Alexander Payne Says “There Are Too Many Damn Long Movies These Days.”

Movies are getting longer these days, and, plot twist, audiences don’t seem to mind it at all.

Yes, some films still have audiences checking their watches and rushing to the washroom before the sweet bliss of their end credits, but 3 hour movies seem to be luring millions of moviegoers to theaters.

Some of the most financially successful films of the year were lengthy experiences; James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3” clocked in at 2 hours and 29 minutes. Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” was 3 hours. “Avatar: The Way of Water” was 192 minutes. “John Wick: Chapter 4,” 169 minutes.

It used to be an unwritten rule, for many moviegoers, that a film should be anywhere between 90 to 120 minutes. Much shorter, and you don't get your money's worth. Much longer, and you start getting restless. Audiences had been trained to expect two hours.

A change seems to have occurred in the last year or two. The latest blockbuster stamped with an epic length is Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” clocking in at a whopping 3 hours 26 minutes.

A poll conducted this past week by The Journal, with over 8,000 regular moviegoers polled, indicates that two hours is the limit for most audiences (34.3%) followed by two-and-a-half hours (27.9%). Three hours and four-plus hours were at 12.5% and 12.3% respectively. The least popular runtime, surprisingly, was 90 minutes or less.

One director who isn’t a fan of long movies is “The Holdovers” filmmaker Alexander Payne: “You want your movie to be as short as possible. There are too many damn long movies these days,” Payne stated in conversation at the Middleburg Film Festival on Saturday.

What I’m starting to notice is our underestimation of modern-dat audience attention spans. As Scorsese recently noted in an interview, if you can watch 5 hours of a TV show then ‘Killers’ shouldn’t be seen as an endurance test.

In the fervent binge-watching world we live in, a 3-hour movie shouldn’t be seen as some kind of “endurance test”. What I found most impressive about “Killers of the Flower Moon” was how it didn’t feel like 206 minutes. Whereas, say, “The Exorcist: Believer” (111 minutes) felt like an eternity to watch.