What's with 135 minute movies?

lendaddy · 03-24-2007, 06:07 PM

As the quality has gone down the duration seems to have gone up.

I watched Blood Diamond last night and although it was an awful and nearly unwatchable movie , it made up for that by being excruciatingly long.

If a movie is going to suck, it should at least have the decency of sticking to the 90 minute rule.

But seriously, why are they making movies so effin long these days? What's the angle?

legion · 03-24-2007, 06:20 PM

Everything has to be 'epic' to be good.

To Hollywood, Epic' means a long movie, not a long, involved story.

lendaddy · 03-24-2007, 06:22 PM

I wonder if it has something to do with keeping them off TV. I mean USA/TBS/TNT would need over 3 hours to screen one of these damn things with commercials.

And if I can sneak in another hit on Blood Diamond, I was thinking to myself how little actual dialouge there was in such a long movie! And he got an Academy nomination (did he win?) for that?

nostatic · nostatic's Garage

directorial hubris

Porsche-O-Phile · Porsche-O-Phile's Garage

They have to be able to get more commercial time in when it gets adapted for TV - and most people won't sit for longer than 2 hours.

lendaddy · 03-24-2007, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Porsche-O-Phile
They have to be able to get more commercial time in when it gets adapted for TV - and most people won't sit for longer than 2 hours.

That's my point, these movies are too long for adaptation.

Evans, Marv · 03-24-2007, 07:56 PM

I prefer long ago when you got two movies, the news reel, and a cartoon.

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

I'm looking forward to Grind House

Jared at Pelican Parts · 03-24-2007, 08:03 PM

hmmm I just watched the 330 minute version of Das Boot the other day and enjoyed it.

911pcars · 03-24-2007, 10:16 PM

If movie theater chains were in command, they'd make all movies 1 hour long... or less. That way, they can maximize the box office profits by turning over customer more frequently. Good thing they don't have that much of a say.

If a movie is lengthy, the director convinced someone the film needed to be that long to tell the story, or the director is powerful enough to demand it based on previous projects. (Scorsese, Spielberg, Lee [Ang], Lee [Spike], Lucas, Jackson [Peter], Kubrick, Hitchcock, Eastwood, Zemeckis, Cameron, Polanski, etc.)

Sometimes, movie making is a crap shoot with the mood of the audience a big factor. There were some great films from years past, short and long, that flopped at the box office when first released.

Sherwood