by Belinda Smitten
Arguably, we’re not in the era of long movies or not the longest ones, not anymore. Once Upon a Time in America (1984) ran for 3 hours and 49 minutes, and then there’s Cleopatra (1963) at 4 hrs and 8 minutes.
Yet despite the seemingly unassailable growth of short-form media, research suggests movies are getting longer, and the few listed above from the 21st century stood as bizarre exceptions in their time. How are studios keeping cinemagoers firmly stuck to their seats?
Between Two Extremes
Let’s start with the growing importance of reels and shorts: videos that only need a split second of our attention. It’s not quite as clear-cut a phenomenon as it seems.
In gaming, for instance, long-form experiences, things with miniatures and dice, are in vogue, but we’re still fond of quick sessions. Bet roulette online, and the experience can be over in a matter of seconds. Developers have tried to shorten multi-round roulette sessions by introducing Speed Roulette and Auto Roulette.
A study from WhatToWatch compared the length of Box Office titles from each decade up to 2021, suggesting we’re caught between two extremes. A lack of tolerance for an eight-minute YouTube video is at odds with the marathon length of some movies.
Plenty of people sat through the three-hour Oppenheimer (2023), suggesting that we’re more than capable of balancing the long and the short in entertainment without too many bathroom breaks.
A Cinema ‘Experience’
Between 2011 and 2021, directors added nine minutes to the productions released. Between 2021 and 2022, just a single year, this increased to ten minutes. It’s worth noting that several monster films debuted in 2022, including Avatar: The Way of Water (192 minutes).
An article published by The Dartmouth suggested that longer films help separate the cinema experience from watching a movie at home by providing exactly that, a cinema ‘experience’.
The number one piece of merchandise in the 2020s, the branded popcorn bucket, can only be acquired at a cinema (and, later, on some official websites). It’s both a marketing gimmick and a way to enhance fans’ enjoyment of whatever is on the silver screen.
On-demand Media
Millennials have long been associated with a desire to prioritise experiences over possessions, and not just because they have less wealth than both previous and subsequent generations. It seems this attitude might be more universal than anyone expected.
In many ways, the longer movie is both a companion and a riposte to the kind of on-demand media on Netflix and Prime Video, as well as on Facebook and Instagram. All the signs suggest our fondness for long-form entertainment is stable, too.
Epics like Oppenheimer aren’t exactly common, but Christopher Nolan’s war drama came at a time when the media had written off our collective attention span. Again, maybe things aren’t quite as straightforward as they seem in movie land.
