Movies Are Getting Longer - And I’m Worried
I went to the movie theater for the first time since the massive Barbenheimer event to see Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Based on true events happening to the Osage people of Oklahoma in the 1920s, I was excited for a movie that had unearthed a buried story focusing on an underrepresented group in the media landscape. Plus, Scorsese was a great director to take this kind of project on.
It was what I expected from a Scorsese film: great acting, beautiful cinematography, a well-executed tone, storylines that bloom gradually, and a subject that truly seemed to matter to the director. I was especially impressed by Lily Gladstone’s performance, who could’ve easily been overshadowed by DiCaprio and De Niro.
The theater experience, however, was quite modest in capacity. Besides myself, there were perhaps three other parties watching the movie. Keep in mind that this was a discount ticket day after work hours.
This may be partly attributed to Killers of the Flower Moon’s daunting 3-hour, 26-minute runtime. It at least turned my brother and his girlfriend off from joining me in the theater. Defending its length, Scorsese asserted that “you can sit in front of the TV and watch something for five hours. Also, there are many people who watch theater for 3.5 hours. There are real actors on stage, you can’t get up and walk around.”
So, if we can sit around watching a play that grants a midway intermission, or binge a TV show that we can pause and passively watch at our leisure, then surely we can shut up and watch Killers of the Flower Moon on the big screen. Yet that’s just it. We’re not talking about live theater, or a show on Netflix. We’re talking about an industry forced to change significantly because of a pandemic, generational economic factors, the rising prevalence of streaming services, and the historic WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike. According to this Gallup study, Americans averaged seeing 1.4 films per person in 2021, compared to the 4.6 average of 2001–2007. Furthermore, inconsistent 2023 box office numbers that still haven’t reached pre-COVID levels further prove that theater attendance continues to be a problem.
In principle, I agree with Scorsese. Films should be valued as the culturally significant, labor-intensive art form that they are. In that respect, cinemas are doing more to make movies an “event” akin to the longer films of the Golden Age. Everything has to be a billion-dollar blockbuster. Everything is a must-watch. Don’t just see this on Netflix. Go to the theater.
Which is why the amount of films longer than 120 minutes getting widespread marketing attention and award recognition seems to be rising. Looking at an IMDb sampling of films released in 2023, about 43% run longer than 2 hours. Through the decades, top-grossing movie data finds a staggering 19-minute average runtime increase just in the past eleven years. It becomes more objectively noticeable when eight of the ten Best Picture Oscar nominees of 2023 are over two hours in length. Furthermore, three of these eight — Avatar: The Way of Water, Top Gun: Maverick, and Elvis — were blockbusters.
Keep in mind that well-marketed movies generally go directly to streaming shortly after their theatrical run. The 2023 Best Picture nominees, for example, were all available to stream before the Academy Awards ceremony. The three-hour TÁR was made available for free on Peacock three months after its theatrical debut. All Quiet on the Western Front was essentially exclusive to Netflix, making its 2-hour, 27-minute experience more like a TV show viewing than a live theater event.
Until technology makes something perhaps even more convenient available, cinemas will always have to compete with the “I’ll wait until it’s streaming” crowd. In fact, given that streaming services depend so strongly on viewing minutes, longer runtimes would likely be more valued.
Seeing that Killers of the Flower Moon is an Apple Original film, it wouldn’t surprise me if a suit at Apple actively encouraged (if not outright fought for) the film’s longer runtime. Despite Scorsese insisting that viewers see Killers of the Flower Moon in theaters, let’s not pretend that it’s almost equally meant for streaming. The same could be said for Scorsese’s previous film, The Irishman, which was distributed by Netflix. These aren’t faults. I think Scorsese is recognizing how the film industry is changing and is adapting to it wisely.
But longer runtimes aren’t necessarily helping theaters. If anything, I think they’re hurting them. The only solution I can think of is to stop treating streaming services like a cinema equivalent. Looking at the Barbenheimer phenomenon, Oppenheimer didn’t start streaming until November 2023 while Barbie was available for digital purchase on Amazon in September. This is appropriate given Oppenheimer’s heavily-marketed 70mm Imax appeal. Two things benefitted Oppenheimer by doing this: it gave viewers a better chance to essentially yearn for Oppenheimer after seeing it in theater, and it gave the “wait until streaming” crowd a longer, more inconvenient waiting period.
Finally, I think the film industry needs to reexamine the prestige of longer runtimes. If everything is a CGI blockbuster juggernaut, then nothing will be special enough to see in theaters.
