Mistborn movie runtime

[Blue-phoenix186]

So I just got back from watching project hail Mary for those who don’t know it’s a new movie adapting a sci-fi book it was a good movie, but I felt like it was a little rushed it was two hours and 30 minutes and I noticed that the final empire is a decent amount longer than the project Hail Mary book  so does this mean they’re gonna rush the final empire movie? Or will they give it a longer run time? Like three hours the problem with that is I. And other fans. Would definitely go watch a three hour mistborn movie but the average person probably won’t I don’t know. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Edited April 1 by Blue-phoenix186

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, Blue-phoenix186 said:

So I just got back from watching project hail Mary for those who don’t know it’s a new movie adapting a sci-fi book it was a good movie, but I felt like it was a little rushed it was two hours and 30 minutes and I noticed that the final empire is a decent amount longer than the project Hail Mary book  so does this mean they’re gonna rush the final empire movie? Or will they give it a longer run time? Like three hours the problem with that is I. And other fans. Would definitely go watch a three hour mistborn movie but the average person probably won’t I don’t know. Does anyone have any thoughts?

It's less than 50 pages difference (PHM is 496 pages, TFE is 541), but I would bet some of the subplot will be lost. There are going to be a lot of changes anyway (Brandon's writing the script, so they are his changes, but changes none-the-less). 

Spoiler

Quote

Sophia

You mentioned previously that you regret making Vin the only woman in Kelsier's crew. Is that something you're planning to change in the Mistborn screenplay?

Brandon Sanderson

It is; I actually already did it. Both Dox and Ham are female in the screenplay. And actually, Ham in particular works really well as a woman, because one of the things that I wanted to do was play with Vin's conceptions of how a thieving crew works, because she worked in bad ones, and not understanding how a great team can work. So I have a great scene where she misinterprets everybody's job in the crew from glancing at them, making a quick judgement, and saying "Well this person's this, this person's this." And the only one she gets right is Spook. It works so well.

Like, in the book, I can take pages and pages to show you, "This is how this crew is different from ones you might have read and ones that Vin has been part of." And in this, the movie, you need to have scenes do a lot of heavy duty lifting, multiple things at the same time. So in this scene, Vin can do that, and then we understand her judgement of why she said all these things, and then Kelsier can be like, "No. That right there is our Thug," pointing at Dockson [Ham], who is now a shorter woman. And with the powers of Allomancy, doesn't matter. And it becomes kind of a big moment, both for the audience and for Vin to understand "things are different here."

I do have to warn you, there isn't a lot of time in the screenplay for the crew. If I'm gonna do this as a film... Which it's not set in stone; it's possible that I'll move to a show. But right now, what I'm planning is: film, television show for Well of Ascension, film. Which means that mostly in the first film, it is focused on Vin, Kelsier, Sazed, and Elend. That's gotta be the core of our film. With Shan as an antagonist. And that's the movie. And I can't spend as much time with each of the crew members, like I did. But what we can do is, we can then move into Well of Ascension as a show, and with that being a show really show the crew and the things they're doing. And kind of write a heist with the crew where the crew is trying to heist keeping the kingdom from collapsing. A thieving crew has been put in charge of a city; let's see if they can keep this empire going. And I think that will work really well in television show format. And that's where we can get into some the things with OreSeur and TenSoon and character arcs for some of the crew members, really get to know Ham and Breeze and everybody.

That's the big cost by doing it in a film. That's the thing you're gonna have to understand, as it becomes really Vin and Kelsier's story. And I think it's gonna work. I think it is great. But if it doesn't, we do have the option of just doing a television show. Which I know a lot of you would rather see; I just see Mistborn as a film. I've always seen it as a feature film. So I'm hoping I can make it work.

Footnote: Brandon appears to misspeak, labeling Dockson as the Thug instead of Ham.
YouTube Livestream 10 (June 18, 2020)

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

So, one thing I think I did wrong in the books was not having more allomancer guards and soldiers who were women. I don't think our same gender norms would be the case on Scadrial.

One of the [screenplay] revisions is this: Shan is no longer Elend's fiance, but his sister. Their father has left on business to the outer domninances, and so Shan is making a play to secure the heirship, trying to prove she is more bold and strong than her brother. This is what gives the team an opening, and why they're striking now with the heist, as in this version, House Venture maintains the city policing and has access to the atium stash.

The plan is to put a few Allomancers (including Ham) into the Venture house guard, and exploit Shan's desire to prove herself by creating chaos in the city that she'll think she needs to put down with decisive action. That will involve her pulling out the atium stash, which will in turn let the team know where to go to rob them.

It streamlines the book's story in some elegant ways to do this. Shan becomes the primary "mark" of the book, in many ways. It also lets me explain a little more succinctly what various members of the crew are doing in the background while we focus on Vin, who is to get close to Shan as a confidant--which is why she's sent to the parties. And why Shan being a brat to her isn't just annoying, it means a major part of the plan isn't yet in place.

It explains way better, in my opinion, why Shan would act against Elend. It's all clicking into place as I move pieces around. That said, I understand those who want a Television show. I could see going that way, perhaps.

Trouble is, nobody in streaming needs a big fantasy property. Anywhere I go right now, I'd be in a distant second or third place to Tolkien, WoT, Witcher, or Kingkiller. The offers I've gotten have been for a fraction of the budget of those shows--since everyone has already spent big money on their big fantasy show, and isn't really interested in another.

I'm confident feature is the place I want Mistborn; but even if I weren't, I'm not thrilled by the idea of being lost on Netflix as their "other" fantasy show.

Rapharasium

I don't know if I'm being negative, but these changes really worry and disappoint me. I really like Era 1 as it is, and all this change in the dynamics of society and the plot as too drastic.

Brandon Sanderson

This isn't negative; I understand this response, and think it's valid.

At the same time, I'm of the personal philosophy that a film should generally be a different beast than a book--a book can lean into the little intricacies of a story, while a film should be a bold but unified statement.

Nothing will happen to the books; those will remain the same. But if I want this film to work as a film, I believe I need to be willing to re-imagine parts of the story.

Mycroft_canner

With Elend having a sister does that mean you don’t need the Zane plot anymore?

Brandon Sanderson

That's from the second book--so it would be in the television show, and we'd likely still do it.

DataLoreHD

prove she is more bold and strong than her brother

Which brother?It certainly could not be Elend, right? Elend had no Allomancy powers (before he ate the lerasium in WoA), so Straff despised Elend and thought him too weak.And Zane was a bastard and also mad dog.If Shan was Straff's legitimate daughter, then her succession was already 100% secure. She wouldn't need to prove anything to anybody.

Brandon Sanderson

It will be Elend, but it's more that this is the first time that Shan gets to be on her own, leading by herself, and wants to show off for the Lord Ruler. Also, there's the question of whether the male heir--though inferior in this case--might get the nod for sexism reasons. I think it's going to work just fine, but I'll admit, it's getting a little rough to discuss all these details on a thread like this--I can't answer everyone's questions, I'm afraid. I just wanted to indicate the kinds of changes I'm looking at making.

Whatever I do will go through my standard "show it to tons of beta readers and get feedback" process, so I should be able to catch problems and fix them.

meh84f

The bit about atium is a bit confusing. The Ventures are going to have the Atium stash? Not the stash that we don’t find until the end I’m assuming? So it’ll be a stash but much smaller than expected?

Brandon Sanderson

So, I'm not sure I can explain it all in this, but one big change I wished I'd made from the start of Mistborn is making atium usable by all Allomancers. As I've gotten further in the cosmere, using a god metal as just for Mistborn has felt off.

So the lore change for the films will mean any Allomancer can use atium. This, in turn, lets House Venture have access to the LR's atium as a "Control the city" last resort. They keep a task force of allomancers for this purpose--which Ham can join, in anticipation of being able to steal it once Shan accesses it. (They don't know that House Venture is only given about a hundred beads of atium, not access to the full mythical cache, which will be reserved for the third movie.)

Makes the worldbuilding and storytelling more elegant, I've found, in the film. And it fits better with more "modern" cosmere fundamentals as have developed over the last decade. I think I'd make this change even if we moved to a television show and long form.

The Lord Ruler is still the "big bad" but Shan and the Inquisitors both get a little more screen time. (Actually, about the same as in the books--it's just that other parts are being trimmed, making them more front-and-center.)

Phantine

Based on that, you're also streamlining away the Sign of Sixteen if it gets a sequel? To be honest, that didn't really work for me in the novel anyway.

Brandon Sanderson

It's one of my least favorite parts of the trilogy. It (along with Vin drawing upon the mists in book one) are big changes I'm hoping to make to fix weaker sections of the continuity.

General Reddit 2020 (June 22, 2020)

etc.

 

Edited April 1 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Returned he/him]

I think that it's best to view movie versions of books as adaptations rather than translations: movies are different from books, and so changes should be expected. Some things that work in a book won't translate well to a movie, and movies allow some things that books don't. Even when there are strong efforts to preserve what the book version is, I find it often leads to the rushed/overcrowded feeling the OP describes. A lot also depends on the director, who will modify and interpret the script beyond what Sanderson might intend for it.

So while I'm a purist at heart I recognize that a super-faithful movie adaptation of a book is likely to be a "worse" movie in many ways than a competent adaptation would be. Run time is one of the biggest considerations with this. I don't think that The Final Empire could be faithfully adapted in less than six hours or so at minimum, which is a set of movies or a miniseries (though I guess miniseries are kind of out of fashion at this point...). I'd wager that the run time will not be longer than two and a half hours (and probably not even that long). That's still enough time to tell a great story, and enough for the essence of the book to shine.

We're going to lose a lot of atmospheric scenes, a moderate amount of character depth, and the general pacing of the novel. Especially with how Sanderson's writing has evolved since writing The Final Empire I expect to lose a lot of nuance about the crew, a lot of individual balls (I predict we'll see two and a half), and gain a more rushed/crowded feeling on the scenes which remain while also being a bit more blunt and formulaic about how those scenes develop and connect with each other. I'm hopeful that it will come out well and satisfy me as a fan (it does happen, sometimes), but I'm also aware that this is a commercial project with a lot of pieces and is in a medium and environment with which Sanderson is relatively inexperienced.

[Schizoposting]

The point of an adaptation is to adapt the source material to a new medium—not to make a one-to-one copy. Naturally, this necessitates making substantial changes. In the case of Mistborn, this will mean streamlining and condensing the story. 

8 hours ago, Treamayne said:

It's less than 50 pages difference (PHM is 496 pages, TFE is 541), but I would bet some of the subplot will be lost. There are going to be a lot of changes anyway (Brandon's writing the script, so they are his changes, but changes none-the-less). 

  Reveal hidden contents

etc.

 

I don't think that page count is a very useful metric here, since the density of text, per page, may be different for different books—wordcount does a much better job of comparing the length of texts.

3 hours ago, Returned said:

We're going to lose a lot of atmospheric scenes, a moderate amount of character depth, and the general pacing of the novel. Especially with how Sanderson's writing has evolved since writing The Final Empire I expect to lose a lot of nuance about the crew, a lot of individual balls (I predict we'll see two and a half), and gain a more rushed/crowded feeling on the scenes which remain while also being a bit more blunt and formulaic about how those scenes develop and connect with each other. I'm hopeful that it will come out well and satisfy me as a fan (it does happen, sometimes), but I'm also aware that this is a commercial project with a lot of pieces and is in a medium and environment with which Sanderson is relatively inexperienced.

This will only be a problem if the screenplay is too faithful to the original—the solution is to change the story so that it works effectively as a film. Given Brandon's philosophy towards adaptations, this is presumably what we'll see. Furthermore, since Apple is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into this, they're almost certainly going to put in the effort to make a good film. Worst comes to worst, it'll be a mediocre Marvel-style blockbuster—they're not going to release something actively bad.

[Returned he/him]

1 hour ago, Schizoposting said:

This will only be a problem if the screenplay is too faithful to the original—the solution is to change the story so that it works effectively as a film. Given Brandon's philosophy towards adaptations, this is presumably what we'll see. Furthermore, since Apple is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into this, they're almost certainly going to put in the effort to make a good film. Worst comes to worst, it'll be a mediocre Marvel-style blockbuster—they're not going to release something actively bad.

That must be why the 1984 Dune movie is one of the most respected and beloved adaptations of all time. Same for the new Wuthering Heights. Anyone here remember the Sci Fi channel's Earthsea adaptation and its towering awesomeness, faithful and divergent in all the right places? Jumping media, the E.T. video game changed all the details of the movie and was wildly popular and well-regarded. 

All sarcasm aside, people rarely set out to make a bad film. People rarely set out to make a bad adaptation. Alas, studios release dud movies every year, and Apple has released some widely disliked and/or unsuccessful movies. As far as I know, Sanderson has never written a movie before, adaptation or otherwise; I doubt he'll be directing (or even would want to). It certainly seems like all the elements for success are present, which is promising. But there are lots of ways a film adaptation project can go poorly, for all sorts of reasons and with a wide array of possible impacts on the final product. A hollow action movie featuring the word "allomancy" but little to none of what made the book so special and well-regarded would be deeply disappointing for me, no matter how much money it might gross. Even if it turns out to be a good enough movie it wouldn't necessarily be a good version of The Final Empire, or Mistborn more generally. That's what worries me, though I'm definitely more excited and optimistic than nervous and pessimistic.

Edited April 1 by Returned

[Schizoposting]

1 hour ago, Returned said:

That must be why the 1984 Dune movie is one of the most respected and beloved adaptations of all time. Same for the new Wuthering Heights. Anyone here remember the Sci Fi channel's Earthsea adaptation and its towering awesomeness, faithful and divergent in all the right places? Jumping media, the E.T. video game changed all the details of the movie and was wildly popular and well-regarded. 

I never understood the desire that people have for an adaptation to correspond perfectly to the source material—I would rather have an unfaithful adaptation that's a good film, than an adaptation that suffers because it sticks too closely to the original. For every adaption that made too many (bad) deviations, there's an adaptation that doesn't make enough changes (like Watchmen). The way that Mistborn is written, it will require substantial reworking to work as a film at all—it's simply too long and complex for a direct scene to scene adaptation. 

2 hours ago, Returned said:

All sarcasm aside, people rarely set out to make a bad film. People rarely set out to make a bad adaptation. Alas, studios release dud movies every year, and Apple has released some widely disliked and/or unsuccessful movies. As far as I know, Sanderson has never written a movie before, adaptation or otherwise; I doubt he'll be directing (or even would want to). It certainly seems like all the elements for success are present, which is promising. But there are lots of ways a film adaptation project can go poorly, for all sorts of reasons and with a wide array of possible impacts on the final product. A hollow action movie featuring the word "allomancy" but little to none of what made the book so special and well-regarded would be deeply disappointing for me, no matter how much money it might gross. Even if it turns out to be a good enough movie it wouldn't necessarily be a good version of The Final Empire, or Mistborn more generally. That's what worries me, though I'm definitely more excited and optimistic than nervous and pessimistic.

I disagree—many blockbuster films are intentionally meant to be as bland and anodyne as possible, to appeal the lowest common denominator. Films like A Minecraft Movie were clearly never intended to be anything more than mediocre. In fact, it's so unusual for studios to focus on actually creating good films, that the ones who do, like A24, become famous for it. 

In Apple's case, it has access to many talented people, who are perfectly capable of making a good film—it's not some esoteric art. While it's by no means guaranteed, there's no reason to believe that they don't have what it takes to make the adaption work. Especially given Brandon's involvement, which will ensure that it's faithful to his vision, at least.

As for his screenplay, while Brandon's not a professional screenwriter, he has written previous screenplays, and his skills as an author presumably carry over to screenwriting, at least to some extent. And, while I obviously don't know him personally, he seems to be genuinely humble and easy to work with, so I think that he'll be able to take criticism when necessary. 

[Returned he/him]

13 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

I never understood the desire that people have for an adaptation to correspond perfectly to the source material—I would rather have an unfaithful adaptation that's a good film, than an adaptation that suffers because it sticks too closely to the original. For every adaption that made too many (bad) deviations, there's an adaptation that doesn't make enough changes (like Watchmen). The way that Mistborn is written, it will require substantial reworking to work as a film at all—it's simply too long and complex for a direct scene to scene adaptation. 

It's not that I have some need for an adaptation to be ultra-faithful to the source material. It's that the book is already very, very good (in my personal opinion), and so substantial changes run a strong risk of losing or blunting some of the things that made it good. There is more downside potential. I've also seen terrible books adapted into great shows and movies, but when the source isn't so good then changes are more likely to be positive. I, too, would prefer a good film to a bad one, but I want a good Final Empire movie (since that's what they're saying they intend to make). A movie that is good enough in its own right but loses most of what made the source material special might as well be an independent property and not an adaptation at all. If TFE is unfilmable, then don't try to film it. If you really want, you could make something else in the Mistborn setting which is filmable without dragging Vin's story into it. Each era 2 book seems very well suited for movies , for example.

That's why the run time is such an important component. It's not realistic to fit the whole book into two hours, but if the movie is not going to be longer than that, what will be cut out, and what impact will it have? We can easily lose a couple of ball scenes, I think. Cutting most of the opening section, showing Vin's life before meeting Kelsier, could probably be made to work but also thins Vin's character quite a bit. Cutting Marsh, Spook, Docks, and Ham would be more problematic. Cutting Sazed out would be far worse. Sanderson writing the screenplay is extremely encouraging (he has a deeper understanding of the source material than anyone else), so we're less likely to lose something that is core to what the story is. But he's not at the helm of the project, many if not most decisions will be out of his hands, adaptations can be badly done, movies can be bad, and we're hoping for a six-hour on-screen story to be stuffed into a two-hour movie.

There's no reason to panic or to assume that the final product will be bad, but neither is there any guarantee of excellence or even mediocre quality. There is valid reason for people to be concerned that a book they love will be translated into a movie they don't. Insisting that the movie will be good and satisfying to fans because of a bland assertion that studios don't make high-budget, bad movies which flop isn't very persuasive.

Edited April 2 by Returned

[Schizoposting]

3 hours ago, Returned said:

It's not that I have some need for an adaptation to be ultra-faithful to the source material. It's that the book is already very, very good (in my personal opinion), and so substantial changes run a strong risk of losing or blunting some of the things that made it good. There is more downside potential. I've also seen terrible books adapted into great shows and movies, but when the source isn't so good then changes are more likely to be positive. I, too, would prefer a good film to a bad one, but I want a good Final Empire movie (since that's what they're saying they intend to make). A movie that is good enough in its own right but loses most of what made the source material special might as well be an independent property and not an adaptation at all. If TFE is unfilmable, then don't try to film it. If you really want, you could make something else in the Mistborn setting which is filmable without dragging Vin's story into it. Each era 2 book seems very well suited for movies , for example.

I think that we should distinguish between the essence of a story, and its appearance—Eyes Wide Shut, for instance, is a very faithful adaptation of Dream Story, despite it completely changing the setting. Conversely, Starship Trooper accurately follows the details of the story, only for it to turn it into a satire of the original. In other words, what matters is that the spirit of the story is preserved, not the exact details. 

The fact that there will be only 2-3 hours to tell a story longer than Dune (which took 2 films to adapt), necessitates that preserving said essence will likely involve cutting and or changing many of the details—otherwise the former will come at the expense of the latter. To me, at least, what matters is that it's the same story at heart, not whether or not Shan Elariel is Elend's sister or Fiancée. 

3 hours ago, Returned said:

That's why the run time is such an important component. It's not realistic to fit the whole book into two hours, but if the movie is not going to be longer than that, what will be cut out, and what impact will it have? We can easily lose a couple of ball scenes, I think. Cutting most of the opening section, showing Vin's life before meeting Kelsier, could probably be made to work but also thins Vin's character quite a bit. Cutting Marsh, Spook, Docks, and Ham would be more problematic. Cutting Sazed out would be far worse. Sanderson writing the screenplay is extremely encouraging (he has a deeper understanding of the source material than anyone else), so we're less likely to lose something that is core to what the story is. But he's not at the helm of the project, many if not most decisions will be out of his hands, adaptations can be badly done, movies can be bad, and we're hoping for a six-hour on-screen story to be stuffed into a two-hour movie.

You're thinking too linearly here: the way to condense the story isn't to cut out large sections—it's to rewrite the story from scratch, to be more efficient, and cover all the necessary details, while leaving out anything superfluous. I'm not a writer, so I don't exactly know how this would look like, but Brandon has talked about how a script that didn't include any of the original scenes (except the balcony one), worked better than one that was more direct. And ultimately, many plotlines and characters are completely unnecessary to the broader story, like half of the crew. So, they can easily be simplified or cut out entirely. 

3 hours ago, Returned said:

There's no reason to panic or to assume that the final product will be bad, but neither is there any guarantee of excellence or even mediocre quality. There is valid reason for people to be concerned that a book they love will be translated into a movie they don't. Insisting that the movie will be good and satisfying to fans because of a bland assertion that studios don't make high-budget, bad movies which flop isn't very persuasive.

"Guarantee" may be too strong of a word, but failure is certainly unlikely—box office bombs are the exception, not the rule, otherwise nobody would be making films. And often times, films fail for reasons other than quality. Even if fans end up being disappointed, it's difficult to imagine the film being anything less than competently made. I even think that there's a substantial chance that the adaptation can overcome some of the issues of the original, making it an improvement.