Alexander Payne Slams Bloated Runtimes: “Cut, Cut, I Get It”

Movies are getting longer, and—plot twist—audiences don’t seem to mind. The age of binge-watching has been a total game-changer.

Sure, some films still have viewers checking their watches, but 130-180 minute blockbusters are increasingly becoming the norm. Once upon a time, the sweet spot was considered 90 to 120 minutes—shorter felt like a rip-off, longer risked testing patience. But in the past few years, that unspoken rule has loosened. Hell, Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” dared us to watch its epic 3 hours and 26 minutes. Ditto Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” and its 3-hour runtime, which still translated into a film that grossed nearly $1 billion.

Someone who isn’t a fan of long movies is Alexander Payne. While interviewed at Locarno, the filmmaker yet again complained about how modern-day filmmakers seem allergic to snipping runtimes:

Now I’m 64 years old, and I see so many films which are three or four hours long, and without very good reason. And I sit in a lot of modern films and I say, “Cut, cut. I get it. Cut.

Payne has been very vocal about excessive lengths. Back in 2023, while guesting at the Middleburg Film Festival, and while “Killers of the Flower Moon” was playing in theaters, Payne called out filmmakers who had indulgent runtimes:

You want your movie to be as short as possible. There are too many damn long movies these days. If your movie’s three and a half hours, at least let it be the shortest possible version of a three-and-a-half-hour movie.

Last month, Venice Film Festival boss Alberto Barbera complained about the lack of discipline modern-day filmmakers have had lately, noting that films between 2h15m and 2h30m are becoming the “new international standard,” creating major scheduling headaches for programmers.

A recent poll by The Journal, surveying more than 8,000 regular moviegoers, found that two hours remains the preferred length for 34.3% of respondents, with 27.9% favoring two-and-a-half hours. Only 12.5% chose three hours, and 12.3% went for four-plus. The least popular runtime? Surprisingly, 90 minutes or less.

Still, perhaps we’re underestimating modern attention spans. As Scorsese pointed out, if people can binge five straight hours of television, “Killers of the Flower Moon” shouldn’t be treated as a trial of endurance. In fact, the film’s 206 minutes glide by—unlike, say, “The Exorcist: Believer,” which somehow made 111 minutes feel like forever.

When considering a single movie that breaks the sacred 120-minute barrier, there’s hope that it will use its runtime to take its time and build a world that absorbs you, takes you out of your current reality. If the film accomplishes what it sets out to do, you could even come out of it transformed, in a state of pure bliss.

“The Godfather: Part Two” (212 minutes), “Fanny and Alexander” (312 minutes) and “Shoah” (526 minutes) are examples of long films that I can’t imagine cutting a single minute of.

As Roger Ebert once said “No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough.”