I have no qualms with a long movie. If the story is great I want to live in that world for as long as possible. A 95 min movie can feel like an eternity (good or bad) and a 3 hour movie can fly by and leave you wanting more.
The problem, as I see it, is unfocused storytelling.
It starts with a good screenplay that is focused, concise, and well paced. Shoot more than you need to tell the story, then edit out everything that's not 100% necessary. Be lean and purposeful in your story. A great screenplay will service everything in the story with great economy. Great scenes will serve two or more purposes, develop the story, and - when they're really great - make you lose all sense of time.
Many films are full of sprawling superfluous plots that don't amount to much. I feel this most during certain blockbuster films that are packed to the gills with spectacular set pieces, have three separate "emotional" climaxes, and somehow fail to stick the landing. When these elements are poorly balanced or overcooked they feel like a slog.
I would not phrase the means of approaching best length as "edit out everything that's not 100% necessary" but as something more like "make every scene count/pull more than its weight". The former, to my mind, tends to associate with small goals and a pure utilitarianism that falls short of excellence. I doubt you meant anything like that.
I certainly agree that "Great scenes will server two or more purposes". A scene can advance the plot, display who the characters are and who they may become, foreshadow or rationalize future plot elements (or present red herrings), introduce worldbuilding depth, manage the emotional state of the audience (comic relief is a simple example), etc. I would not be surprised if a great scene can also so elevate other scenes that its relative greatness may be less obvious because it makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts in isolation.
I very rarely watch movies (even less often in a theater) and I do not have a drama or fiction writing background, but even a "little learning" about the theory hints that bulk is easier to achieve than extensive excellence.
Easy disagree from me. I could watch a movie like Das Boot if it was twice the already lengthy 4+ hours. Not to mention the 4-part Count of Monte Cristo among other more obvious ones like LOTR.
Movies you watch in theatres are one thing. It’s uncomfortable, you can’t pause it, you can’t contemplate it, there’s people all around you. It’s not an immersive experience despite a big screen.
So not all movies are best seen in a theatre. And the ones that aren’t are probably not long enough.
> It’s not an immersive experience despite a big screen.
Thank you for this statement. I have struggled for years to enunciate why I don’t enjoy movies in theaters anymore, and all the distractions and inconveniences truly do remove my immersion.
Last week we were in Vegas and saw The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere. I saw the movie many times as a child, but I was blown away at how short it was. Maybe that's a product of the shorter attention spans we have when we are younger, so it felt longer then, but it was apparent at how quick and clear the story telling was then.
I think people underestimate the loss of physical media in general and video stores in particular.
Physical media use to account for half of a films eventual gross. Some films even did better. See every cult classic (Office Space comes to mind easily).
When you’re making films that have to be produced for second run distribution on physical media they had to fit on VHS cassette.
Studio VHS production ended in 2006. Netflix VOD began in 2007. At that point the length of your film stopped mattering. It took a few more years for studios and directors to realize it, but that was the actual end of economic constraints.
As I push on 40, I no longer go to the cinema for anything over 2h. I hardly ever go anyway, but if it's over 2h, I'll wait for it on streaming. No point in missing some parts of it in the middle.
Hard disagree about declarative "X is Y". It's a failure of weakening attention span. There are plenty of excellent long movies:
- Once Upon a Time in America (1984) 3:49
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 3:47
- The Irishman (2019) 3:29
- Malcolm X (1992) 3:22
- The Godfather Part II (1974) 3:22
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) 3:21
- Schindler's List (1992) 3:15
- Gandhi (1982) 3:11
- The Green Mile (1999) 3:09
- The Deer Hunter (1978) 3:03
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) 2:59
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) 2:58
- Casino (1995) 2:58
- Braveheart (1995) 2:58
- The Godfather (1972) 2:55
- Django Unchained (2012) 2:45
What I most object to is lazy storytelling for lazy, second-screen audiences lacking in style and subtlety having a robotic, spoon-fed, infantile, unnatural, expository narration quality in every character like it's a commercial for an antacid.
I have no qualms with a long movie. If the story is great I want to live in that world for as long as possible. A 95 min movie can feel like an eternity (good or bad) and a 3 hour movie can fly by and leave you wanting more.
The problem, as I see it, is unfocused storytelling.
It starts with a good screenplay that is focused, concise, and well paced. Shoot more than you need to tell the story, then edit out everything that's not 100% necessary. Be lean and purposeful in your story. A great screenplay will service everything in the story with great economy. Great scenes will serve two or more purposes, develop the story, and - when they're really great - make you lose all sense of time.
Many films are full of sprawling superfluous plots that don't amount to much. I feel this most during certain blockbuster films that are packed to the gills with spectacular set pieces, have three separate "emotional" climaxes, and somehow fail to stick the landing. When these elements are poorly balanced or overcooked they feel like a slog.
I would not phrase the means of approaching best length as "edit out everything that's not 100% necessary" but as something more like "make every scene count/pull more than its weight". The former, to my mind, tends to associate with small goals and a pure utilitarianism that falls short of excellence. I doubt you meant anything like that.
I certainly agree that "Great scenes will server two or more purposes". A scene can advance the plot, display who the characters are and who they may become, foreshadow or rationalize future plot elements (or present red herrings), introduce worldbuilding depth, manage the emotional state of the audience (comic relief is a simple example), etc. I would not be surprised if a great scene can also so elevate other scenes that its relative greatness may be less obvious because it makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts in isolation.
I very rarely watch movies (even less often in a theater) and I do not have a drama or fiction writing background, but even a "little learning" about the theory hints that bulk is easier to achieve than extensive excellence.
Easy disagree from me. I could watch a movie like Das Boot if it was twice the already lengthy 4+ hours. Not to mention the 4-part Count of Monte Cristo among other more obvious ones like LOTR.
Movies you watch in theatres are one thing. It’s uncomfortable, you can’t pause it, you can’t contemplate it, there’s people all around you. It’s not an immersive experience despite a big screen.
So not all movies are best seen in a theatre. And the ones that aren’t are probably not long enough.
> It’s not an immersive experience despite a big screen.
Thank you for this statement. I have struggled for years to enunciate why I don’t enjoy movies in theaters anymore, and all the distractions and inconveniences truly do remove my immersion.
> multiple grownup movies opening widely at the same time (“Demolition Man,”
I've never heard Demolition Man described as a grownup movie before.
If a movie is well made then it is as long or as short as it needs to be. If it isn't then it's not.
Last week we were in Vegas and saw The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere. I saw the movie many times as a child, but I was blown away at how short it was. Maybe that's a product of the shorter attention spans we have when we are younger, so it felt longer then, but it was apparent at how quick and clear the story telling was then.
The Sphere version of WoZ is intentionally shorter. It is 75 minutes, compared to the original's 101 minutes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz_at_Sphere
I think people underestimate the loss of physical media in general and video stores in particular.
Physical media use to account for half of a films eventual gross. Some films even did better. See every cult classic (Office Space comes to mind easily).
When you’re making films that have to be produced for second run distribution on physical media they had to fit on VHS cassette.
Studio VHS production ended in 2006. Netflix VOD began in 2007. At that point the length of your film stopped mattering. It took a few more years for studios and directors to realize it, but that was the actual end of economic constraints.
As I push on 40, I no longer go to the cinema for anything over 2h. I hardly ever go anyway, but if it's over 2h, I'll wait for it on streaming. No point in missing some parts of it in the middle.
Hard disagree about declarative "X is Y". It's a failure of weakening attention span. There are plenty of excellent long movies:
- Once Upon a Time in America (1984) 3:49
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 3:47
- The Irishman (2019) 3:29
- Malcolm X (1992) 3:22
- The Godfather Part II (1974) 3:22
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) 3:21
- Schindler's List (1992) 3:15
- Gandhi (1982) 3:11
- The Green Mile (1999) 3:09
- The Deer Hunter (1978) 3:03
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) 2:59
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) 2:58
- Casino (1995) 2:58
- Braveheart (1995) 2:58
- The Godfather (1972) 2:55
- Django Unchained (2012) 2:45
What I most object to is lazy storytelling for lazy, second-screen audiences lacking in style and subtlety having a robotic, spoon-fed, infantile, unnatural, expository narration quality in every character like it's a commercial for an antacid.
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