It sure has happened to you: you get the feeling that movies last longer and longer lately. That what used to be solved in an hour and a half now needs a minimum of two, and that the prestigious cinema walks through the three hours very happily. And you know what? You’re right. In part, at least. It is not the first time that hyper-long films dominate the box office: in the 50s there were not a few epics that exceeded three hours long (‘The Ten Commandments’, ‘Ben-Hur’), and in later years they returned to go down The reason was not to adjust to the taste of society or to give creators a free hand, no. It was the usual: television.
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“Movie theaters are emptying out because of television” sounds like a broken record, and with good reason: it is a cyclical argument in time. With the television boom in the mid-50s, when half of American homes had one, the cinema ceased to be the reference medium to go to in search of entertainment. Why get dressed, take the car, pay and watch a movie If from your sofa you can see different entertainment options without paying an extra?
The cinema had to deal with television in some way to try to return to become the vital medium for the society that it was in the 30s and 40s. The solution? Give an experience that television could not match. The poorest productions were content to be part of a double bill in which the first heyday of 3D or crazy systems promoted by William Castle and his acolytes took place. The bigger budget ones tended to be unique epics in Cinemascope and vibrant colors.very long stories for which breaks were needed and that represented a real change with respect to the quality of televisions at that time.
‘Around the world in 80 days’, ‘The greatest show on earth’ (now in fashion for its pivotal appearance in ‘The Fabelmans’) or ‘The King and I’ they achieved success and Oscars, despite limiting the passes per day in those gigantic rooms with a single screen. Full-length and short-form movies were able to survive side by side with television for almost two decades, without necessarily being mutually exclusive. But suddenly the next turning point in this story came: a little gadget known as a Video Home System. I mean, VHS.
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With the advent of video, the industry was once again facing a situation of possible vacuum in the theaters because of, exactly, television. But it did not worry the production companies so much, who saw a new market niche that expanded the offer of premieres, reruns and television passes in a very lucrative way. There was only one problem: VHS had a limited run time, so they forced blockbusters to run shorter and shorter.
Starting in the early 80’s, films had to be two hours maximum (90 minutes preferred) to fit well on tape. The exception were the prestigious films destined for the Oscar, such as ‘Gandhi’ or ‘The Last Emperor’, which were allowed to go beyond three hours. But they were fewer and fewer, at least in the most popular niches. Besides, an hour and a half content could be better sold to television networks, which, with ads, fit her perfectly into a block. All happy.
If in the 1960s the average length of a film was 119 minutes, in the 1980s the figure had dropped to 110. If you are a video store child, it is logical that you believe that the differences from a few decades ago to now exist, the good news is that it is not paranoia. The home theater was, for two decades, a reason to maintain control over the duration of movies and he is, paradoxically, the one who has fired it afterwards.
And the streaming arrived
TV and VHS they were absolute turning points in how audiovisual content was distributed and consumed, but nothing prepared us for the arrival of Netflix and the others. If already at the beginning of the 2000s, with the DVD, the duration barrier blew up, streaming came to turn everything upside down in the industryleaving the world literally without knowing how to react.
On the one hand, the null dependence on linear television and the physical format means that creators do not have any type of restriction to launch full-length films if you think your story needs to be told in these terms. On the other, the public needs an incentive to leave the house: ‘Avatar’ showed that they were willing to do it and pay a ticket if the entertainment is going to be spectacular and they feel that their money has been redeemed. This race for “There’s More” has led to small hour-and-a-half movies take refuge in a streaming that only wants contentof whatever duration and quality, in order to maintain its market share.
The average length of the ten highest-grossing American films of the past year is 138 minutes., with only three going down from the two-hour duration (‘Minions: The Origin of Gru’, ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’ and ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’). To give an example, in 1985 the average was 116, with only two films exceeding the two-hour limit: ‘Out of Africa’ and ‘The Color Purple’. And without going that far, just twenty years ago, in 2002, with the same terms, the average duration was 118, with only three films exceeding two hours.
Longer duration, it’s war
After the pandemic, the length of most commercial movies has increased dramatically. If in 2019 the ten highest-grossing films lasted an average of 127 minutes, in 2021 we were already at 130. And that’s without going into the prestigious drama, which has skyrocketed along with the most mainstream cinema: This year’s Oscar nominees average 144 minuteswith only two tapes coming down from those two hours by the hair: ‘They speak’ and ‘Souls in pain of Inisherin’.
But apart from the nominees, we must take into account all those who failed in their attempt to reach the nominationwith equally impossible durations (such as ‘Bardo’ or ‘Blonde’) that respect the designs of the author and the prestigious drama but make going to the movies or streaming far from being a pleasant experience, specify a time that each time must be distributed among more leisure possibilities. The platforms want you to stay with them as long as possible, and the massive multiplexes make it possible for films of excessive lengths to be shown every ten minutes, filling the theaters and condemning less explosive tapes to have a second life on the Internet.
The trend is clearly to make movies longer and longer. As much as producers want shorter films, they have no excuse for star directors to moderate. Over the last three years, the confluence of different changes in the industry that, taken separately, would make for a totally different game has created an explosive cyclogenesis that, for now, our bladder is paying for. And unless theaters include breaks like they once did, it looks like it will stay that way.