Compilation Movie: Difference between revisions

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{{trope}}
A '''Compilation Movie''' is created by editing together episodes of a television series to create a movie-length installment. Although this usually applies to home video releases, it can happen with broadcasts as well. How seamless the resulting movie is depends on how good the editor was, and what materials they had to work with (sometimes the opening credits or [[To Be Continued]] caption will be left in as the editor only had the complete version of each episode, or the end credits may only refer to the people who worked on the last episode). While the bulk of each episode is usually kept intact, some minor editing is usually made for time, continuity, or to make the new edit more seamless.
 
Back before home video recorders became widespread these would sometimes be released to cinemas as feature films. As home videos became more common, these were increasingly released as direct-to-video 'movies'. Often the plots of the two episodes thus used had absolutely no relation to each other (save the involvement of [[The Hero]], natch); this was sometimes patched over with dubbed-in dialog attempting to link the two adventures. With the modern trend of releasing full seasons of series on DVD, this form of Compilation Movie seems to be dying out.
 
A Compilation Movie can also be used in serialized TV to combine all the episodes of a serial into a single "movie", if the serial was very long then the resulting Compilation Movie may be essentially a feature length [[Clip Show]]. In the mecha anime genre, these movies are pretty much still par for the course. In the case of [[Soap Opera|Soap Operas]]s that are aired several times a week, a compilation at the end of the week may be the only repeat. This is preferable to a a back-to-back showing as it avoids viewers leaving after only the first episode, and in theory allows more advertisements where the credits used to be.
 
While the pacing of these movies are often quite suspect, especially in a series where there was originally a cliffhanger, new scenes are sometimes added to justify their release.
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== [[Anime]] ==
* Variation: The American release known as ''[[Digimon]]: [[The Movie]]'' was made by editing together the first three [[Short Anime Movie|Short Anime Movies]]s from ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' and ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]''. ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'''s movie originally wasn't going to be included but [[Executive Meddling|Higher ups]] insisted that the 3rd movie be included. No one in the dubbing process realized that the only people who would be watching the movie were people who were planning to see the film anyway (and wouldn't have minded the extra footage required for decent editing (especially of the 3rd part) that had been taken out due to length concerns) or critics. To make matters, worse anybody who's seen the 3rd part, knows how crudely it was edited. (This doesn't apply to the first two parts.)Clips were taken out of context, and an entire subplot was completely destroyed. In short this is one film that could have it edited and improved by remixing it. (But not the lines, just the editing cuts.)
* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Evangelion: Death and Rebirth]]'' is kind of a corner case, containing parts of both the show and [[The Movie]].
** The reason why Death and Rebirth happened was because Hideaki Anno felt that the Japanese public's memory needed to be refreshed regarding the events of the series, considering End of Evangelion was due for release soon and the series had ended a year ago. As well, there were scenes cut from the series (and re-added for the Director's Cut episodes) that would have been critical to understanding End of Evangelion; for example, the scene where {{spoiler|Gendo tries to merge Rei with the Adam embryo on his hand}} would be nearly incomprehensible without first knowing that {{spoiler|Gendo even HAD the embryo on his hand.}}
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* One of the oldest examples must be the 1955 movie ''[[Davy Crockett]], King of the Wild Frontier'', edited together from three episodes of ''[[Disneyland]]'': "Davy Crockett: Indian Figter", "Davy Crockett Goes to Congress" and "Davy Crockett at the Alamo".
** ''[[Davy Crockett]] and the River Pirates'' did the same thing with the remaining two episodes, "Davy Crockett's Keelboat Race" and "Davy Crockett and the River Pirates".
* The 1966 TV adaptation of ''[[The Green Hornet]]'' had two of these. In 1974 four episodes of the series--"The Hunter and the Hunted", "Invasion from Outer Space" (Parts 1 and 2), and "The Preying Mantis"--were—were stitched together for overseas theatrical release. DVDs of this movie are noteworthy for its [[Spotlight-Stealing Title|spotlight stealing]] billing: "Bruce Lee as Kato in ''The Green Hornet''". Followed by a 1976 release, ''Fury of the Dragon'', which compiled the episodes "Trouble for Prince Charming", "Secret of the Sally Bell", "The Ray Is for Killing", and "Bad Bet on a 459-Silent".
* During the 70s, the BBC would air a Compilation Movie of a previous ''[[Doctor Who]]'' serial at Christmas, These would then be used as replacement programs if bad weather had canceled a live sports game.
** Some PBS stations used to show classic ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episodes in Compilation Movie format. The color used to [http://www.purpleville.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rtwebsite/colouris.htm re-colorize] "The Daemons" came off such a compilation. BBC America has also done this with new series episodes, albeit quite badly by leaving the director and producer credits in half way through the movie.
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* Also happened to ''[[H₂O: Just Add Water]]'' when it was shown on the Disney Channel. This time, they mixed the first few episodes with two episodes from later in the first season, meaning that one character came out of nowhere, did very little and just walked off. Technically not a [[Big Lipped Alligator Moment]], as the same character later reappeared and came dangerously close to discovering Cleo, Emma and Rikki's [[Our Mermaids Are Different|big secret]].
* ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' had a movie compiled from three episodes of the first season, but fear of competition with another Lucy/Desi movie, ''The Long, Long Trailer'', prevented a public release until it came to DVD in 2007.
* A [[Direct to Video]] ''[[Cruel Intentions]]'' [[Prequel]], "Manchester Prep", was actually a compilation of episodes produced for a never-aired TV series based on the movie. <ref>[[FOX]] was the would-be broadcaster, [[Screwed by the Network|of course]].</ref>
* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' has an interesting case with ''In The Beginning'', which was basically recapping the established history of the Earth Minbari War, complete with whatever flashback footage they'd used to depict The War on the show (which took place 10-1510–15 years after the end of the conflict). Quite a bit of the movie was original footage specific to the plot of filling in the blanks in what we had been shown about the war, but there are still quite a few recognizable scenes spliced in from the show, leading to things like Micheal York appearing in the movie for all of one second, with no lines.
* While not a stitching together of TV episodes, many of the scenes in the ''[[On the Buses]]'' movies were lifted from TV episodes.
* Several episodes of ''[[Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot]]'' (the American version of the ''[[Giant Robo]]'' [[Toku]] series) were edited together into the movie "Voyage Into Space".
* ''[[Salvage 1]]'': The two part episodes "Golden Orbit" and "Hard Water" were combined in the late eighties and aired as "movies" on ''CBS Late Night''.
* In the UK, two [[Mr. Bean]] compilation DVDs have been released, 'Happy Birthday Mr Bean' and 'Mr Bean's Holiday Havoc' ([[I Thought It Meant|not to be confused with the similarly titled movie]]), lasting 60-7060–70 minutes.
** There was also a 'Best Of Mr Bean' Special with a newly recorded [[Framing Device]] of Mr Bean looking through his loft.
* Some of the UK [[Top Gear]] DVDs are compilations of the challanges that last up to three hours, and from 'The Challanges Three' onwards have even included bonus discs; there have been five of these compilations so far.
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** The show now had a rerun of the first two seasons in Germany where the channel [[Super RTL]] cut together four episodes for one movie. They cut out the morals and titlescreens for all episodes except the first one of each movie. Newsreels stayed where they are, although they most of the time just explained what already happened.
* The first ''[[Star Wars: Clone Wars]]'' miniseries aired on Cartoon Network with 4 minute episodes and was later released on DVD as an hour long movie. Inverted in some countries outside the US as this is the only form the episodes were available and TV-airings are in the same format.
* The ''[[South Park]]: Imaginationland'' movie is all three episodes of the "Imaginationland" arc of the TV show edited together in one movie, and -- inand—in a surprisingly notable first for the franchise on DVD -- isDVD—is completely uncensored, to boot.
** Similarly, a marathon of South Park's most notorious episodes concluded with the Season 1 cliffhanger and its resolution episode edited together as one, interspaced with "Great Destinations" segments from the creators in Snoqualmie, Washington.
** While not yet edited into a compilation movie, the three meteor shower episodes from Season 3 were edited into one [http://www.spscriptorium.com/Treats/TheMeteorShower.htm in script form] by a fan.
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* The ''[[Futurama]]'' direct-to-video movies (''Bender's Big Score'', ''The Beast with a Billion Backs'', ''Bender's Game'', and ''Into the Wild Green Yonder'') are technically each about four TV episodes cut together. However, they were released as movies ''before'' being broadcast as individual episodes, making this something of an inversion.
* ''[[Family Guy]]: The Stewie Griffin Story'' is an inversion. It was conceived as a direct-to-video movie shortly before FOX decided to renew the series a few years after its earlier cancellation. The movie was written in a way that it could split into three episodes, all connected to a main story arc, and shown on television.
* Several direct-to-video Disney movies released between 1998 and 2003 that were based on TV shows and weren't sequels (and even some that ''were'', like ''[[Cinderella (Disney film)|Cinderella]] II'' and ''[[Atlantis: The Lost Empire|Atlantis: Milo's Return]]'') were basically really random episode compilations with linking material. <ref>The ''Atlantis'' one was actually from a series that was called off after the movie's underwhelming box office.</ref>
* This was the original plan for the each arc of ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man]]''; the resulting movies would include footage cut from the episodes for time and standards and practices reasons. However, this plan was scrapped after the release of the first such collection, "Attack of the Lizard".
* The [[Five Episode Pilot|two or three part pilot]] for any animated series is quickly dubbed as a "movie" when it hits shelves, in order to influence buying power: ''[[Justice League]]'', ''[[Transformers Animated]]'', ''[[Gargoyles]]'', ''[[Batman Beyond]]'', ''[[The Mighty Ducks (animation)|The Mighty Ducks]]'' Animated Series, etc.
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