Does having too many characters ruin a movie?

What are your thoughts on this?

I don't think so. Rather, ensemble casts can make or break the film, in my opinion.

It worked great for me in films like Reservoir Dogs, Smokin' Aces, and Seven Samurai. It's all in the execution; same goes for superhero films. People dread villain ensembles because of the Spider-Man sequels and Batman Forever (or & Robin). However, I think it's worth noting that factors beyond the characters/cast were extreme hindrances to the films (eg: studio interference in case A and direction/storyboarding in case B).

Oh yeah, especially with what happened with X-Men: The Last Stand when Brian Singer was replaced by Brett Ratner due to working on Superman Returns at the time.

I think there is a magic number, that if you go too high its just to much to juggle at once. The original Xmen films problem was that they didnt even TRY to handle the numerous characters, they may as well just called it Wolverine. And honestly, Wolverine is one of the Xmen least fit to carry a movie, he is a pretty stereotypical gruff, lone wolf, bad a**.

I agree that the original X-Men movies mainly focused on Wolverine and barely developed the other characters. I just hope that Days of Future Past will change all that.

No. The problem is script and length of movie not number of characters. I mean Lord of the Rings is super long with a stellar script with tons of characters you get to know and love. Hobbit last year had around 16 characters and that didn't bother the film.

Spider-Man 3's problem wasn't to many villains but was a weak albeit good script(I can't say it was bad as I enjoy it today and it got me into comics...). X-Men Last Stand had a Evil Script with way to short a time to do it.

I mean this problem goes to movies with way shorter casts and it can be way worse. I mean Red Dawn from last year was atrocious. It had the same problems and only had like at max 4 with a few who are supporting cast with none getting character development.

@bluelantern1995: None of the Hobbit characters mattered but Bilbo, Gandolf, and Thorrin A LITTLE BIT. Sure a couple of charactes, Fili for example, had highlighting moments, but that is completely different than an Xmen movie where EVERY character has their own fan following.

Avengers did something amazing in giving each character real moments to shine (still focusing on certain characters in particular though, Iron Man), and I agree a good director and a good script can help/ completely overcome that, but who knows if this new Xmen movies has either of those things. The older Xmen movies certainly didnt.

No its how they are used.

I definitely agree with this! I liked what the Avengers did with the characters also as it felt like everyone had a moment to shine instead of just focusing on one character and I really hope that the next X-Men movie will actually focus on all the characters, especially with them adding more new characters to the cast.

It can be. But as most have said its also the writers and directors job to help the cause. I got s feeling Days of future past will be atleast a two parter.

I hope that Days of Future Past will be a two parter. It would help focus on all the characters they are planning on putting into this movie and the original story itself seems like something that would cause a two parter movie.

Hours feel like minutes in the theater. There are only so many minutes to have X amount of characters in one sitting.

It depends on a lot of factors. How much backstory does each of the characters need, how many characters are standard in the source material, how well does the production team manage screentime, and so on. Usually, when I think of the movies that suffer from having too many characters, it's usually because they have too many villains who pull the movie in too many directions.

I think the X-Men in particular works fine with a huge cast of characters. Whereas Avengers of JLA has always been about a team, and Spider-Man and Superman have always been about an individual, X-Men has always been about an entire race/species of people. While X-Men The Last Stand was not a good movie, I think that was due to a miss-use of the source material more so than the amount of mutants they put on screen.

On the other hand the Avengers had a relatively small team size, 6 members, and is a great fun movie. But Hawkeye was completely miss used and out of character. If that was because they didn't have time to flesh him out or just that Joss doesn't care much for the character I couldn't say, but it is disappointing when our favorite characters feel like afterthoughts.

I agree about how Hawkeye was misused in the Avengers movie since he spent the majority of the movie just being mind controlled by Loki. I wonder if in Avengers 2, Hawkeye will get a better role?

depends, movies like avengers, and lotr worked fine with large casts. there are also the other x men movies i mean wolverine and his mutants which didnt work great because they focused on 1 character instead of focusing on the entire cast. thats why i dont have high hopes for days of future past because singer is working on it again and it will probably feature wolverine again.

That's what I'm afraid of for the Days of Future Past movie also. I mean, I'm glad that there's another X-Men movie coming up but since The Wolverine is coming out this year, I wouldn't be surprised if Days of Future Past somehow focuses more on Wolverine again.

X-Men movies, then yes. Didn't seem to hurt the original Star Wars trilogy though. It's all in the acting, dialogue, and directing.

@rabbitearsblog: I really really hope so. I think part of the problem with having the Hawkeye that I want is that the movie version of Tony Stark has a very similar role already.

@norrinboltagonprime21 & @rabbitearsblog: I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but from what I do know, it seems like the original DOFP comic storyline is a Wolverine centric storyline. Not that I want it to be, as I have as much Logan fatigue as anyone else. But I don't really see that happening. With two version of Prof. X and Magneto it seems like they will be the stars again like they were in first class. Hopefully.

@rabbitearsblog: At this point i would prefer for the x men franchises to get rebooted to give it a fresh start. they have shown potential like x men first class but the other x men movies were just ok. there are alot of characters they could focus on and different stories they could use but they've limited themselves by focusing the entire movies on wolverine. Wolverine is better as a loner and solo movies for him would be a better idea with much looser ties to the x men to focus on other characters.

Actually, the original Days of Future Past comic book was centered more on Kitty Pryde since she was the one who had to travel from the future to the past to save Senator Kelly from being assassinated. Although, I wouldn't be surprised if the movie would try to focus on Wolverine instead of Kitty this time around.

@nappystr8: I am hoping DOPT is good because i enjoy comic book movies but the idea of singer working on it doesn't give me a good feeling. i fear even with the large cast it will somehow revolve around wolverine because thats what hes done for far.

I agree that I would prefer it if they rebooted the X-Men franchise so that way more characters and stories would be explored, even though they did explore some of the stories from the comics a bit in the first three movies.

Not if done correctly, and X-3 was not.

@rabbitearsblog said:

Well, Kitty has been confirmed for the movie, so I trust Singer to take that into account. But Wolverine has claws. People love claws. So be prepared for plenty of him too.

I definitely agree, although it would have been nice if it did focus on someone else for a change.

Cyclops deserves to shine for once. Eye beams arent cooler than claws?!

Problem with that question is that the answer is always yes, better question would be how many is too much? I think that question can only be answered by each movie separately rather than universal answer.

It depends - I don't necessarily think that too many characters correlate with a bad movie, there are a lot of other factors involved. For instance, the first X-Men had a fairly large cast (about eleven, by my count) - but I thought they balanced the cast relatively well. Wolverine and Rogue were the central PoV characters, Xavier and the rest of the X-Men are the supporting cast, Magneto and Mystique are the main villains, and Sabretooth and Toad are the henchmen. Even Senator Kelly had a role. In contrast, X-Men Origins: Wolverine had about six characters with little to no development, and characters like Gambit weighed down the overall plot and felt wasted.

Exactly Rabbit. I feel like a casting of this magnitude will warrant an extented story sliced into two. Or we are talking LOTR length viewing.

It all depends on how fleshed out the characters are. You can have a dozen characters no problem if the characterization is sound. But it takes a talented writer to accomplish this. Not to mention a director who knows how to pace a story with so many characters without getting lost in the details for too long. That's why, more often than not, too many characters ends up ruining a movie.

Joss Whedon is a good example of a writer/director who thrives with a team dynamic, hene the success of the Avengers film.

Yeah it does. Spider-Man 3 is a pretty good example of it.

I agree with this. A good writer and a good director can make a movie with so many characters work if they know how to juggle the plot involving the characters. I guess that's why I love Joss Whedon's works so much since he knows how to juggle a team dynamic in a movie or TV series.

Really depends on the script.

I agree. I really can't see all of these characters getting equal screen time in just one movie.