Cinema Chief Pleads With Directors To Make Shorter Movies

[Danja]

Cinema Chief Pleads With Directors To Make Shorter Movies: “You’re Making The Film For An Audience”

Clare Binns, creative director of Cineworld-owned Picturehouse Cinemas, has claimed that film runtimes are a problem for audiences and cinemas.

deadline.com

This not the 1980s.

Given the advent of streaming, box office is no longer quite as important as it used to.be.

 

[Tosk]

Binns said longer films mean that theaters “only get one evening show,” which could hurt the revenue of some chains.

So basically, change your art in case it causes some cinemas make less.

How about no?

“I think it’s a wake-up call to directors. If they want their films in cinemas, people have to feel comfortable about what they’re committing to.”

What is a wake-up call? Her saying it? I doubt it.

Plus, I think the billion+ bucks that Fire and Ash has made with it's over three hour running time says that audiences are fine with it.

 

[Set Harth]

"Make movies shorter, and also restate the plot constantly for people unable to put their phone down all day"

how about **** off

 

[Owain Taggart]

They aren't wrong though. Movies have become bloated experiences. Not every movie needs to be a 2 and a half-hour+ epic. What often happens these days is that the runtimes don't benefit the stories being told, where they can benefit from tighter editing.

 

[Aragorn]

A good movie is as long or short as it needs to be. But when you watch something from Michael Bay or Zack Snyder when there's no oversight you can feel the bloat. Especially those Transformers sequels.

On the other end, when Top Gun was ruling the box office, Stallone willingly hacked his own movie Cobra into incoherent pieces just so they could squeeze one more show in per day.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

I can remember going to see Dances with Wolves and that movie had a fifteen minute intermission.
The movie didn't feel long.
I could say the same for Titanic.
It was exactly as long as it needed to be.
A good movie is never too long.
A bad movie is never too short.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Oh, shut up, Binns.

Though in JEANNE DIELMAN's case, he might be right.....

 

[Aragorn]

I can remember going to see Dances with Wolves and that movie had a fifteen minute intermission.

JFK was the only movie I saw in theaters that I can recall had an intermission.

 

[Owain Taggart]

A good movie is as long or short as it needs to be. But when you watch something from Michael Bay or Zack Snyder when there's no oversight you can feel the bloat. Especially those Transformers sequels.

Exactly. And there have been some movies where I've felt perhaps needed to be reigned in. And to be honest, I think sometimes the directors are not as efficient as they should be in putting something together.

Two and a half hour movies used to be quite rare, same with 3 hours. 90 Minutes (or 1hr 30min) used to be the standard. Now we seem to be hovering over 3 hours being normalized. For some people, that's an awful lot of time to be spending sitting down.

 

[Danja]

Two and a half hour movies used to be quite rare, same with 3 hours. 90 Minutes (or 1hr 30min) used to be the standard. Now we seem to be hovering over 3 hours being normalized. For some people, that's an awful lot of time to be spending sitting down.

I prefer streaming for that reason.

I can't sit for an extended period (It took me stopping and starting 3-4 times to get through Joker).

 

[Owain Taggart]

^Yes, there are definite benefits to streaming, in that you can handle the breaks on your own and watch things at your own pace.

But interestingly, streaming has also had a side-effect to having longer episodes. And I might be in the minority, but I find movie length episodes difficult to get through, for the simple reason that it's more of a time commitment.

 

[The Wormhole]

Four of the top five highest grossing films of all time are three hours long. Even the top five highest grossing when adjusted for inflation still includes four three hour films. Doesn't look to me like audiences have a problem with long movies.

 

[Starkers]

They aren't wrong though. Movies have become bloated experiences. Not every movie needs to be a 2 and a half-hour+ epic. What often happens these days is that the runtimes don't benefit the stories being told, where they can benefit from tighter editing.

This. I remember watching Blade Runner 2049 and when it ended I'd have happily sat in the cinema for another hour, so immersed was I in the world. Meanwhile other films have me rolling my eyes and wishing that the art of editing seems to be a lost art in some cases. Too many directors bloat their films, because they can.

One of my favourite films of last year was Soderbergh's Black Bag. A spy film with a convoluted plot, and multiple characters (all of whom felt genuine). It was 94 minutes long.

It's getting ridiculous that we now have action movies knocking on three hours' door. The first Mission Impossible was sub two hours, the last one was almost three hours.

It's the same with Bond films. Many of the Craig films were far too long. It'd be good to get back to that kind of taut thriller length of around two hours.

 

[The Wormhole]

I remember watching Blade Runner 2049 and when it ended I'd have happily sat in the cinema for another hour,

Whereas I felt Blade Runner 2049 didn't actually have to be three hours long. Granted, I had a bad theatre experience when I saw it, the theatre was packed, and I had to sit next to a, while I'll be polite and call him a large man who kept jabbing his elbow into my stomach. And the damnedest thing is, I genuinely believe it was unintentional. He was that large.

 

[Starkers]

Whereas I was in a very big, but underpopulated IMAX screen!

 

[BillJ]

Shorter films are going to save movie theaters. It is a declining industry that is simply a dinosaur now.