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.
This is why I haven’t seen “The Irishman” yet. I like Scorsese, it has a great cast, and I’ve heard good things about the movie, but I can’t find the time to sit down for three and a half hours.
Between work, kids, and just generally trying to keep on top of stuff it leaves little time to commit to a film that long. Recently I’ve been just watching series’. It’s easy to watch an hour long episode, or two, than to strap in for a really long movie.
I have a long list of movies I’ve been “meaning to catch up on”, but the trend of longer runtimes is making that list longer and longer.
What if I told you that you can pause movies after watching for an hour and then come back to it later?
Yep. Recently watched Apocalypse Now Redux with my wife on a Saturday night and we got tired half way through. We just stopped it there and watched the second half on a Saturday night one week later.
Neither of us had seen Apocalypse Now before. Hell of a movie!
I did this with the LOTR trilogy recently. Excellent experience. There’s definitely spots where it made sense to pause depending on how much time I had to spare. Watching it in 45-90 minute chunks and stopping at logical transitions made it feasible and enjoyable for me
That’s pretty much what I do with streaming stuff as well. Long movies and sometimes show eps.
Yes, I know you can pause movies on your TV, and sometimes that’s how I watch them. I think it takes something away from the movie by watching it in segments, but maybe that’s just me.
And then you end up on binging 4episodes and the film would have been shorter.