Sometimes we see a trailer for a movie and see nothing but potential. Narratively speaking, we can see a lot from two minutes of footage to get us interested. Often, however, when we see the final product, we can’t help but feel underwhelmed. Sometimes there was too much story to tell to fit the run time, and therefore parts were left out. Perhaps the director had a grand vision for the perfect film, but the studio wanted something shorter. While seeing big-budget films in theaters is great, sometimes the stories are better suited in a smaller medium.
Lately, the miniseries has become a popular storytelling format. Afterall, the miniseries provides ways for a showrunner or director to tell a fuller story within a range of episodes to the extent that it leaves no questions or doubt. In addition, it’s a great way to adapt novels, such asthe great romance Normal People by Sally Rooney. The films on this list were chosen because they all had a wealth of potential beyond what fans saw. This isn’t to say that any of them are bad, just that the story potential was more extensive than the film medium could show. As such, here are eight films that would have made better miniseries.
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8 Dune
Warner Bros. Pictures
Most people seemed to love Denis Villeneuve’s first chapter to the sci-fi epic Dune. The journey of Paul Atreides is captivating and a feast for the eyes set to the symphony of Hans Zimmerman. It’s recently been nominated for 10 Oscars at the upcoming 2022 award ceremony, including Best Picture. However, many fans of the book felt that there was too many missing elements and weren’t feeling as satisfied from their viewing. The story structure felt off, and Villeneuve also left out essential aspects from Frank Herbert’s novel — an often occurring sin in book-to-film adaptations. To be fair, in an over-400-page book, not everything will fit into a two-hour runtime. This is why the novel would have been better adapted into a miniseries. This would have resolved the structural issues and allowed the director to include Herbert’s vision to its fullest potential. Villeneuve himself stated that he broke the story into two films because it was too complex to cover in one installment, with power in details that wouldn’t fit into a few hours.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
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7 The Hobbit
Photo Credit - WingNut Films, New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros. Pictures
The overall reception to The Hobbit trilogy, which started with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, was polarizing, to say the least. The idea to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic into three movies was an ambitious move, but many argue that Warner Bros. bit off more than they could chew as Peter Jackson’s second trip to Middle-earth didn’t quite live up to his first trilogy. With forced connections to the Lord of the Rings, heavy over-use of CGI, and an un-unique cast too large to follow, this unexpected journey bogged itself down unnecessarily and gave up much of what made its predecessor great.
6 The Last Samurai
Photo Credit - Radar Pictures, The Bedford Falls Company, Cruise/Wagner Productions
The Last Samurai in 2003 showed Tom Cruise portraying a Civil War veteran that gets taken captive in Japan by samurai. It’s not a story based on a book or comic and isn’t overly long for an epic. It’s not a bad film either. It was given rave reviews and earned over $400 million worldwide, which wasn’t a small achievement in the early 2000s. It was also nominated for four Academy Awards. In short, it’s a great story, but there is a lot of potential that wasn’t fully realized.
The film was set during a time of Westernization, but the subject was glossed over. Exploring it as part of an episodic miniseries would only enrich the story. The show format would also allow the story to further explore the central conflict between the four core groups in the film: the American military, the samurai, the Japanese Imperial Army, and the Empire of Japan. Doing so would have provided much more room for character-driven storylines. The series would have all the potential to be an epic historical retelling on a larger scale and would fit perfectly on HBO as a period drama.
5 Underworld
Lakeshore Entertainment
One could argue that this franchise has overstayed its welcome. 2003’s Underworld was a cultural predecessor of the werewolf and vampire rivalry that fans would see reincarnated multiple times over the years that followed. It brought everything needed to be great: an ancient war packed with lore and lineage, two distinct factions, unique characters, and a killer aesthetic. However, the latter films failed to add much to the established story and came off too much like the studios forcing out sequels for money, causing the story we were introduced too to fall away into irrelevancy.
Still, there is a lot of great story opportunities in this franchise. A full-length series can be made from the first three films material alone, but with a broad lineage on two sides, spin-off stories would be great as well, much like the Star Wars spin-offs. In addition, it would be interesting to see the vampire and werewolves factions be expanded in greater detail and allow fans to see things from both perspectives, something they haven’t ever gotten much of in five films.
4 IT
Photo Credit - New Line Cinema, Double Dream, Vertigo Entertainment, Rideback
With a great first film and a somewhat less so sequel, Andy Muschietti more or less hit the nail on the head with IT, his modern retelling of Stephen King’s most iconic stories. The director was right to put the over 1000-page novel into two films, but still, a lot got cut out for the sake of time. Bill had a wife in the novel, and her role would become integral to the plot in the second half. There was also more of Mike Hanlan than we saw, as well as an explanation as to how everyone could just leave Derry and become wildly successful and yet have no kids. The supernatural explanation to this is never elaborated on or acknowledged. In the cases of the films and the 90s miniseries, there is a lot that both got right and a lot that they each got wrong. Both made cuts that would have otherwise deepened the story. As successful as both may have been, King’s story would have done better as a miniseries as it would have given more to the characters, including Pennywise, The Dancing Clown. It would have added more depth and allowed Muschietti to further enrich the material he came up with on his own, like Richie’s sexuality or Bill’s connection to the skateboard kid in IT: Chapter 2.
3 30 Days of Night
Photo Credit - Columbia Pictures, Dark Horse Entertainment, Ghost House Pictures
30 Days of Night is based on the comic book story by Steve Niles and is three issues long. With that, the makers of the 2007 film were probably able to include everything from the pages onto the screen. Even still, a story of humans trying to survive a vampire invasion for an entire month could be a horrifying series. Imagine if Mike Flanagan of Haunting of Hill House adapted this into a 13-episode Netflix tale. The series could follow the various survivors and allow the audience to learn about them before the initial attack and give everyone time to breathe and get to know them before they are randomly picked off. It would also give more insight into the human struggles of hiding, starvation, exhaustion, running, and being in constant fear for a month. Fans could also learn more about the undead killers as well. It was clear from the film that there is more to their species than hunting and feeding. As much as the film may or may not have covered from the comics, there was more of a story in the pale creatures that wasn’t seen. A series would also have the chance to solve the whitewashing issue from the film as some characters were supposed to be Inuit, given the Alaskan setting.
2 Ender’s Game
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is a favorite on plenty of people’s lists. The 1985 novel has for a long time been a staple on school and military reading lists — and for good reason, too. The story following Andrew “Ender” Wiggin as a student at the International Fleet’s Battle School was adapted to film in 2013, granting the wishes of thousands of fans of the book. Unfortunately, it became one of an endless list of adaptations that failed to live up to the hype and success of its source material.
Ender’s Game was released to mediocre reviews and largely underperforming at the box office. Any plans thereafter to adapt the book’s sequels were effectively squashed as well. The book is only about 384 pages and full of enough material for a miniseries without excluding anything from the book and also providing enough room for necessary in-depth storytelling. Studios could go further than a miniseries if they wanted as the novel covers years. The sequel novels offer enough material for a full-length series, and the time span of Enders Game would allow the child actors to age naturally.
1 Eternals
Eternals was perhaps the most ambitious Marvel project to date, but the film tried to reach for more than it could grasp. There was a rich focus on mythology and concepts, and the very sizable cast each had their own backstories and viewpoints. All of this outgrew the movie’s runtime of just under 3-hours. If Marvel had instead expanded the story into a Disney+ miniseries — which is has done successfully for WandaVision and Hawkeye — all these elements would have had plenty of time and space to breathe. Indeed, the past year’s catalog superhero-based shows has already been a huge success for the streamer, with MCU products being nominated for Emmy Awards for the first time. A reformatting to TV would have allowed Eternals to flesh out everything it wanted to do and would have had more chance of success. Unfortunately, its grand vision being packed into the film format may have been what divided critics, making this a missed opportunity. With a sequel being teased in the end credits scene, perhaps they will have a chance to rectify this mistake in the future?
