. Abrams reboot of the Star Trek franchise has provided an interesting new take on iconic characters (Spock and Uhuru as a couple makes so much sense).

Then there are the plethora of films based on TV shows that are just bad, the reason for the reboot being creative bankruptcy and not the desire to do an homage.  Why anyone would want to see Car 54 Where Are You on the big screen defies explanation.  Lorne Michael produced one good movie from a Saturday Night Live sketch, The Blues Brothers, but since has created an unending stream of drek like Superstar, It’s Pat and The Ladies Man.

It is uncommon for TV shows to make a literal transition to the big screen; by the time a TV show has come to the end of its run, it usually is creatively exhausted.  The X-Files tried the impossible and made a feature movie in the middle of the series, which was modestly successful (the feature film made after the series had ended was a major snore).  Star Trek successfully transitioned to movies after decades of fans clamoring for a return of the TV series; the transition of The Next Generation to movies was less successful.

Perhaps the most artistically successful movie based on a TV show was Serenity, based on the late lamented Joss Whedon vehicle Firefly.  Whedon did the impossible (which he seems to do on a regular basis), creating a film that was intelligible to those un-initiated to the Firefly series but a fulfilling sequel that rewarded fans of the show.  Financially the film opened at number two at the box office on the last week of September 2005, but was out of the twenty within a month; apparently all the Firefly fans went on opening weekend then didn’t go back.  However the movie was Whedon’s first work as a film director, which helped get him the gig as director of The Avengers.

Now comes Veronica Mars, the brilliant, low-rated series created by Rob Thomas that rocketed Kristen Bell to stardom.  In a survey of the past ten years of TV at Television Without Pity, fans voted the character Veronica Mars as “Best Badass” which is pretty impressive when you consider Bell is 5’1” and weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet.  Season one was a masterpiece, with each self-contained episode working as a tile that together formed an incredible mosaic.  Seasons two and three were less successful (has any show set in high school ever successfully transitioned to college?) but still worth watching.

Can Veronica Mars justify its fan’s faith and be a box office hit?  We’ll know after the weekend of March 24^th, when the movie goes into wide release.  As a huge fan of the show, I hope so.  The season 3 DVD contained a mini-episode that Rob Thomas did as a pitch for a fourth season, which fast forwarded Veronica out of college and showed her as a neophyte agent with the FBI, and it was so good that I can’t believe the networked passed on it (wait a minute, network executives doing something stupid?  Of course I can believe it).  Apparently in the new incarnation Veronica has turned her back on law enforcement and the movie portrays her as a New York attorney, but old boyfriend Logan gets her to come home to Neptune when he needs her sleuthing skills.

I will continue to believe that most movies based on TV shows are a bad idea (Bewitched?  Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me?).  But if the Veronica Mars movie is comparable in quality to Serenity, it might be proof that there are exceptions to the rule.