Welcome to the Weekly Movie Thread, your place on the Avocado to discuss films with your fellow commenters. Want to make a recommendation? Looking for recommendations? Want to share your opinions of movies, both new and classic? 

Some time ago, I had wondered which movies would be better as TV shows. An episodic run would let a character breathe, explore the world more fully, and allow plot elements to not feel so hurried.

But then there’s the opposite effect. Sometimes TV shows just feel like they drag. Comics fans are familiar with decompressed storytelling, where six issues of a comics run used take up a single issue. (In interviews, Sam Raimi mentioned that comic books were his inspiration for his movie making style in the way they compressed story elements as efficiently as possible. I don’t know if he would have take that away from modern comics.)

Television shows do the same thing. It’s often that you hear that a project had originally been slated for film, only down the road for the concept to be turned into a television series. There are many reasons for that. Perhaps the movie would have flopped, and the television format would be guaranteed to be more successful? Maybe it’s a way to save on Star Wars-budgeted special effects? It could be that a TV format was easier to work into the schedule of the cast. Perhaps, like Sandman, it’s actually the most appropriate medium and a movie would never have done it justice.

But sometimes there are times you see a show and think, “This would have been better as a movie.” The plot could be tighter. More money could have been spent on the special effects. It could feel less like an afterthought and more like a big event. It could even be that you didn’t even bother watching it in TV series format, when you would have watched it on the movie screens. After all… we don’t all subscribe to the same streaming services, but a movie theater is right there.

Today’s bonus prompt: what television series do you think would have better been a movie?