Jim Jarmusch Hates Today’s Action Movies: “There’s No Shot That Lasts More Than Three Seconds”

Jim Jarmusch has already mentioned how “Twin Peaks: The Return” was the best piece of American cinema of the last ten years, calling the series an “18-hour film.” Just because of that — all hail, Jim Jarmusch.

He’s no slouch either, a great filmmaker behind such films as “Paterson,” “Only Lovers Left Alive,” “Broken Flowers,” “Ghost Dog” and “Stranger Than Paradise.” He's an iconoclast partly responsible for the start of the indie boom in the mid-‘80s.

However, don’t ask Jarmusch what he thinks of Star Wars, he hasn’t seen a single one of those movies. In an interview with The Believer, Jarmusch insists that he will “never see” the “Star Wars” franchise out of protest over its cultural impact.

“I have particular things I will never see. I will never see any ‘Star Wars’ films, because I resent that I know so much about them and the characters. Why is all that in my head when I’ve never actually seen one, you know? Why do I know about R2-D2 and Darth Vader and all these things when I’ve never even seen any ‘Star Wars’ film?”

He continued, “I’ve never seen ‘Gone with the Wind’ and I never will, just because I feel like it’s forced on me and it’s some kind of corny thing.”

Jarmusch goes on to criticize today’s action movies and the amount of cuts in them:

But I have to tell you one thing I hate — and you can just do a little test yourself: watch any recent action-oriented movie and look for any shot that’s more than three seconds long. I find that really insulting and shit filmmaking: like they have to keep it moving every three seconds. And that’s the longest they’ll leave a shot on! And then cut. One second, cut! Two seconds, cut! Three seconds, cut! Man, I get a headache. I just turn it off. I’m like, Come on, man, go to film school! Watch something! Go read a book! Look at a painting! Look at something. This is nonsense. I can’t stand that.

He’s right. I mean, there are exceptions (“Fury Road,” “John Wick”, “The Raid”), but a majority of them, especially Marvel, are relentlessly edited. You basically go along with the action until overkill blows your fuses. These are movies primarily aimed at TikTok-obsessed teenagers, so of course they would assault your senses with quick-cut editing.

It’s become a plague of modern action cinema. Your heroic story is rendered meaningless if one can't tell what the hell is going on. What today’s modern action needs is more wide tracking motions and seeing more of each character, including better blocking.

The popularization of frenetic cutting in American cinema occurred in tandem with the popularization of music videos, and the MTV revolution. It was certainly influenced by the generation of filmmakers who grew out of the music video industry.

Michael Bay, who came from music videos, might be the biggest influence of this style with his knack for extremely low-average shot length. Whether you like Bay or not, his ‘90s action movies have had a lasting impact in the way Marvel shoots its big scenes.

The resulting, and lasting, effect on moviemaking is action scenes that look more like montages. Not the ones Eisenstein would have approved of, but rather meaningless ones, with a lot crash bang boom and not a whole lot of clarity to the frame.