Official runtime

Discuss the latest about the second Silent Hill Movie

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resevil80
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Re: Official runtime

Post by resevil80 »

Silent Hill 3 is not complicated....With Silent Hill 2 you have to build on EVERYTHING....Plus, you actually have interesting characters to go along with James...Angela has a story to tell, Eddie is running around being insane, Maria, Laura...and the story plays out much slower.

With Silent Hill 3...You have useless Douglas, Vincent just showing up to advance the "plot" and Claudia(who is the only worthwhile Character besides heather), its a more action oriented approach(IMO)...I stand by what I said, 94 minutes is easily enough time to do Silent Hill 3...But I would want Silent Hill 2 to takes its sweet time and be a very slow burn...
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Re: Official runtime

Post by TerryRed »

If anyone remembers, I tried doing an edit of the first film, removing all the "real world Chris and Gucci parts" to see how it worked since they weren't intended to be in the film.

Suprisingly it worked well, and shortened the movie by about 15 mins.

I personally have no problem with the length of the first film and wouldn't mind seeing this one a little longer.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by MistahJ »

I was hoping that it'd be longer, but at least it's not under a hour, lol.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by Falconv1.0 »

resevil80 wrote:Silent Hill 3 is not complicated....With Silent Hill 2 you have to build on EVERYTHING....Plus, you actually have interesting characters to go along with James...Angela has a story to tell, Eddie is running around being insane, Maria, Laura...and the story plays out much slower.

With Silent Hill 3...You have useless Douglas, Vincent just showing up to advance the "plot" and Claudia(who is the only worthwhile Character besides heather), its a more action oriented approach(IMO)...I stand by what I said, 94 minutes is easily enough time to do Silent Hill 3...But I would want Silent Hill 2 to takes its sweet time and be a very slow burn...
All you actually said there was that SH2 had better characters/story. In no way did you dispute my statement about how there are far more plot details that you need to know to understand 3's story that would be harder to get right in a movie compared to a guy being stone cold fucking crazy and coming to grips with what he's done, which is what SH2 essentially boils down to.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by Scanman22 »

Falconv1.0 wrote:
resevil80 wrote:Silent Hill 3 is not complicated....With Silent Hill 2 you have to build on EVERYTHING....Plus, you actually have interesting characters to go along with James...Angela has a story to tell, Eddie is running around being insane, Maria, Laura...and the story plays out much slower.

With Silent Hill 3...You have useless Douglas, Vincent just showing up to advance the "plot" and Claudia(who is the only worthwhile Character besides heather), its a more action oriented approach(IMO)...I stand by what I said, 94 minutes is easily enough time to do Silent Hill 3...But I would want Silent Hill 2 to takes its sweet time and be a very slow burn...
All you actually said there was that SH2 had better characters/story. In no way did you dispute my statement about how there are far more plot details that you need to know to understand 3's story that would be harder to get right in a movie compared to a guy being stone cold fucking crazy and coming to grips with what he's done, which is what SH2 essentially boils down to.
Exactly! There is NO way Silent Hill 2's story is more complicated. It just takes longer to reveal the truth. It is pretty straight forward once you have the facts.

The third game (SH3) is actually more complicated in terms of plot, revelations, characters, and motives! Heather is a deeper and more interesting character than James. She is a reincarnation of a former split soul'ed tortured individual who is now pregnant with the fetus of a supernatural being. Her father has been murdered. She is being stalked by religious zealots. She kills things which may or may not be people viewed as they truly are just like Leonard (that is if Vincent is telling the truth). And finally, she is being constantly watched/followed by another supernatural being who's ultimate goal is to tend to the fetus within her! The story reveals tons of information about Silent Hill 1, the town itself, and the cult along with its inner dealings/workings!


Silent Hill 3's story is way more complicated than Silent Hill 2's story in my opinion. It is just the way SH2 is told that makes it seem deeper than it truly is! But James, Angela, Eddie, Maria, and Laura all have straight forward issues and goals once you realize the truth about them, it is pretty uncomplicated. Don't get me wrong, I love Sh2's story. But SH3 is just the more complicated and has a deeper plot.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by Garmonbozey »

Scanman22 wrote:Exactly! There is NO way Silent Hill 2's story is more complicated. It just takes longer to reveal the truth. It is pretty straight forward once you have the facts.

The third game (SH3) is actually more complicated in terms of plot, revelations, characters, and motives! Heather is a deeper and more interesting character than James. She is a reincarnation of a former split soul'ed tortured individual who is now pregnant with the fetus of a supernatural being. Her father has been murdered. She is being stalked by religious zealots. She kills things which may or may not be people viewed as they truly are just like Leonard (that is if Vincent is telling the truth). And finally, she is being constantly watched/followed by another supernatural being who's ultimate goal is to tend to the fetus within her! The story reveals tons of information about Silent Hill 1, the town itself, and the cult along with its inner dealings/workings!


Silent Hill 3's story is way more complicated than Silent Hill 2's story in my opinion. It is just the way SH2 is told that makes it seem deeper than it truly is! But James, Angela, Eddie, Maria, and Laura all have straight forward issues and goals once you realize the truth about them, it is pretty uncomplicated. Don't get me wrong, I love Sh2's story. But SH3 is just the more complicated and has a deeper plot.
The essence and depth of a story lie in their presentation. You can whittle away any masterpiece into a single descriptive sentence, but that doesn't mean anything.

Silent HIll 3's story only begins at the half way mark of the game. It can easily fit into an hour movie if needed and get everything in there.

Half of the plot detail you're talking about is arbitrary notes or background-info notes or fan extrapolation or theories and etc. The actual playing of the game gives you a pretty bereft story, if you focus only on the story. It's the immersion of the game itself that makes the sum better than its parts. But here we're dealing with someone who has to adapt mostly the cinematic parts, the atmosphere but most of all the surface-most story, which is again bereft.

So again, I see no problem with the run-time. It's enough time to cover the game and stuff from the first film with some omissions, some additions, etc.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by Falconv1.0 »

Silent Hill 3 is about a girl traveling to Silent Hill to take revenge on a leader of a Cult who apparently got her pregnant so she can give birf to their twisted idea of a God, also something something Seal of Metatron.

Silent Hill 2 is about a crazy person looking for his dead wife in a town they went to once on vacation because he's crazy.

Silent Hill 2's presentation being better does not somehow make it more complicated.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by Silent Fantasy »

I have to agree that SH2 is not more complicated, but it does rely on a different pace than SH3's plot does. SH2 works because of how it was told, and the smaller details interwoven into the main plot are what make it intricate. The main plot of SH3 can be told in a more straight foward manner without losing much, but that's not necessarily a weakness, just different.
So though I wish the movie was longer, I don't see the runtime being detrimental to the films plot considering it's not a sequel to the first Silent Hill game and does not need to explain as much background information as SH3 did with the memos and other details lying around.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by teosoleil »

Uh oh. A "which story is more complicated?" thread now? Well, it's obviously Silent Hill 2 because you need to understand and infer important subtle aspects of the story to see its true beauty. Silent Hill 3 more complex? Sure, it may have more STUFF in it, but in the long run, no it is not as complex as Silent Hill 2.

How long did it take you to fully "digest" SH3? Now how about SH2? I predict the majority would pick the latter as taking more time to fully realize and explain properly. In fact, there are more complex and debatable topics in various SH2 forums compared to SH3.

The presentation has nothing to do with its complexity, really, because presentation is an offshoot of the complexity itself, not created first to bend how complex it may or may not be.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by Yuki »

Keep in mind: story and symbolism are not the same thing. SH2's story was of James going to Silent Hill, meeting Laura, Eddie, Maria and Angela, finding out things about them and then realizing he killed Mary. It's a lot more straightforward than SH3's because the cult doesn't figure into the plot; there's plenty of symbolism that makes it deeper and makes more to analyze, but with SH3 you have to explain who the Order is, what they want, and why they want it.

Furthermore, if you're doing this in a movie, you can't do it through found notes or long, expository sequences.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by Silent Fantasy »

^ I knew there was a better way to explain it. I still feel it will be ignored and this thread is going to turn into a SH2 vs SH3 plot argument though.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by chounokoe »

Yuki wrote:Keep in mind: story and symbolism are not the same thing. SH2's story was of James going to Silent Hill, meeting Laura, Eddie, Maria and Angela, finding out things about them and then realizing he killed Mary. It's a lot more straightforward than SH3's
SH2's plot might have been more straightforward than SH3's, but I'd say in terms of storytelling SH3 is a lot more straightforward and that (especially because many plot elements were eliminated in the movieverse) makes SH3 way easier to adapt.

Both games do use their minor plotlines to explain stuff about the bigger plotline, that is why I wouldn't actually say that SH3 is "less symbolic" or "less deep" like many people tend to say. Claudia and Leonard's relationship mirrors that of Alessa and Dahlia and serves as a counter-example to Heather and Harry, Douglas and his son mirror Heather's doubts about parenting, infanticide/filicide, which also happened to Alessa at the greedy hands of her birthmother and out of mercy by her adoptive father.
Yet, because every one of those characters has some kind of directs connection to the central plot, they drive alongside each other much more smoothly.

In SH2 many of the parallels to James' plight only become apparent by knowing of his dilemma. That means of course, for the game to be immersing, these parallel plots had to be able to stand on their own until the revelation of their connection is made. This does not only go for Laura, Angela and Eddie, but also for the various unseen inhabitants of the places we visit, the people mentioned in notes and clippings.

While in SH3 it is clear that the main focus is Heather, you can argue if the story of James or the story of the town is more important to SH2. Also, for the movie of SH1 most, if not all of the towns story was eliminated or at least not mentioned, which makes it even easier to tell.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by teosoleil »

Silent Fantasy wrote: [...] this thread is going to turn into a SH2 vs SH3 plot argument though.
It already has. And soon this :- |
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Re: Official runtime

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chounokoe wrote: While in SH3 it is clear that the main focus is Heather, you can argue if the story of James or the story of the town is more important to SH2. Also, for the movie of SH1 most, if not all of the towns story was eliminated or at least not mentioned, which makes it even easier to tell.
Wait, what? Besides some extraneous stuff like the Walter note, if memory serves me, SH2 has very little talk about the town itself except for how it relates to James.

As I said before, because SH2 is character-focused, it'd probably be easier to translate to film without the notes intact. Symbolism would still be present in the background and in the monsters, but the plot itself is already shown in the story: James goes to find Mary in Silent Hill and realizes he's killed her; Laura is looking for Mary but doesn't see monsters; Eddie is slowly turning into a psychopath; Angela was abused and seeks redemption and revenge. The notes, items, and environments we see feed into those, but we see the basic elements of everything in the exposition.

In SH3, the cult is much more of a focus. We need to know how it works, what Claudia and Leonard's relationship is, who Vincent is, and what exactly the God is that the Order is trying to birth; much of this is told through notes and through paintings, and that's not something you can do nearly as well through a movie as through a game.

I'm not saying one's more complicated than the other, because they both have layers that come to them as a result of their medium. What I'm saying is that there are two different styles of storytelling here, both with their own complexities and challenges in bringing to the screen.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by DistantJ »

Silent Hill has two threads running through the series, sometimes they intertwine, and sometimes they even attempt to ret-con each other together, but there's no denying that there are two story threads. One being the Alessa/The Order/Otherworld saga which is covered in 1,3,4,Origins and Homecoming, and the other being the idea of characters drawn to a purgatory to be punished by manifestations of their own mental anguish, i.e. 2,Homecoming, Origins and Downpour. Origins tried to do both and bring it all together, Downpour (along with Past Life) implies that Alessa is just another soul who has been affected by Silent Hill and that it's been the way it is since long before even Origins.

The movies clearly are (currently) following the first thread, which was able to be explained away in a single scene in the first film, and the rest of the time was spent on creepy churches, monsters, all that junk. If you ask me, the second thread requires longer runtimes, to look into a character's history, personal life, experiences, inner anguish etc.; you can't explain it away with boogeymen and magic. I believe that emotional obstacles require more screentime than physical or metaphysical ones.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by chounokoe »

Yuki wrote:Wait, what? Besides some extraneous stuff like the Walter note, if memory serves me, SH2 has very little talk about the town itself except for how it relates to James.
Actually I'd say that there was much more about the town being established in SH2 than people give it credit for. Yes, it had very little TALK about the town, but storytelling exists on more levels than just being flat out told, we were especially being SHOWN a much wider palette of information than in SH3.
In SH3 everything is geared towards the Alessa-plot (if we go by this term). It is told in a way that we can assume, from the halfway point on, that everything we hear and see is about Heather/Alessa, how people/things think about her, how her struggle intertwines with those people.
In SH2 we have many loosely connected plotlines that are only woven together in the last act through the revelation of the common theme of guilt. James' killing of Mary, Lauras innocence and Eddies loss of it, Angelas desperate escape from her past, but also small things like statues, the state of apartments, pictures lying around, the prison, the article about Sullivan.
In SH3, the cult is much more of a focus. We need to know how it works, what Claudia and Leonard's relationship is, who Vincent is, and what exactly the God is that the Order is trying to birth
I'd actually argue that you don't need to know the origin of the cult (you would need the article about Angelas murder of her father in SH2 much more), because it basically draws back to the 1970s cliche of cults performing terrible deeds to raise demons.

But what we are missing with this discussion here is, that neither the cult nor the town feature a lot into the story of the Silent Hill movie, if at all.
We do not know how Bassett will work the "Order of Valtiel" into the Gans' film-world yet, but the first movie created no real opening for either of them having a place in the films.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by Siaye »

thagerty wrote:I tried doing an edit of the first film, removing all the "real world Chris and Gucci parts" to see how it worked since they weren't intended to be in the film.

Suprisingly it worked well, and shortened the movie by about 15 mins.
Last time I watched the DVD, I started the movie when Rose first wakes up in the car, and skipped all of Chris' scenes. It cut the movie in half.

Just to add my two cents to the current topic: I always played SH2 for the story, and played SH3 for the more gruesome otherworld (even though it took forever to get there). I still think SH3's otherworld was the scariest.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: I think an hour & a half runtime is pretty decent.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by teosoleil »

DistantJ wrote:Silent Hill has two threads running through the series, sometimes they intertwine, and sometimes they even attempt to ret-con each other together, but there's no denying that there are two story threads. One being the Alessa/The Order/Otherworld saga which is covered in 1,3,4,Origins and Homecoming, and the other being the idea of characters drawn to a purgatory to be punished by manifestations of their own mental anguish, i.e. 2,Homecoming, Origins and Downpour. Origins tried to do both and bring it all together, Downpour (along with Past Life) implies that Alessa is just another soul who has been affected by Silent Hill and that it's been the way it is since long before even Origins.
Off topic, but I would say that, in present Silent Hill, there can now be considered three major arcs, the third being the whole Native American Mythology history of Silent Hill. It was a case in previous Silent Hill games, but didn't come up majorly as it's own thread until Past Life mostly revolved around it and Downpour expanded on it.

And I would also state that characters aren't punished necessarily, that's somewhat of a shallow understanding of the nature of the game, but are pulled into manifestations of their psyche. Punishment is determined by whether or not characters want it, as shown in SH2, Homecoming (if either Adam is determined to want punishment subconsciously, or if "official" rules of punishment for those who don't follow the sacrifices are present), and Downpour, where almost all major characters want revenge in some form or another.
Yuki wrote:Wait, what? Besides some extraneous stuff like the Walter note, if memory serves me, SH2 has very little talk about the town itself except for how it relates to James.
??? I believe there is one extremely MAJOR point you're ignoring that Silent Hill 2 introduced to the series.

Silent Hill 2 introduced the whole concept of the town reflecting the subconscious of characters, also the aspect of being drawn into the other world(s). If the little points revolving around this subject weren't present, then we wouldn't even have games like Downpour or Origins.

There's also a whole lot of things you're missing about what SH2 adds to the town--Pyramid Head, for instance, and the town's past executioner he was based on, as well as the Little Baroness sinking (which ties into SH: The Arcade), and even more Native American Mythology & past of the town with the Church of the Rebirth, all as examples.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by The Adversary »

>SH2 has very little talk about the town itself except for how it relates to James.<
Your memory has failed you.

· Little Baroness
· other Toluca Lake disaster
· Civil War involvement
· Toluca Prison history
· etc.
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Re: Official runtime

Post by Yuki »

I stand corrected, but I also stand with the thought that SH2 would be easier to straightforwardly adapt, simply with losing symbolism yet maintaining what actually happened to each character.
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