He's saying that his movie is so loosely written and edited that you can skip several minutes of it in the bathroom and it'll be fine? Ok... I'm not sure that's the flex you make it out to be. If...
He's saying that his movie is so loosely written and edited that you can skip several minutes of it in the bathroom and it'll be fine?
Ok... I'm not sure that's the flex you make it out to be. If you want that length, an intermission is the way to go.
I miss intermissions. The theater in my home town (single screen!) had this behemoth literal museum piece of a projector until a few years ago, and so intermissions were the norm well past when...
I miss intermissions. The theater in my home town (single screen!) had this behemoth literal museum piece of a projector until a few years ago, and so intermissions were the norm well past when everyone else switched to digital... I loved it for that, but apparently it got too expensive to run as film became more and more niche. The town had to do a drive to get them a digital projector so they wouldn't shut down. Anyway, everything had an intermission for changing reels or whatever, and it was awesome!
Movie theaters: I will easily double my food spend at your theater if you bring back intermissions for any movie longer than 2 hours. I don't now because I don't pay $50 to miss a bunch of stuff.
Movie theaters:
I will easily double my food spend at your theater if you bring back intermissions for any movie longer than 2 hours. I don't now because I don't pay $50 to miss a bunch of stuff.
Honestly I don’t get why they don’t do it. I figured the second shot at concessions sales would more than make up for reducing the number of screenings you can do, especially being as how there’s...
Honestly I don’t get why they don’t do it. I figured the second shot at concessions sales would more than make up for reducing the number of screenings you can do, especially being as how there’s only a few hours of peak capacity at showings anyway so how much are you really losing out on? Especially for super long movies?
That plus the mid-movie bathroom break opportunity might actually encourage more sales at the front end. Maybe not everyone is like me, but one of the reasons I don’t get drinks at the movies is specifically because I don’t want to have to pee in the middle.
Hey, James. Big fan, but two things: Your 3d Fern Gully FX reel came out a decade ago and the only thing that stood out was the obvious maguffin known as "unobtanium." We can pause a binge to take...
Hey, James. Big fan, but two things:
Your 3d Fern Gully FX reel came out a decade ago and the only thing that stood out was the obvious maguffin known as "unobtanium."
We can pause a binge to take a piss, but you'd better knock our socks off for three hours.
I actually sorta don't like how movies are getting longer. Back in the day, like the 70s, they would put an intermission in anything that was going to be super long. I'll fire up a Pixar movie and go "Sweet, only 90 minutes." I don't think an Avatar sequel can be entertaining for that long if we compare it to the first movie, and consider how bleh that story was once you didn't watch it in 3D.
This article from 2018 has an interesting breakdown on the lengths of movies over time. It's actually been somewhat stable since the mid-80s. However, it feels a lot of the big blockbusters have...
This article from 2018 has an interesting breakdown on the lengths of movies over time. It's actually been somewhat stable since the mid-80s.
However, it feels a lot of the big blockbusters have become longer over the past two decades. I found an article that calculated the average MCU movie is 2 hours and 12 minutes. I would have guessed the average was higher than that. But, if you look at the average lengths by "Phase", than they steadily increase over time.
My feeling has always been that a movie should be as long as it needs to be in order to tell the story it is trying to tell. Sometimes that's 90 minutes and sometimes it's 3 hours.
The people who think movies are getting longer do not watch enough old movies. 3-4 hour epics used to not be all that uncommon 60-70 years ago. And the people comparing long movies today to Lord...
The people who think movies are getting longer do not watch enough old movies. 3-4 hour epics used to not be all that uncommon 60-70 years ago.
And the people comparing long movies today to Lord of the Rings do not remember that their theatrical cuts were 3 hours, with extended cuts pushing 4. I don't know of any recent blockbusters pushing those runtimes.
MCU keeps hiding important stuff in/after the closing credits, so now everyone sits there through the credits, just in case, making every MCU movie feel 10 minutes longer than it is.
MCU keeps hiding important stuff in/after the closing credits, so now everyone sits there through the credits, just in case, making every MCU movie feel 10 minutes longer than it is.
That actually makes sense, and it was interesting to see that the averages were a bit higher in the 60s. I'd be curious about time in genre, but you sort of covered that with the longer...
That actually makes sense, and it was interesting to see that the averages were a bit higher in the 60s.
I'd be curious about time in genre, but you sort of covered that with the longer blockbusters, like the Marvel list. Interestingly, I think they're better examples of longer movies that do alright with the time. I might follow what that dude did and play with the data to see what's up.
That’s when studios would make lavish epics in order to compete with TV. Give people a reason to go out to the theater instead of watching everything at home.
and it was interesting to see that the averages were a bit higher in the 60s.
That’s when studios would make lavish epics in order to compete with TV. Give people a reason to go out to the theater instead of watching everything at home.
As an old man of 30, I just can't tell you how heavily I sigh with relief these days when I see that a film will be less than 2 hours long. Admittedly, I may have the attention span of someone a...
As an old man of 30, I just can't tell you how heavily I sigh with relief these days when I see that a film will be less than 2 hours long. Admittedly, I may have the attention span of someone a tenth of my age, but my bones start to tire after the 90 minute mark.
For me it's not even attention span, it's that they have a lot of dead air when they pass two hours, and tend to wrap in false endings where a plot ends, the dramatic music starts up and I sort of...
For me it's not even attention span, it's that they have a lot of dead air when they pass two hours, and tend to wrap in false endings where a plot ends, the dramatic music starts up and I sort of just groan and think "Here we go again." I'd rather be left with a feeling of "I want to spend more time in that world and learn about <stuff>" than "man, it's finally over."
The problem is everyone thinks their film is a Lord of the Rings. 90 minutes +- 30 is the best window for movie length. These days make it a miniseries if you need more time.
The problem is everyone thinks their film is a Lord of the Rings.
90 minutes +- 30 is the best window for movie length. These days make it a miniseries if you need more time.
So let me get this straight: it's okay for The Batman to have a 3 hour runtime with barely enough plot for an episode of Batman the Animated Series and also to be full of very long slow motion...
So let me get this straight: it's okay for The Batman to have a 3 hour runtime with barely enough plot for an episode of Batman the Animated Seriesand also to be full of very long slow motion shots, and people are already pissed with a science fiction that wasn't even released yet?
The Avatar-panic is pretty funny... The most hated movie that everyone loved somehow? Lol.
Surely James F* Cameron deserves a little more confidence.
It's all down to pacing, which is something Cameron seems to ignore here. While there is currently a whole Thing about movie and TV show runtimes in the greater conversation, it's the feel of...
It's all down to pacing, which is something Cameron seems to ignore here. While there is currently a whole Thing about movie and TV show runtimes in the greater conversation, it's the feel of length that's a longstanding criterion of media. Some 90 minute movies can feel too long, and some 3 hour movies can feel too short. Same with some 10 minute and 2 minute songs, or novels and novellas. Pacing is a key part of constructing media and there's most definitely an art to it.
But his specific complaint here is "Don't complain about a 3 hour movie when you can binge watch 5 hours of TV", which is... kind of insane coming from someone who is a director by profession. Surely he'd understand that TV episodes are tuned to have a full arc within the confines of each episode so of course people can and will keep going if afforded the opportunity, as opposed to a movie where a plodding experience can and will put people off mid-watch.
The missing context here is that one of the biggest complaints about the first Avatar movie is that it already felt too long for what it was. It's not due to the exact runtime but simply because many found the first movie to be slothlike in its pace, with lots of gearing up for the action scenes we already knew to expect. The Batman was a slow movie but it didn't feel overly long to many people, not in comparison to how people responded to the first Avatar.
I don't know how loud and constant the complaints about this movie (that isn't even out yet) have been for Cameron but without that context, it sounds like Cameron is already not open to any notes just yet based on the furor of this response (or is this a prescription?).
James Cameron makes long movies, but I wouldn't say any of them have been poorly paced. All these people making bold proclamations of Avatar 2's failure are oddly reminiscent of people who said...
James Cameron makes long movies, but I wouldn't say any of them have been poorly paced.
All these people making bold proclamations of Avatar 2's failure are oddly reminiscent of people who said the first would fail. Titanic was also famously expected to be a massive box office bomb. People just like underestimating James Cameron.
That's it, essentially. The guy is a master filmmaker, but "smart movie people" have something against melodrama from the guy who made T2. I can see how that makes people frustrated, it's as if...
People just like underestimating James Cameron.
That's it, essentially. The guy is a master filmmaker, but "smart movie people" have something against melodrama from the guy who made T2. I can see how that makes people frustrated, it's as if Dennis Villeneuve decided that from now on he'll only make screwball comedies. People would be frustrated even if he made excellent screwball comedies.
Titanic and Avatar are both superb melodrama (the first historic, the second sci-fi), but for many folks melodrama is inherently inferior. The reason why Avatar rattles so many people is not because it's bad, but rather because it dares to be an extremely costly, high-quality version of something they consider trivial, unworthy, and unoriginal. Like a hotdog that costs one thousand dollars.
Went and saw Avatar 1 in the largest 3D Imax I could find on release. It was beautiful...but incredibly boring. I immediately stopped caring about anything Cameron was doing because it was quite...
Went and saw Avatar 1 in the largest 3D Imax I could find on release.
It was beautiful...but incredibly boring. I immediately stopped caring about anything Cameron was doing because it was quite clear he's becoming another George Lucas.
I don't wanna pay $50 to have a snack and watch a tech demo.
People have been complaining about the runtimes of huge movies getting longer and longer for years, so I'm not quite sure what you mean. It's not like Avatar is being picked on here.
People have been complaining about the runtimes of huge movies getting longer and longer for years, so I'm not quite sure what you mean. It's not like Avatar is being picked on here.
The complaint makes little sense because movie runtimes have been pretty stable after peaking in the '60s. I think people just have shorter attention spans.
People have been complaining about the runtimes of huge movies getting longer and longer for years,
Here is a graph that pulls the average from only the 50 highest grossing films of each year. Here is the source for both graphs. As you can see, there does not seem to be much of a trend, just a...
Here is a graph that pulls the average from only the 50 highest grossing films of each year.
“I don’t want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch [television] for eight hours,” Cameron told the magazine. “I can almost write this part of the review. ‘The agonizingly long three-hour movie…’ It’s like, give me a fucking break. I’ve watched my kids sit and do five one-hour episodes in a row. Here’s the big social paradigm shift that has to happen: it’s okay to get up and go pee.”
“The trolls will have it that nobody gives a shit and they can’t remember the characters’ names or one damn thing that happened in the movie,” Cameron said. “Then they see the movie again and go, ‘Oh, okay, excuse me, let me just shut the fuck up right now.’ So I’m not worried about that.”
I was watching Stranger Things s4e7 a few days ago, and it suddenly dawned on me "hey, this is a movie." (This episode is 1h40m long for those who don't know.)
I was watching Stranger Things s4e7 a few days ago, and it suddenly dawned on me "hey, this is a movie." (This episode is 1h40m long for those who don't know.)
Episode 8 is a whopping 2 hours and 22 minutes! I've had to dodge spoilers for the last few days because my girlfriend and I don't have time to watch something that long. I can understand the long...
Episode 8 is a whopping 2 hours and 22 minutes! I've had to dodge spoilers for the last few days because my girlfriend and I don't have time to watch something that long. I can understand the long run time for episode 7 because there wasn't a good place to split it up, but there has to be a part to split things up for episode 8.
He's saying that his movie is so loosely written and edited that you can skip several minutes of it in the bathroom and it'll be fine?
Ok... I'm not sure that's the flex you make it out to be. If you want that length, an intermission is the way to go.
I miss intermissions. The theater in my home town (single screen!) had this behemoth literal museum piece of a projector until a few years ago, and so intermissions were the norm well past when everyone else switched to digital... I loved it for that, but apparently it got too expensive to run as film became more and more niche. The town had to do a drive to get them a digital projector so they wouldn't shut down. Anyway, everything had an intermission for changing reels or whatever, and it was awesome!
Movie theaters:
I will easily double my food spend at your theater if you bring back intermissions for any movie longer than 2 hours. I don't now because I don't pay $50 to miss a bunch of stuff.
Honestly I don’t get why they don’t do it. I figured the second shot at concessions sales would more than make up for reducing the number of screenings you can do, especially being as how there’s only a few hours of peak capacity at showings anyway so how much are you really losing out on? Especially for super long movies?
That plus the mid-movie bathroom break opportunity might actually encourage more sales at the front end. Maybe not everyone is like me, but one of the reasons I don’t get drinks at the movies is specifically because I don’t want to have to pee in the middle.
Hey, James. Big fan, but two things:
Your 3d Fern Gully FX reel came out a decade ago and the only thing that stood out was the obvious maguffin known as "unobtanium."
We can pause a binge to take a piss, but you'd better knock our socks off for three hours.
I actually sorta don't like how movies are getting longer. Back in the day, like the 70s, they would put an intermission in anything that was going to be super long. I'll fire up a Pixar movie and go "Sweet, only 90 minutes." I don't think an Avatar sequel can be entertaining for that long if we compare it to the first movie, and consider how bleh that story was once you didn't watch it in 3D.
This article from 2018 has an interesting breakdown on the lengths of movies over time. It's actually been somewhat stable since the mid-80s.
However, it feels a lot of the big blockbusters have become longer over the past two decades. I found an article that calculated the average MCU movie is 2 hours and 12 minutes. I would have guessed the average was higher than that. But, if you look at the average lengths by "Phase", than they steadily increase over time.
My feeling has always been that a movie should be as long as it needs to be in order to tell the story it is trying to tell. Sometimes that's 90 minutes and sometimes it's 3 hours.
The people who think movies are getting longer do not watch enough old movies. 3-4 hour epics used to not be all that uncommon 60-70 years ago.
And the people comparing long movies today to Lord of the Rings do not remember that their theatrical cuts were 3 hours, with extended cuts pushing 4. I don't know of any recent blockbusters pushing those runtimes.
MCU keeps hiding important stuff in/after the closing credits, so now everyone sits there through the credits, just in case, making every MCU movie feel 10 minutes longer than it is.
That actually makes sense, and it was interesting to see that the averages were a bit higher in the 60s.
I'd be curious about time in genre, but you sort of covered that with the longer blockbusters, like the Marvel list. Interestingly, I think they're better examples of longer movies that do alright with the time. I might follow what that dude did and play with the data to see what's up.
That’s when studios would make lavish epics in order to compete with TV. Give people a reason to go out to the theater instead of watching everything at home.
As an old man of 30, I just can't tell you how heavily I sigh with relief these days when I see that a film will be less than 2 hours long. Admittedly, I may have the attention span of someone a tenth of my age, but my bones start to tire after the 90 minute mark.
For me it's not even attention span, it's that they have a lot of dead air when they pass two hours, and tend to wrap in false endings where a plot ends, the dramatic music starts up and I sort of just groan and think "Here we go again." I'd rather be left with a feeling of "I want to spend more time in that world and learn about <stuff>" than "man, it's finally over."
The problem is everyone thinks their film is a Lord of the Rings.
90 minutes +- 30 is the best window for movie length. These days make it a miniseries if you need more time.
So let me get this straight: it's okay for The Batman to have a 3 hour runtime with barely enough plot for an episode of Batman the Animated Series and also to be full of very long slow motion shots, and people are already pissed with a science fiction that wasn't even released yet?
The Avatar-panic is pretty funny... The most hated movie that everyone loved somehow? Lol.
Surely James F* Cameron deserves a little more confidence.
It's all down to pacing, which is something Cameron seems to ignore here. While there is currently a whole Thing about movie and TV show runtimes in the greater conversation, it's the feel of length that's a longstanding criterion of media. Some 90 minute movies can feel too long, and some 3 hour movies can feel too short. Same with some 10 minute and 2 minute songs, or novels and novellas. Pacing is a key part of constructing media and there's most definitely an art to it.
But his specific complaint here is "Don't complain about a 3 hour movie when you can binge watch 5 hours of TV", which is... kind of insane coming from someone who is a director by profession. Surely he'd understand that TV episodes are tuned to have a full arc within the confines of each episode so of course people can and will keep going if afforded the opportunity, as opposed to a movie where a plodding experience can and will put people off mid-watch.
The missing context here is that one of the biggest complaints about the first Avatar movie is that it already felt too long for what it was. It's not due to the exact runtime but simply because many found the first movie to be slothlike in its pace, with lots of gearing up for the action scenes we already knew to expect. The Batman was a slow movie but it didn't feel overly long to many people, not in comparison to how people responded to the first Avatar.
I don't know how loud and constant the complaints about this movie (that isn't even out yet) have been for Cameron but without that context, it sounds like Cameron is already not open to any notes just yet based on the furor of this response (or is this a prescription?).
James Cameron makes long movies, but I wouldn't say any of them have been poorly paced.
All these people making bold proclamations of Avatar 2's failure are oddly reminiscent of people who said the first would fail. Titanic was also famously expected to be a massive box office bomb. People just like underestimating James Cameron.
That's it, essentially. The guy is a master filmmaker, but "smart movie people" have something against melodrama from the guy who made T2. I can see how that makes people frustrated, it's as if Dennis Villeneuve decided that from now on he'll only make screwball comedies. People would be frustrated even if he made excellent screwball comedies.
Titanic and Avatar are both superb melodrama (the first historic, the second sci-fi), but for many folks melodrama is inherently inferior. The reason why Avatar rattles so many people is not because it's bad, but rather because it dares to be an extremely costly, high-quality version of something they consider trivial, unworthy, and unoriginal. Like a hotdog that costs one thousand dollars.
Well, I'm 1000% one of those people that found it incredibly long 🤷♀️
Went and saw Avatar 1 in the largest 3D Imax I could find on release.
It was beautiful...but incredibly boring. I immediately stopped caring about anything Cameron was doing because it was quite clear he's becoming another George Lucas.
I don't wanna pay $50 to have a snack and watch a tech demo.
People have been complaining about the runtimes of huge movies getting longer and longer for years, so I'm not quite sure what you mean. It's not like Avatar is being picked on here.
The complaint makes little sense because movie runtimes have been pretty stable after peaking in the '60s. I think people just have shorter attention spans.
I'd like to see this graph weighted by percentage of box office receipts.
Here is a graph that pulls the average from only the 50 highest grossing films of each year.
Here is the source for both graphs.
As you can see, there does not seem to be much of a trend, just a really spiky graph hovering around 110 minutes.
I was watching Stranger Things s4e7 a few days ago, and it suddenly dawned on me "hey, this is a movie." (This episode is 1h40m long for those who don't know.)
Episode 8 is a whopping 2 hours and 22 minutes! I've had to dodge spoilers for the last few days because my girlfriend and I don't have time to watch something that long. I can understand the long run time for episode 7 because there wasn't a good place to split it up, but there has to be a part to split things up for episode 8.
Streaming runtimes are getting ridiculous, I much prefer shorter episodes.
I wish most movies were three hours long, I am always more willing to pay tickets to see a longer movie than a shorter one.