Movies have been getting longer for a few years or so but they are especially long this year. Look at the biggest films this year and see how they are about 20-30min longer than they would be in the past.
- The Flash - 2h 24m
- Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - 2h 34m
- Oppenheimer - 3h
- Barbie - 1h 54m
- John Wick: Chapter 4 - 2h 49m
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - 2h 29m
And even crazier are the 2 parter movies.
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - 2h 16m
- Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One - 2h 43m
- Dune 2 - reported way over 2h
A few years ago this was different.
- Action films like Indiana Jones, Marvel movies, John Wick and Mission Impossible used to be about 2h - 2h 15m.
- Movies closest to Barbie like Clueless and Legally Blonde were about 1h 30m.
- Biopics like Oppenheimer were longer but not 3h. Lincoln was 2h 30m.
- Animated films would be 1h 45m max.
- Lynch’s original Dune was almost 3h cut by the studio to 2h 15m.
I remember when Harry Potter Deathly Hallows got criticism for being a 2 parter. The Dark Knight Rises got push back from theaters saying it was too long and made it difficult to have a lot of showtimes. Now it feels like these long showtimes and 2 parters are the rule rather than the exception.
Do you prefer movies longer or do you think they are getting too bloated and need to be cut down?
Also what is causing this trend of long films? I think it’s streaming and binging making people more comfortable watching TV for a long time. But I see people say that attention spans are getting shorter thanks to the internet so I don’t really know.
One thing people probably aren’t considering is tapes. They had a literal length to them. I remember Titanic was a 2 tape set because it was so long. That meant, movies wanted to meaningfully hit the home market, they had to be short enough to fit on one tape, including any preroll advertisements the studio wanted the squeeze in.
DVDs helped a little, but they took were constrained, and were trying to pack in additional features while they were at it.
Now all bets are off in the home market. Even TV shows have started changing to match the format. Streaming first shows are often variable length per episode. Rather than try to fit a specific size, they run until the story is told, like a movie.
This is an interesting graph! I think the phenomenon of longer runtimes has two major reasons:
1. Streaming Studios are much less stringent with how long a movie can be since it’s less of a concern how many times it can be shown per day/theatre. Also, runtime doesn’t matter as much when the viewers can pause and return to it whenever they please. This is encouraged by streaming services because it also increases the overall time spent in the app.
2. The vanishing of medium-budget movies High-profile, high-budget movies by known directors have always been longer on average, because they can afford to do so and are expected to draw large audiences. In recent years the number of mid-budget movies, the likes we are used to from pre-2010, has drastically decreased in favor of big blockbuster productions (here’s an article about it). So the average runtime has increased as a consequence of this.
I personally don’t like this trend. Although I really enjoy longer movies, most of them wind up with obnoxious amounts of badly written filler-content.
That peak in the early 2000s has to be the extended LOTR trilogy. Which I’m very happy to watch
From the data, it looks like average lengths have gone down since about 2004, so this year may just be an anomaly.
I believe Peter Jackson has a lot to answer for in this regard. I feel like the LotR films were the watershed films for longlongfilm acceptance, and they are actually worth the watch in their longest forms.
But then The Hobbit films happened. I remember feeling that 3 films sounded ridiculous and that they were all unnecessarily long considering the length of the book and, compared to the original trilogy, they were rather horrible to look at.
20 years ago, give or take 10, VHS video tapes were a major form factor for films and entertainment at home. Of course you could record for 8 hours at trash quality but you could get 2 hours at better quality. So to best accommodate films for VHS they cut them down to 2 hours max (118 mins was a frequent runtime for adult movies and 88 mins for kids movies).
I prefer to watch films that are good to great, no matter the time as long as the artists know how to use the time well and make the work worth to watch. There is fantastic works that span the whole spectrum, from short films to lenghy films, and there is trash all the way too (Some director compared it to paintings, that range from tiny papers to whole walls). If we really think about it, any anthology series like Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone 1959 are just a collection of short films that share a theme, some recurring stage crew, and etc. If i am short on literal time, i have no problem stopping and taking multiple sections to watch a film (purists have some point that it loses a little of the impact some times, but most of the time it really does not).
I think it is 2 reasons for the trend:
- Cinema-at-home technologies just keeps getting so much better all the time, and it is already pretty great. Streaming and 80 inch 4K OLED TVs are just the latest iteration of a process started in the 1950s with tube TVs, and if VR-AR glasses popularize they will be the next. Cinema Studios and Cinema-at-theater companies had to invent new immersive technologies and art forms to stay competitive, from the rectangle screen form (16:9) until IMAX 4-D etc. They also artificially benefited the cinema-at-theater by having the release window schedule (3 months in theaters, another 6 months to dvd, 1-2 years to tv, etc), that has been diminushed but it still exists (6 weeks to 2 months in theaters i think), and in our FOMO infested culture this might make theaters stay in the long run in some form or another. But overall, home has never been such a sweet place to watch cinema.
- The endless rat-race to keep cinema-at-theater competitive with cinema-at-home has eventually made that only Blockbusters in high tecnology cinemas are attractive enough to most people, and to pay for all this sensorial spectacle that ranges from the theaters to the films themselves, the scale of capital costs in the whole industry has just risen to the roof, and now the tickets are usually very expensive (and foods drinks etc). The average consumer in turn, feels that going to a film in a theater has to be WORTH it, has to be better than home and has to compensate for the high ticket (and foods etc) price. This means that films have to be a Spectacle that is highly sensorial and lasts a lot of time to become a memorable Event in the persons day, week or month. So, longer run times.
There is a cinema industry that is already more advanced in these characteristics: it’s Bollywood, with the Masala genre (i.e. a spectacle that has to please the whole family, and they include at least some romance action drama dance music in every film) and many hours of lengh (4hr is not unusual). Because the average indian is poor, and they go to the cinema rarely, so the indian studios have to make it worth it, an Event for the whole family, like Hollywood has to now. There is also something of a Music Show vibe, where the audience cheers and claps when the stars appears on screen, and actively engages with the film throughout (booing a vilain , lamenting a death scene, etc), it reminds me of the marvel spider man 3, but times 10 and all the time, it’s a cinema-at-theater experience also unmatched by home, because of the collective element. Maybe Bollywood is the mirror that Hollywood has to emulate now, instead of the other way.
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There’s a big difference in a 2 hr plus movie that’s all fluff and one that actually has substance/is compelling. I can’t sit through modern movies anymore because the story isn’t really worth my time or attention.
I dunno man, Spiderverse 2p1 absolutely flew by - what a great movie
I cant wait for Beyond!
I went to Dead Reckoning the other day and afterward it occurred to me why I don’t go to movies very often anymore. With advertisements and travel time both ways, it worked out to a 4 hour commitment. I have kids. I don’t often have that kind of time.
I’ve generally stopped watching movies because they’re too long. I prefer the shorter episodes of TV shows.
Every now and then when I’m in the mood for a movie I’m looking for 90 minute movies. Otherwise I doze off
Where did all the 90 minute movies go? I’m up for a longer movie if it can hold my attention (I have the same problem of dozing off) but 90 minutes was the sweet spot. Especially because you could make a late night (10pm or after) snap decision to watch a movie and still be in bed before midnight.
Do you watch TV more than 2 hrs per day? Multiple episodes of a show or just one and done?
I don’t really watch more than 2 hours per day. Sometimes I just watch the 1 episode, and if I’ve started it earlier enough, then I might be able to sneak in another episode before I get into bed.
I mean, if they can justify their lenght go for it. The problem is when movies overstay their welcome.
This is something i’ve been thinking for a while… whilst some movies i’m really glade to see have a 2 hour plus run time… i grew up when movies were 1 1/2 hours… standard… you could sit down, pick any VHS and know you’d be done in an hour and a half…
I don’t go to the cinema much, but the last time i did was to see the sparkly vampire playing Batman… my fucking god that was a long movie to be sat there for…
I do wonder if it’s anything to do with the binge watching that streaming services have brought about for tv shows… but even then for some reason i’d rather sit and watch 3 episodes of something rather than a 3 hour movie… maybe it’s pacing or the way the story is structured.
I actually prefer this, I think the John Wick 4 length was perfect, I wouldn’t have minded a 3 hour Across the spiderverse runtime.
Even Dune I thought had a fine runtime. I think I could legitimately sit through a 5 hour Dune 2 / 3rd Spiderverse movie and love every second.
This is generally only applicable to peak content though. I’m not sitting around for 3 hours watching Dial of destiny.
This is generally only applicable to peak content though
This is the main rub. A 3 hour movie that actually needs to be 3 hours can be great. I love all 3 Lord of the Rings movies. But as much as I wanted it to be really good, Dial of Destiny did not need its run time, nor did it use it to add substance
Man, I saw Dial of Destiny last night and I felt like it used its runtime well. Could’ve done without yet another train fight, and the chase sequences might’ve been cut down a bit, but the only thing that felt saggy about this movie was Harrison Ford’s skin.
Could’ve done without yet another train fight, and the chase sequences might’ve been cut down a bit
This is exactly how I felt - like the opening sequence was too long for what it contributed, and that the chase sequences could have been cut down. Sounds like we just disagree on the overall impact due to those aspects
So I had just seen Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning over the weekend, and had to laugh when the opening sequence of this one had almost the same action scene on top of a train going through a tunnel. And then also had a chase scene through narrow alleyways in a comically tiny vehicle.
Don’t get me wrong, the action sequences were well-executed, but they felt somehow a bit generic, as if you could paste them into almost any action movie without losing a beat, and those two were case in point. I did love the dynamics of the tuktuk chase, but as a focus for the characters it fell a tad short.
It’s getting to the point where they need an intermission.
I would advocate for the return of intermissions! Theater chains would love it, because it would mean more concessions.
Let’s all go to the Lobby,
Let’s all go to the Lobby!
Let’s all go to the Lobby,
And grab ourselves a treat!
Not just the past few years, OP.
I remember when I was a kid in the late 90s, the standard duration for any movie was about 1h40ish. Which was plenty.
I think this trend started in the 2000s/late 2000s and it kept getting worse.
I think it was the dark knight and the LOTR that really kicked the trend into overdrive.
But honestly it’s hard to make a movie with an action plot AND three dimensional characters in a hour fourty. One reason I think it’s good that the mini series or short TV show format are popular.
