Let’s be honest about this. No film needs to be longer than three hours. And fewer than you might think can justify breaking the 2hrs 40m mark. News that Martin Scorsese’s latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, is clocking in at well over three hours is only the latest in what seems to be a trend in mainstream cinema towards the butt-numbing end of the running time spectrum. If any director knows what to do with every last frame of a rumoured 3hrs 20m, it is Scorsese. But this does raise the question: are marathon movies really what the audience wants? There’s a theory that, in the age of TikTok, the collective attention span is shrinking. Is expecting punters to sit through more than three hours the best way to lure post-pandemic audiences back into cinemas?
There’s a tacit assumption that a hefty running time automatically conveys event movie status or that anything over three hours is a Big, Important Artistic Statement worthy of note. In the last year, Damien Chazelle’s Babylon clocked in at an overwrought 3hrs 9m; Avatar: The Way of Water was 3hrs 12 damp minutes; Andrew Dominik’s polarising Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde was just shy of the three-hour mark at 2hrs 47m. And the original cut of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths hit 2hrs 54m, before Iñárritu re-edited, shaving off 20 or so minutes. But of these, only Avatar, with a current box-office tally just shy of $2.25bn, can legitimately lay claim to the event movie tag. The others? It’s fair to say that audiences stayed away in droves.
But for Blonde and Bardo, which, like Scorsese’s previous picture, The Irishman (3hrs 29m), were financed by Netflix, the theatrical releases were deliberately limited, suggesting box office performance is less of a concern. And this – the rise of streaming platforms – is one factor that may explain the trend towards longer films. Viewing habits, as evidenced by the concept of “blitzing” through a long-form series, have shifted. If viewers will happily watch four episodes of, say, Breaking Bad, back to back, why wouldn’t they spend the same length of time with a film? But while this works as a home-viewing option, cinema visits are more of an investment – in time and effort, as well as financially. And the date-night staple of dinner and a movie is rather skewered when the films are three-hour whoppers. A movie and a bag of convenience store peanuts doesn’t quite have the same allure.
There’s another factor though. It’s no coincidence that all of these recent examples were directed by men. And with the notable exception of Chantal Akerman’s BFI best film poll-topper Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (3hrs 22m), the same tends to be true historically. There’s an argument to be made in some cases that the three-hour cine-slog is just a form of manspreading; another example of men taking up space just because they can. It’s reflected in the audience also: there’s an irksome breed of ultra-competitive film bro who would rather pee into a bottle than miss even a minute of Filipino director Lav Diaz’s latest long hauler. It’s worth repeating at this point: size isn’t everything, guys.
• This article was amended on 27 February 2023 to correct a misspelling of Chantal Akerman’s surname.
• Wendy Ide is the Observer’s deputy film critic
