Why we don't need a Breaking Bad movie

The past month I had the pleasure of finishing watching one of the best TV shows ever produced: Breaking Bad.

Initially, I didn't want to watch the show. For me, it belonged to that list of mainstream shows such as The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc., that everybody was talking about all the time. However, Rotten Tomatoes didn't make a mistake giving Breaking Bad almost a perfect score in all of its seasons.

Starting with Bryan Cranston, who plays the chemist Walter White (who would later become Heisenberg), alongside Aaron Paul, who plays Jesse Pinkman, they begin their journey into the meth business in the first season when Walter's knowledge about the meth production process and Jesse's contacts and insight into the meth business work together to earn money. Walter, a chemistry high school professor, has this idea of entering into this business, in part because of desperation, and also because he was attracted to money, to begin with, as we can see in the first episode during his birthday.

Anyways, the plot is really interesting. Personally, my favorite season was the Third one, because it involved the most drastic changes to Walter's personality. During this season, he's forced to make difficult decisions in order to save his position and also Jesse's life, till we watch one of the strongest climaxes in TV history unravel in front of our eyes on that season's final episode (I'm not going to drop any spoilers).

Also, some days ago I finished the acclaimed spin-off show of Breaking Bad: Better Call Saul, which shows the development of Saul Goodman (or Jimmy McGill), approximately 6 years before the events shown in Breaking Bad.

Some people said that Better Call Saul would be a disaster, but I personally loved it, almost as much as Breaking Bad, and some people love that show as much as I do too! Naturally, it has less action than Breaking Bad and it relies more on dialogue, the plot, and subtle changes to the environment in which Jimmy McGill lives, due to his decisions or the ones around him, such as his brother Chuck (Charles McGill) and his girl-friend Kim Wexler.

Now, the past month I stumbled across some news. They said that the actual creator of both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, the genius Vince Gilligan, was going to work in a 2-hour Breaking Bad film. It seems that the Albuquerque Journal first reported this, and according to some article of theirs, this film would focus on the escape of Jesse Pinkman from the Neo-nazi prison—i.e., after the events of Breaking Bad—, and with the name Greenbrier.

We don't know any of these things for sure, but I wanted to share my opinion on this matter.

I'm a firm believer that masterpieces such as Breaking Bad should remain without changes or extensions to their history. Now you would tell me, "what about Better Call Saul then?", well, it is not exactly an extension of Breaking Bad, it is more an extension of the Breaking Bad Universe. During certain episodes, they feature a lot of familiar faces for sure, but they don't intend to change or extend what happened to Walter White or Jesse Pinkman.

And yes, Vince Gilligan is again in charge of this project, but it doesn't ensure anything. There's always the risk of failure or embarrassment during an extension of an old masterpiece, and I believe that the more you squeeze the juice out of a fantastic franchise or show, the more likely you're going to receive the fans and the general public disapproval.

I always like to compare these situations to the most popular Japanese series of all time, Death Note. Although it had some live-action, alongside a terrible Netflix movie in the past year, I think it is the perfect example of how a series should end. The creator, the master Ohba, alongside Obata as the illustrator, never responded to fans' requests for the second part of Death Note, and I believe they have done right ignoring those comments. Maybe Vince Gilligan should reconsider what he's doing, or at least be VERY careful about his new projects, because the fans may regret their requests at the end.