The Guardian has an interesting articles about the seemingly endless supply, in fact the trend towards, long movies. Even this summer’s blockbusters, films that usually try and race through the story in some sort of misconception that relentless pace equals excitement, are coming in long. The Da Vinci Code had a run time of about 147 minutes, Superman Returns and Pirates of the Caribbean 2 will weigh in at about 150 minutes each, Miami Vice is supposed to be 146 minutes long, even the Disney/Pixar animated film Cars will run to nearly two hours (by contrast, it looks like the comedies will retain their traditionally shorter run times).
The question is why are there so many long films being made? From a cinema chain’s perspective, longer films aren’t good, it means fewer showings, which means fewer punters, which means less people to buy tickets and popcorn (I’m not sure this is something that anyone has factored into box office takings, it could account for some of the supposed drop off in addmissions). Movies remain in the cinema for a much shorter time now, so having fewer screenings available during the boom time right after its debut may be hurting the box office success of these films. On the other hand, as many people have pointed out, Hollywood no longer looks to the box office for its main source of revenue, so it doesn’t really care, and, as the articles states, longer films provide more time for product placement and extra songs for the soundtrack.
Maybe the length of films indicates that, as audiences have become more intelligent viewers, stories must be more complicated, more convulted and have more depth than the film that have gone before in order to appeal. Perhaps simple, linear plots are no longer enough to satisfy the audience and that increasing levels of sub-plotting and character development is needed. I’m not so sure.
Maybe it is, as the article suggests, the industry trying to create ‘events,’ films that go beyond just being a film, but tranform into an experience, something that’ll draw people out of their homes and down to the local mulitplex. Are longer ‘epic’ films the next weapon Hollywood will use to fight back against TV, as it did back in the forties by introducing widescreen, colour and size?
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