Why are most movies 120 minutes (or more)?

R

rc444

Well-known member
Hi everyone,

I've noticed that most movies are two hours or more. Sure, there are a few under that, but as a general rule of thumb, 75% seem to be 120 minutes minimum. Will an audience remember a 120+ minute movie better than say a 90 minute effort -- is that why they do it? Or is it purely an advertising formality a two hour movie? How come we don't see the 90 minute film very much?

What about the rule that says in screenwriting you are only allowed to submit scripts of 110 pages long? If that's true, how come many movies are over two hours? Good to get everyone's thoughts...

Thanks
rc444
 
A friend of mine used to look at the length of a feature and if it were less than 110 minutes he could tell it wasn't any good. I can't say the same but it takes a certain amount of time to tell a story and get the viewer involved.
 
I think that the increasing length indicates a lack of discipline and care about the form. Anything over two hours is too long. It's hard to cut but when I see a movie is 2 hours or more I think twice about going at all. I think that the discipline to keep a movie under 110 shows the ability to tell a story in a movie. There are exceptions but most movies that work that are excruciatingly long would be better cut down, in my opinion.
 
Some movies I see that go well beyond the " old" 90 minutes time frame are very much in love with themselves. They seem to me often as still somewhat interesting but also as overweight primadonnas that take too much space in time and do not want to leave stage. As usual there is no rule. And especially for comedies to be longer than 100 minutes is not really that advisable. I like at time epic fat ladies like Ariane Mnouchkine's "Moliere". But I start missing clear cut stories and movies that are a bit more speedy.
 
Hitchcock said he length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder. I miss the shorter keep-it-simple stuff... lots of movies these days have to slow a tempo, and wander too far off the main story path. All IMHO of course, and with lots of exceptions.
 
hasnt there been a trend since early 2000s of them getting longer? i would swear prior to around that time everything was 2 hours or under. now its all 2.5 hours and up. I mean youve got Judd apatow movies clocking in at 2:30. what the hell?
 
I'm sure there's some kind of Hollywood mathematical formula for how long a movie needs to be to satisfy an audience, maximize showings per day, and how many concessions the theater can sell, resulting in the average length.
 
GONE WITH THE WIND - 1939; 238-minutes plus intermission. Obviously destined to be a flop.
Only the story, cast, cinematography, lighting, wardrobe, sets, editing saved it.
 
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When I was a young man in Copenhagen, the cinemas had new shows every two hours 5-7-9-11, unless the odd longer movie played, called all night show.
 
I read somewhere where 100 minutes was considered the optimum running time from the theatrical exhibitors' point of view. At that length, the theaters can schedule a show every two hours and still have plenty of time to get people in and out, get the auditorium cleaned and have time for trailers. However, that short of a running time is hard to come by. I don't know why exactly, but I think it is getting a little out of hand really. A two and a half hour comic book movie just seems to me to be kind of ridiculous in most instances. Whether the running time is appropriate really depends on the movie.

I have been watching some of the genre pictures on Roger Corman's new subscription YouTube Channel, Corman's Drive In

http://www.youtube.com/user/cormansdrivein?feature

Most all of the films are under 90 minutes in length and I have to admit that watching them is kind of a breath of fresh air and has been a bit of a learning experience. The movies are what they are, exploitation films from the git-go, but I really am becoming impressed by the very tight story telling/narrative structure the movies have. For the most part I find them very entertaining. I think there is a lot to learn there for independent filmmakers. Get in, set up the story quick and get on with it. I like that. It is not for every film, but I think that is appropriate for a lot more movies than a lot of movie makers realize.
 
David G. Smith said:
I have been watching some of the genre pictures on Roger Corman's new subscription YouTube Channel, Corman's Drive In

http://www.youtube.com/user/cormansdrivein?feature

Most all of the films are under 90 minutes in length and I have to admit that watching them is kind of a breath of fresh air and has been a bit of a learning experience.
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Pop quiz... what's the average time from parking till Johnny Rocket-in-the-Pocket 'goes for the gold with Sally Sue'? ... 90 minutes... gives Sally Sue the option of going for popcorn, or continue to fog up the windows... that or Mary Jane and Billy Joe, who have been sitting in the front seat, silently, seethingly, well mostly on Joe's part having lost the flip of the coin for sitting in the back seat with Sally Sue, to exit the car and take the bus home, or walk... depending on location...

But on a more serious note... I looked at the 'average movie run times' a while ago, and it seems that there was a steady rise to somewhere about the late-30 to 40's (perhaps shorter during the war as 'nitrate' may have become a limited war material...), but after WWII the average was between 100-120 minutes. Certain genres of course had shorter times, and there were also more 'double' features in single screen theaters.

But the 'blockbusters' of yore were frequently 'longish'... from IMDB...

"Around the World in 80 Days"(1956) 173 min (mostly travelogue scenery shots...)
"Bridge Over the River Kwai"(1957) 161 min (including Col. Bogie whistlers...)

From a entirely previous generation... or two...

"Birth of a Nation"(1915) 165 min. (including KKKler's charging around...)
"Intolerance"(1916) 197 min (including sentimental heart yanking...)

Similar vintage but from 'foreign sources'...

"Metropolis"(1927) 153 min (Including Robogirl's dance number...) (don't know if this is the original runtime or the various 'cut' versions...)

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The 'reason' perhaps for the shorter film run time was perhaps due to the 'lack' of alternative home entertainment that TV provided with short 30 minute serials (which had all but disappeared by the end of the 40's along with news reels and cartoons...), as well as the hour long TV competed against the 'shorter' movie lengths...

So it would seem that along with the wide screen format, run length may have also been a 'differentiating' element.
 
Well, up until the middle to late 1950's I believe that most theaters offered double bills along with news reels, cartoons, comedy shorts and serials as an evenings entertainment so I am sure that had an influence on the running times of features, outside of the epics noted above. The Drive Ins also specialized in double bills with a similar impact I'm sure.
 
REDS (1981) : 195 minutes
Ghandi (1982) : 191 minutes
The Right Stuff (1983) : 193 minutes

...I doubt that many people saw any of these at the drive in. :-)
 
Well, as a kid, I saw "The Sound of Music", with a running time of 174 minutes, at the drive in... Well, I fell asleep half way through actually. I don't remember it being part of a double bill.
 
David G. Smith said:
Well, as a kid, I saw "The Sound of Music", with a running time of 174 minutes, at the drive in... Well, I fell asleep half way through actually. I don't remember it being part of a double bill.
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I saw the "Sound of Music"(1965), when it was in theaters, at a church social... "'cuz theaters were dens of iniquity"... on a 16mm rental print... which meant there was no 'clean' alternations between one projector to another... Same for "A Man for All Seasons"(1966)... While I didn't fall asleep for either of the, in the case of "A Man for All Seasons", my most memorable moment was when I overheard one of the nice church ladies asking another nice church lady... "Why did they show a movie about Catholics?"... but I digress...
 
TheDingo said:
I expect this "re-imagining" of it won't run 3 hours, if it ever gets made... ;-)
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"The Hills are alive with the sound of Vampires"!!!

As noted there have always been epics, roadshow and tent-pole pictures with longer running times. What I really don't understand is why almost every "High Concept" genre flick now made (Which is dang near all that Hollywood produces these days) seems to be well over two hours in running time. I still really enjoy going to see movies at the theater. I have two second run, low cost theaters, near by and a couple of very cool art house venues (Including the GREAT Detroit Film Theater at the Detroit Institute of Arts) very near my home. I hate to admit it but, being busy like every one else, I do take into consideration the running time of a film when choosing one to go see. I am rarely available to see a movie during the week until after 7:30PM and going to a flick that is much longer than more than 2 hours makes for a late night that my old bones have a hard time pulling off these days. This is even a consideration on weekends when the demands on time are sometimes equally as constraining as during the week. This even extends to Netflix streaming and delivered discs. For example, I have wanted to see the movie "Enter The Void" for quit a while now but with a running time of 161 minutes it has become lower and lower on my flicks to get to list. I guess that most mainstream movies made are responding to the increase in competition from all the other forms of entertainment that is out there by trying to be bigger and correspondingly longer. I can't help but think that there is an element of diminishing returns to this strategy. Yes, the films are bigger, but they ask for a larger commitment of time in a faster paced, busy world.
 
David G. Smith said:
"The Hills are alive with the sound of Vampires"!!!

As noted there have always been epics, roadshow and tent-pole pictures with longer running times. What I really don't understand is why almost every "High Concept" genre flick now made (Which is dang near all that Hollywood produces these days) seems to be well over two hours in running time.
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Obviously I can only conjecture, but I think at this point 2 hours still is a defferentiating element of 'stay home watch TV', free, or 'go to the movies, spend $25'...

I do agree that some comedies probably could do with cuts to closer to 90 minutes, because for some, it seems like the joke stream sort of fizzled at about 100 minutes...

I also don't mind some of the 'installment' type films such as the "Lord of the Rings" series, where 'we knew...' there would be 3 installments, at about 2-3 hours each... I just don't like 'waiting around a year' for the next installment... (that goes for the "Game of Thrones" as well... which is the only cable content I've even remotely been interested in watching 'real time' rather than waiting for the DVD/BD release...).

But for several 'tentpole' film series, like "Harry Potter", and Nolan's "Batman", the Wife and I did go to the marathons that were available. For HP the marathon was over several nights, two movies each, starting at about 6 pm, until the final night when at 12:01 the final installment ran... The Batman series was done in one night starting at 6 pm, letting out at about 3 am as I recall...

We were going to do the same for Star Trek recently, but the first installment was not captioned so we saw 'The Great Gatsby'(2013) instead, then relocated to the other theater for "Star Trek: Into Darkness".

As it is we don't have any second run theaters in our area any more. The nearest 'art house' theater is about 40 miles away, and that is sort of a barrier to seeing films there.
 
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