“El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie”, the continuation / epilogue of the revolutionary masterpiece of Vince Gilligan “Breaking Bad”, was a good film because it looked like a double episode in the same show. This is because we all knew what before. It was an additional and missing piece in the 62 episodes that made us obsessed with Walter White (Bryan Cranston), Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) and their family and commercial partners. Consider it as a new added to an elaborate and extended novel.
It’s just the thing: the best television programs that work for years work because they feel like novels told on the screen. We immerse ourselves and we get lost, always eager to return to a world that we love and that we are fascinated, populated by characters which we can never have enough. Most films cannot (and will not trigger) the same feeling because they do not have time – although the increase in film times in recent years gives storytellers more space to work, especially with regard to the development of the characters.
“Breaking Bad” has always been intended to be a television program, and Gilligan used all the tools at its disposal that the medium provided characters absorbing craftsmanship that were delighted with the smallest details. No open bottle episode or cold has the same thing afterwards. It is mainly because Gilligan had time to nail them as he wanted – and no one agrees with this than Cranston.
The dark and rich soul of Breaking Bad would have been lost if it was a film
The best programs that preceded “Breaking Bad” – “The Sopranos”, “The Wire”, “Six Feet Under”, etc. – All of them showed what was possible on the small screen, and the Gilligan series was a highest point of this. It was the right concept for the right medium, and even if you could get the biggest filmmaker and screenwriter to make it a film, it would simply not be the same at any level. You simply could not leave aside all the hinges that made “Breaking Bad” exceptional and always have the same amazing impact as the series has had. Not that anyone who wants (and I hope it will never change), but I raise it because the biggest star of the show, Cranston, summed up this perfectly in an oral story of 2018 published in The Ringer on what most consider the biggest episode of “Breaking Bad” (“Ozymandias”). As he said:
“It’s just an adhesive drama. What is most important is that it happens at the right time. I always say that” Breaking Bad “was the perfect television show because it would have made a terrible film, right?
In most movies and television shows, the time of the most vital and breathtaking moments is everything. “Breaking Bad” is one of those series where practically all have been delivered perfectly. In agreement with Cranston, I think it would not have been possible in a film, terrible or not.
