What is the difference between TV and a Good Movie?

[Chr1]

Most TV series are made in the same high definition as films (both audio and video) nowadays tho. Most series these days are are as high def and high budget as some blockbusters.

It's really more about the content and personal taste imho. I think we're conflating technical quality, with the actual artistic content.
I think it happens here a lot with music too.

The first one is objective. The second is clearly more subjective and a matter of taste.
Again, my 2c.

 

[Chr1]

PS. My recommendations for good series...

For gritty realism: Deadwood and The Wire.
(I'd bet Tarantino would rate these.)

For escapism/sci-fi: Love, Death and Robots (Netflix), Severance.

Plus : Shout out for the free streaming service Kanopy out of Australia. Just need a library card or college login. Top drawer for a diverse range of stuff.
Plus free.
Yowsa.

 

[Snarfie]

Did watch Wednesday on Netflix, always been my favorite Addams Family character since the old movies. Wondered what became of here and this wasn’t disappointing, especially with actors in dark funny roles like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Joanna Lumley as Grandma, who made her fortune as an undertaker buying up the graveyards. The Season 2 opener really lingers. Wednesday vs. a serial killer, with help from Thing, Dark humor done right. Over the top, bit of Tarantino-style. Priceless.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

Sturgoen's Law: "90 percent of everything is crap."

There are some great TV series, the problem with that medium is that once a show becomes successful, there's pressure to keep making episodes, even after the main writing/conceptual talent has moved on and been replaced with second-rate writers who can follow the formula but provide nothing interesting or new. I often lose interest in an otherwise good series after a few seasons for this reason. (c.f Mad Men, Downton Abbey, et. al.)

A good example is "Better Call Saul" where the main writer (Vince Gilligan) left in the middle of the third season, after which the series plodded along for a few years until he returned to finish the story in season 6.

Individual films don't have this problem, although "franchise" movies with sequels have it in spades. A good story should have a beginning, middle, and an end - whether it's a 2 hour movie or a 16-part TV series is not really the issue, it's the open-endedness of TV/sequels that makes for formulaic pablum.

BTW, my take is that Tarentino is one of the biggest wastes of talent in all of film making. A brilliant director with incredible talent who churns out well-crafted crap.

 

[Chagall]

Season of a TV show has the same budget as a movie, so it's no wonder they look and feel like a 8-hour long movie. Depending on how complex the story and characters are, the long format works in its favor. Importantly, they end because the story is done - no need to drag it out. Examples: Chernobyl, Queen’s Gambit, Arcane, Utopia and Andor.

What Tarantino is alluding to is that many shows never end. They go on and on for seven or eight seasons adding new charecters and plots and turning them into soup operas like Yellowstone, Peaky blinders and Stranger things. If these shows had been planned as two or three seasons with a clear beginning, middle, and end, they would have worked much better, instead of having one strong season followed by weaker repetitions.

 

[Timcognito]

Season of a TV show has the same budget as a movie, so it's no wonder they look and feel like a 8-hour long movie. Depending on how complex the story and characters are, the long format works in its favor. Importantly, they end because the story is done - no need to drag it out. Examples: Chernobyl, Queen’s Gambit, Arcane, Utopia and Andor.

What Tarantino is alluding to is that many shows never end. They go on and on for seven or eight seasons adding new charecters and plots and turning them into soup operas like Yellowstone, Peaky blinders and Stranger things. If these shows had been planned as two or three seasons with a clear beginning, middle, and end, they would have worked much better, instead of having one strong season followed by weaker repetitions.

Agree, in a multi-year series the journey starts but never ends, characters rarely die, plot gets stale, non existent and predictable. Another good one was the mini-series Ripley with many plot twists, new characters and unpredictable ending.

Ripley (TV Mini Series 2024) ⭐ 8.1 | Crime, Drama, Thriller

1h | TV-MA

www.imdb.com

 

[Chr1]

Loved Ripley. Awesome moody B&W cinematography.

 

[Philbo King]

Tarantino nails what I so dislike about new TV series, even when they are well acted:

1. No ads
2. Volume not deafening
3. No people around me doing random jabber
4. No 13 dollar popcorn

Obviously, going out to the movies is now an incredibly rare event for me.

 

[rgpit]

I'm still waiting for him to make a good western...

Django Unchained

 

[Multicore]

Agree with QT and Amir here. I said the same about The Wire and Breaking Bad back when they were on. I got bored. Some time in season 2 I just started to seem like a soap and eventually I lost the motivation. No matter how novel, well written, acted, shot, edited, cinematic it is, a soap's a soap

The difference is that a movie or a TV miniseries carries you to its dramatic destination while a soap has no destination.

An exception, I suppose, is Twin Peaks which was functionally a soap going nowhere and was great.

An interesting example, the first season of House of Cards with Ian Richardson was a 4-part British political thriller miniseries and is one of the best TV dramas I can remember. When Netflix remade it with Spacey I was excited to watch it but about half way through the first season I started to get that feeling: it's going nowhere. Have they turned it into another bloody soap? And so it was. There was no dramatic destination.

Alternatively I am down with good episode TV dramas that begin and wrap up a story usually in one episode, accompanied perhaps by character and relationship development from one episode to the next. House MD and Elementary are good examples.

 

[Multicore]

Hey ho. Yet another thread with massive generalisations.

Was the irony intended?

 

[Tell]

Tarantino have made some really good movie, but I really don't agree with much of what he says outside those movies and I don't agree here either.
I love having a way more in depth and thorough story where I can live with the characters for a much long time than a movie can ever give me. And I don't need to remember every single scene wither, why would I?
But of course there is series that turns into soap operas, but that's not representative of all series is it? Though I did watch an episode of some followup to Yellowstone, 1923 I think it was but I stopped after that first episode because it felt just like some random drama where people act stupidly just to get the plot going. Maybe Tarantino should watch Andor instead and he'll get one of the best series ever created.

But then of course movies and series don't need to be the "same" in whatever way he wants them to, they're different mediums so why would they?

 

[Joe Smith]

I love things that a just perfect for the medium they were created for, and that you can hardly imagine any other way. Novels with an interior narrative voice that a movie just can't capture. Great plot + character-driven series like Gilligan's Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and Pluribus, or Dark on Netflix that would get short shrift indeed as movies. And movies that are exactly the right length and no more, which would get ponderous or fall apart as a series.

And I love the exceptions. Blade Runner is very different than Dick's Do Androids Dream... but is perfect, exceptional. And 2001 was originally a very short story by Clarke {"The Sentinel"), but again, the transformation into something else worked and is timeless.

In general, just as in the difference between short stories and novels, one can get much more character information and "shadings" in a well-written series.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

Blade Runner is very different than Dick's Do Androids Dream... but is perfect, exceptional.

So is the Anthology TV series Electric Dreams. It's only loosely based on the Philip K. Dick stories, but in many ways that's a good thing. Worth a view.

And like many limited "anthology" series it avoids the problems of the never-ending TV series.

 

[Noske]

I think that QT might have a point if only he could've taken the time to clarify exactly what he was talking about.

I think that a fair bit of the discussion here is a consequence of that omission. Which makes what he said rather undergraduate.

 

[jhaider]

The big difference between movies and TV is the screen size and time constraints…

IMO the big difference between TV and movies today is the audience. Major label movies tend to be made for international audiences, which inherently restricts the script. TV audiences are more localized, so the writing can be more interesting. Also, TV doesn’t generally have the crutch of a special effects. So that’s why, whatever a movie director might wish, TV tends to be more interesting today.

 

[Hayabusa]

"What is the difference between TV and a Good Movie?"

About the same difference as between a book and a story

 

[Noske]

"What is the difference between TV and a Good Movie?"

About the same difference as between a book and a story

I disagree.

 

[Hayabusa]

I disagree.

I agree there is still enough to disagree with

 

[EJ3]

1. No ads
2. Volume not deafening
3. No people around me doing random jabber
4. No 13 dollar popcorn

Obviously, going out to the movies is now an incredibly rare event for me.

My wife & I have not owned a TV since 2007 (when she moved from Saipan to Guam [I was stationed on a ship that was ported in Saipan] but flew the 129 miles many weekends) & she did not like the available cable selections & suggested that we did not need a TV. I agreed, since I mostly watch Movies on the silver disk anyway. My laptop could play Blu Rays & a 40" 19# monitor screen using 4 one hundred pound magnets attached to the VESA mount held it on the ships wall in my birth. So I was good. Now we use a desktop that can play Blu Rays & a 32" screen. No streaming, as we live where it is not feasible due to no cell signal here. This is a purely intentional place to live. The library has many disks and that works for us. Other than that, most of what I own is concert disks. (We do attend movies at an IMAX [about 110 mile trip each way] 4 or 5 times a year.)
Our closest Pizza Joint (it does NOT have WiFi):