French filmmaker Céline Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Girlhood) hosted a masterclass in Spain recently, during which she said (via World of Reel):
There are … very long movies that have a monopoly on movie screens. I make short films because I try to make room for others. Making a three-hour movie means that theaters will only be able to program three screenings of your film per day. If you make a three-hour movie, you are a selfish activist, and not of cinema.
This could be a swipe at any of several of this year’s most prominent films: Oppenheimer [pictured], Killers of the Flower Moon, Beau Is Afraid; Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part 1 clocks in at a little under three hours.
Is Sciamma correct? Are three-hour-plus movies damaging to the overall entertainment environment? Are they the work of selfish filmmakers?
I’m of two minds about this. Stories in any format should be as long as they need to be — no longer and no shorter — in order to tell the story they are telling. I certainly don’t think that either Oppenheimer or Killers of the Flower Moon are too long or too indulgent. On the other hand, there are plenty of films — many of those in the comic-book and action realms — that are over two hours in length, often well over, that could have benefitted from a judicious trim.
Is there anything definitive that can be said about movie runtimes, or is it always a matter of It depends…?
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I agree that the story should be as long as it needs to be; but on the other hand the medium should be chosen to fit the story. If I set out to film The Lord of the Rings I don’t try to make it into one continuous eight-hour film of the whole story.
I think that asking a viewer to commit to concentrating on a single thing for that long, without breaks of any kind, is asking a lot. (Sports and theatre and concerts don’t usually ask this, there are intervals, as there have sometimes been in film.) Maybe your film is so amazing that it deserves that continuous attention; but can you, the person making the film who presumably is biased in its favour, be regarded as a fair judge? Probably not!
(And if you say that a viewer at home can make breaks whenever they want to, this is true, but there is a difference in the way I perceive a film that I’ve watched start to finish than a film that I’ve watched with breaks, maybe over several days.)
The specific comment strikes me as somewhat nonsensical, given how many screens are available in modern theaters. (And if we’re talking about art houses, they should and do work on different principles than the filthy commerce of les théatres des multiplex, n’est-ce-pas?)
But a lot of modern movies could benefit from more judicious editing. As a counter-example to the modern trend, take The Marvels (which the box office may not have loved, but I did.) Running time of 105 minutes, and not an ounce of fat on it. I’d actually argue it was trimmed maybe a little too much, as a few important story beats go by really fast, but it’s never boring. Total time from trailers to end of credits at the Alamo was 120 minutes exactly.
A lot of modern movies remind me of one of Elmore Leonard’s rules of writing: “Writers should leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.”
I also think we’re fortunate to live in a time where directors can “kill their darlings” but also save them, in the form of deleted scenes.
I’ll focus on comedies. There are certainly comedies over two hours that are to-die-for funny. But, let’s face it, anything over 90 minutes had better REALLY be worth it.
There’s no problem with movies being as long as they need to be, but the pricing structure should become more elastic and varied. Many people have written articles suggesting tiered pricing with higher ticket prices for large budget blockbusters vs. smaller dramas.
That works in theory. but the problem is in practice the audiences for large budget movies are poorer on average than those for dramas and indie films. It doesn’t make sense to punish the masses to benefit wealthier customers, so some other factors need to be taken into account.
I’d suggest instead scaling the ticket prices with length. Just as a thousand page novel uses more paper and thus has a more expensive paperback, a three hour movie takes up more screen time and should be priced more than a crisp ninety minute film. This would open up space for an even cheaper, shorter mid-length format of around an hour (there are plenty of outstanding two-parter television episodes, so good stories can be told in an hour).
Similarly, there used to be many second-run theaters that would show older movies at reduced prices. There’s no reason that price structure couldn’t be built into first run theaters which would put less pressure on studios to have a huge marketing push in order to nab enormous first weekend ticket sales.
I just watched a triple feature of The Boy and The Heron (2h4m, feels like 5 hours) , Fallen Leaves (1h21m), and The Holdovers (2h13m). The ticket for each of these was $16, which makes no sense. TBatH is a 200 million dollar film that just went wide on Dec 8, Fallen Leaves has a budget of 1.5 million and came out on Nov 17 in the US, and The Holdovers cost around 70 million to make and was released on Oct 29th simultaneously in theaters and streaming on demand.
I watched TBatH on the largest screen, seating several hundred people, and Fallen Leaves and The Holdovers in a much smaller side theater that seats around seventy. Theaters already charge premium prices for IMAX/Dolby/XD etc., but they should also offer a discount for smaller screens.
Obviously, the matinee showings should remain cheaper, but a logical pricing structure would also take into account the length of the movie, how long it has been released, whether it is streaming (on demand), and the size of the theater. The scale would go something like:
MOST EXPENSIVE – Just released, long, not streaming yet, largest screen/best sound.
MID PRICE – medium length and/or released more than two weeks and/or streaming
LEAST EXPENSIVE – short movie, already streaming on demand, small screen
Poorer customers could still watch blockbusters after two weeks when the price dropped, or watch them on a smaller screen for a discount, and most mainstream children’s films would be cheaper due to their shorter length and streaming availability which would help families.
So, fairer pricing would have been: $20 for TBatH, $10 for Fallen Leaves, and $12 for The Holdovers. The theater would get slightly less money from me, but a few people might decide to see the shorter, older films instead of the recent blockbuster, which in this case would definitely be a wise decision and would result in more word of mouth sales for the two smaller films and ultimately more concessions profits for the theater.
In this case in particular that would be a great outcome, because even though I personally liked TBatH’s slow, dreamlike, loose Wizard of Ozzy structure, it’s a truly horrible slog for the average mainstream movie fan to sit through. Fallen Leaves tells a short, simple story well, and would be a great date-movie deal at $20 (two tickets) for those who appreciate Finnish deadpan humor while The Holdovers is a perfectly written and acted masterpiece, by far Paine’s best film, that too many people probably skipped at the theater (like I almost did) when a couple might have given it a chance if the comparison had been $24 vs $40 for two tickets.
So long story short, Villeneuve and Miyazaki can stuff their films with artsy superfluous walking shots and pad their movies out to ludicrous lengths if they think it builds atmosphere, but they should be have to pay a price in higher ticket prices. Similarly, efficient filmmakers should be rewarded with more ticket sales and word of mouth publicity from cheaper tickets, and struggling moviegoers should be financially rewarded by theaters for their patience and/or flexibility, subsequently reaping the rewards of broader tails and more consistent concession sales from an influx of shorter films.
In Europe, they do adapt prices to movie lenght – very long movies are priced higher. Movies in 3D are priced higher. And I know there was a time when in a certain cinema here in town, watching a movie on the biggest screen, with a special sound system, also was more expensive than on the smaller screen next door. (I think however, that this has changed by now, als modern cinemas have very good sound systems for large and small sceens alike).
I don’t think that one could call any filmmaker selfish who do filming over 3 hrs. Lord of the Ring (even one of them) in 90 minutes eg would have been ridiculous.
Oh, that’s interesting – in the US, they also price movies higher in 3D and on “premium” screens with better sound and picture. I agree that a 90 minute LotR film would feel rushed, but I’m positive those three Hobbit movies could have easily been carved down quite a bit.
I personally don’t mind long movies in principle and enjoy the slow paced, dream-like structure of many of Miyazaki’s films, and even though I don’t like Nolan’s style, his longer films don’t feel bloated (Villeneuve’s… not so much). It would be nice though if we followed the European practices you referenced and increased the ticket prices for movies over 2.5 hours to put a pressure on the filmmakers to work a little harder in the editing room. Some long films fill every minute with gold, but a few directors have so much clout and prestige that no one is brave enough to tell them they need to trim the fat. I wouldn’t call them selfish – just unrestrained and surrounded by yes people.
There are also many teenagers wandering the malls here in the US who would definitely spontaneously decide to watch an hour-long short film for five dollars, so it would be nice if that category was available. Watching a 2.5+ hour movie is a huge time commitment that most won’t make on a whim, especially the younger generation. Theaters must get experimental if they want to stay alive (malls too, that’s another story) – simply praying for more Barbenheimers isn’t going to cut it.