Are average movies getting longer & longer? (1 Viewer)

[WayneG]

A decade ago many lower budget foreign or independent films typically ran 80 minutes - which I guess is four reels.Very cost effective. Now, the same types of films seem to run 100-120 minutes, which may mean that with DVD there are more revenue streams and thus bigger budgets. Or film got a lot cheaper.

 

[Paul_Sjordal]

I'll have to agree with Dave Stark. It really doesn't matter how long a movie is.

If it's a good movie, then it won't matter how short or long it is. You'll still like it. If it's a bad movie, then watching it will be tortuous whether it's 70 minutes of torture or 180 minutes of torture.

I would prefer that movies be made as long as they need to be. Placing artificial restrictions on time is a bad thing. Remember Abyss? Cameron pretty much ruined his own movie by trying to bring it under an arbitrary time restriction. The ending of the theatrical release flat out didn't make any damn sense. Similarly, Cameron messed up the theatrical release of Aliens by removing the motherhood subtext (what I consider the most important theme of the movie). Again, this was done in the name of meeting an arbitrary time limit set by the studio.

 

[TommyT]

I gotta disagree with you a bit: I thought the orig vers of The Abyss was good, kept me on the edge of my seat for 2.5 hrs, BUT the expanded version is still better. Ditto T2. It is truly an injustice when a director is forced to shorten his own work but I think Cameron did a good job bringing the story in despite the orders of a few Gestapo studio execs. Terry Gilliam had the same problem w/Brazil & refused to back down.

Still, the best example I've seen of seamless expansion is Fellowship SEE on DVD.

 

[KyleK]

On the subject of The Abyss: If I remember correctly another reason they cut the ending down is that the suspended wave effects didn't work, so it still wouldn't have made any sense.

Kyle

 

[TommyT]

Hmmm, didn't know that. I'll have to check on it. That would make sense since the computer graphics probably weren't advanced enough to make realistic looking tidal waves in 1988. I'm sure that the animation of the water tentacle probably took over a year to fine tune so creating waves would've been just as challenging.

I'm gonna check the trivia feature on my copy of the DVD sometime soon. Maybe there's an explanation in that or one of the other bonuses.

 

[Bill J]

Coincidently I just watched the special edition version of The Abyss last night and I much prefer the theatrical ending.

The whole anti-war theme in the end was way too straightforward and preachy for me. I have heard that Cameron wanted to create 2001 in an underwater environment, but his revised ending was too narrow minded and was not thought provoking. I thought that the much more ambiguous ending of the theatrical version was far superior although neither are excellent.

 

[SteveGon]

What irks me is tripe like Armageddon, one of the worst films of the 90s; 2.5 hrs & amounts to nothing more than a lengthy music video. I swear there isn't a shot in that flick that's more than 5 seconds long! Roger Ebert called it the 1st 150 min trailer & he was right. Not to mention some of the worst writing, acting & direction I've ever seen.

 

[James Edward]

I agree.

The title of this thread should should have italics:

Are Average Movies Getting Longer & Longer

I could be wrong, but if taken strictly at face value, the answer, I believe, is yes. So, if average movies are getting longer, and David Leans, Hitchcocks, etc., are few and far between, it seems that plots and characters are stretched way too thin. James Bond is a long running franchise that may or may not be relevant:

Dr. No- 110 min.
From Russia With Love- 115 min.
Goldfinger- 112 min.

Goldeneye- 130 min.
The World Is Not Enough- 128 min.
Die Another Day- 136 min.
On average, 20 minutes of added absurdity.

This is apples to oranges comparison, but:
Tora! Tora! Tora!- 144 min.
Pearl Harbor- 183 min.
40 extra minutes of...

I don't feel cheated if a movie is only 90 minutes long but adequately tells its story. Too many movies today, IMO, have delusions of grandeur.

 

[TommyT]

Actually, it was a quasi-mediocre battle surrounded by 2.5 hrs of cliched tripe: Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy's best friend is jealous as hell (possible homeoerotic subplot there), boy's best friend romances girl while boy is off fighting someplace else, boy dies in final scene, boy's friend promises to take care of girl & boy's son forever. The end.

Predictable. Replace some of the 'boys' with 'overbearing father' & you have Armageddon. Insert a sinking ship & you have Titanic. It's all been done before & in many cases, better.

I've always felt this way about Scent of a Woman: 2 hrs 45 mins. They could've streamlined it by at least 30.

 

[Mitch Stevens]

I tend to agree that if a movie is EXTREMELY long, it's certainly not that it's more well developed, it could be, that they added a whole bunch of unnecessary scenes and made it drag out way too long.

The Hulk is one of the worst offenders. It was WAY too long, and boring. I hated it!

X2, while I LOVE X-Men, and it's sequel, it was just WAY too long, and really dragged in some places. It could have done without so many sub-plots, and it would have been perfect.

T3! Oh my gosh! Nothing but the same thing over and over and over. The Terminatrix was un-defeatable, we get that already, but do we really need to see her fighting for 10 hours straight, just so we KNOW that nothing can stop her??? Damn, I wish that movie would have been an hour shorter! Still, I must say that I enjoyed it much more than T2, but it just drags on, and on, with exactly the same thing, over and over.

Keep in mind, that length has nothing to do with me liking a film or not. If a film is done properly, it can be extremely enjoyable (Lord Of The Rings). Usually though, movies just add completely unnecessary scenes JUST to make the movie longer, and that's when I get angry!

Pearl Harbor is a film that I enjoy immensely! I have watched it 11 times, and am about to watch it tonight again! The 3 hours that it lasts, seems like it goes by in 1 hour! I love it to death, and wish it was even longer!

 

[Shane S.]

First post so bear with me.

I've been noticing the same thing about movies seeming to be longer lately, but it strikes me more like this..on average there are more 2.5 to 3 hour movies being released and its done simply for the sake of releasing a 2.5 to 3 movie. Of course there are exceptions but alot of the "longer" movies lately have been quanity not quality. And its all really dictated by the idea of making money. In the past studios would cut movie times so they could get more viewings in a day and hence get more money. Now the idea is offer up a a "Blockbuster" 2-3 hour "epic". More people will want to watch and we'll sell more tickets and get more money. Its a shame because it makes it hard for you to know whats good and what isn't when you spend your 10 dollars.

As a non-directional reply to some posts i've read...

Comic book movies can be long but don't need to be, Dare Devil seemed rushed to me so did the first X-MEN. Comic books also tend to have alot of drama to them so should be more than a cliche action-flick. 10 minutes of the Hulk was too long IMO.

Scent of a Woman is one of my favorite movies wouldn't change a thing.

Pirates... too long but still kind of entertaining.

LOTR - I'd sit through them both (so far) and still want more (even if I made the mistake of getting the xtra large soda)

Glad to be here,
Shane

 

[ChuckSolo]

Personally I like longer movies. With the price you pay nowadays for the movie and refreshments, bang for the buck is great IMHO. I went to the movies a couple of weeks ago, alone and during the day to a matinee. By the time I left there I had spent $17.00! I got the matinee discounted movie ticket, small popcorn, a large soda and a hot dog. Darn right I want to see a movie longer than 90 minutes for that price. Imagine if my wife went with me, it would have been almost 40 bucks.

 

[Chris Lynch]

As a general rule, I agree with those who say a great movie is a great movie, regardless of running time. There is only one factor relating to running time that I notice, which is:

90 minutes of A+ material is really good, 180 minutes is even better

90 minutes of F- material is really bad, 180 minutes is even worse

That being said, I would like to see the return of the intermission for the really long films. I NEVER can resist the X-tra large coke.

It really does depend on the material at hand. Phone Booth was only 80 minutes long, and I thought it was perfect. But I also like a good three hour epic as much as anyone, I really feel transported with those films.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> It's not a matter of how long, but what you do with what you got.

Are we still talking about movies?

 

[SteveP]

While in production with the 1935 version of DAVID COPPERFIELD producer David O. Selznick was asked, "How long can we make it?" His reply: "How long is it good?"

Some years later, after producing the nearly four hour long GONE WITH THE WIND, Selznick took pleasure in pointing out that his release immediately preceding it, INTERMEZZO, ran only 70 minutes.