Movies and TV Shows
General discussion about movies and TV shows.
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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.
From the data, it looks like average lengths have gone down since about 2004, so this year may just be an anomaly.
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.
I'm finding harder to even find 90m horror films to watch on Halloween. Used to be every horror film was 90m lol.
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.
Personally I don’t think that’s the point at all. Even if there are multiple episodes of a show watched in the same day, there are 2 things missing from movies that make shows considerably more appealing.
The first is that with shows, you already know this is just buildup of more story, so if it’s slow or character development lags, as long as you are still into it, it’s fine, they have so much time to tell the story and develop everything fully. Movies, unless planned as multi-release franchises, rarely have this going for them. It has to engage you enough to want to slam down 2 hours of time upfront. Most movies fail spectacularly to build their characters enough for me to want to drop that sort of time on the nothingpotato predictable ending, but I’ll gladly do so with shows.
The second is flexibility. If you want to watch 4 episodes that are 30 min, you can, but you can also choose to stop after 2 if it isn’t holding your interest or you want to do something else. You can pause a movie that isn’t engaging you enough and come back later, but let’s be real, we all know how that turns out 85+% of the time..
It's getting to the point where they need an intermission.
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!
I would advocate for the return of intermissions! Theater chains would love it, because it would mean more concessions.
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.
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).
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!
On the other hand, I can watch Lawrence of Arabia (year 1958, 222 minutes) without a problem.
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.
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.
Good. Maybe people will actually pay attention then.
I think it may be because of all of the high quality shows and films on streaming sites that people are beginning to appreciate nuance again. It's also perhaps a backlash against short form content on TikTok and YouTube.
push back from theaters saying it was too long and made it difficult to have a lot of showtimes
So with the volume of theatre goers and the rise of streaming and VOD revenue this is less of an issue
I mean, if they can justify their lenght go for it. The problem is when movies overstay their welcome.
They have to differentiate from long Tv show episodes. Some TV show episodes are over 2 hours long already. @chickenwing
I watched the godfather for the first time a few months ago.
It might still be playing.
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 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.
Fewer people going? So they don’t have to squeeze as many screenings in as before? 🤷♂️
Most animated films clock in around 70 minutes traditionally.
Looks like I'm just never watching the right movies. My default understanding is that a movie will be 2hrs long, give or take 12 minutes for the credits. It's felt like they've been trending shorter to me for about a decade now, and I've not been happy about it. Renfield was shockingly good compared to what I expected it to be, but even then, the character development could really have benefitted a lot from that missing 30 minutes.
If you have the story to fill the runtime, it's great. Give me bang for my buck.
I've noticed that over the years without actually making a list like that. I don't know why the trend is moving to longer movies, I could guess. Maybe film makers are trying to give people more for their money with the high cost of theater tickets. Or maybe it's because more people watch from home where length is less of an issue. You don't have to watch a film in one sitting.
Keep in mind when movies are made there's a lot of footage that ends up on the cutting room floor. I've noticed these longer movies are more liberal with the editing. They have a good amount of footage that simply doesn't need to be there. Could be they're including less relevant scenes due to more relaxed requirements from producers.
I've always thought you could take a six hour mini-series and boil it down to a two hour movie. It's all a matter of editing and most of the time less is more.
Oh, the first time I saw a two part theatre release was Matrix 2. That made me so angry because they left it hanging like a serial TV episode. I went to the theatre for that one and paid the premium. I was really mad I paid my nickel and was left hanging like that. I still watched the the third release, but at home following the second one. By the time the third was out and came to DVD, I didn't remember the second. It was basically a five hour movie.
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.