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The current film industry trends cater more towards sequels, extensive franchises, and a perspective that’s willing to turn any good idea into its own connected universe. Some movies can make this approach work and become cinematic gems, but excess isn’t always the missing ingredient that makes a struggling movie suddenly succeed.
Along with ballooning budgets, increasingly long runtimes have also become more expected, especially when these films are meant to resolve many movies or entire decades of continuity. Long movies have turned into a divisive pattern for the industry and even though some films can justify their extensive length, that doesn’t mean that it’s an approach that works for everyone.
10 Worth It: Zodiac Presents An Onslaught Of Information That Wants To Consume The Viewer
David Fincher has built a reputation on the level of precision and intensity that he brings to his productions. Fincher has tackled the subject matter of serial killers before with aplomb, but Zodiac might be the director’s crowning achievement. The exhaustive movie spans many years from multiple perspectives as the hunt for the notorious Zodiac killer rages on.
Zodiac is 2 hours and 37 minutes long (with a director’s cut that’s five minutes longer), but it necessitates this lengthy runtime so the audience can get as lost in the clues and casework as the characters in the movie.
9 Waste It: The Irishman Is An Exercise In Excess That Loses Its Way At 3.5 Hours
The Irishman is the most extreme example of Martin Scorsese testing the audience’s patience and it’s one of the few Scorsese movies where audiences openly chastised the movie for being overly long. The Irishman is three and a half hours long, but the movie’s thorough nature is because it sets out to chronicle the full adult lives of its characters.
The Irishman isn’t exactly successful in this regard and it’s left with several sequences that feel like they could be shortened or excised entirely, even if it’s still inspiring to see Scorsese finally pull this project together.
8 Worth It: Annette Chronicles A Lifetime To Properly Make Its Point About Art
Leos Carax’s most recent epic, Annette, is a radical take on a surreal rock opera. The movie explores the romance between an opera singer and a comedian, as well as the creative conflict that occurs regarding their respective levels of fame. The catalyst for their relationship is the birth of their very special prodigy, Annette.
Annette could have begun with the titular character’s birth, but it’s essential to immerse the audience in the lives of these characters before she enters the picture. It makes Annette’s growth that much more powerful and the two-hour and twenty-minute movie just flies by.
7 Waste It: King Kong Is A Monument Of Hubris When Peter Jackson Was At His Biggest
It’s oddly fitting that a movie like King Kong that’s all about pomp, circumstance, and misguided exploitation would also become an unruly example of a director’s ego run amok. Peter Jackson became a cinematic legend through The Lord of the Rings trilogy and was ostensibly given a blank check to do whatever he wanted.
This resulted in a King Kong remake that’s almost three and a half hours long, making it well over an hour longer than the 1933 original. Jackson’s King Kong doesn’t leave anything open to interpretation and allows the popular director to fully flex his power.
6 Worth It: Avengers: Endgame Brings A Decade Of Marvel Movies To A Close In Three Hours
The Marvel Cinematic Universe and other examples of superhero cinema have completely taken over the box office and become the more guaranteed way to bring in over a billion dollars. However, the bigger that this connected universe becomes means that runtimes continue to balloon to extensive lengths.
Avengers: Endgame clocks in at just over three hours, which might seem like a lot for a superhero movie, but it’s surprisingly efficient with how it spends its time and what gets covered. There’s such endless action and callbacks that it feels much shorter than it actually is.
5 Waste It: Funny People Is Judd Apatow’s Longest & Most Indulgent Feature Film
Judd Apatow has grown into one of the biggest names when it comes to cinematic comedies, but a common complaint that’s voiced at the director is that his movies are too long and that he struggles with editing. This results in most of Apatow’s simple movies clocking in at over two hours, but Funny People really pushes things as a comedy that’s two hours and 33 minutes long.
Unfortunately, Funny People contains some of Apatow’s most insightful work and a fantastic, introspective performance by Adam Sandler. These rewarding traits just get diluted by everything else within the misshapen movie.
4 Worth It: The Hateful Eight Is Quentin Tarantino At His Most Patient & Indulgent
Quentin Tarantino is a director that’s all about the cinematic experience. The Hateful Eight is full of Tarantino’s trademark tricks, but it also feels more restrained and almost functions like a piece of theater or an Agatha Christie mystery.
The Hateful Eight is a masterpiece in terms of character development and exposition, but it’s also over three hours long. Tarantino includes an overture and intermission, and explicitly leans into this long length to help the characters’ anxiety better sink in. The Hateful Eight justifies its runtime and there’s an even longer edit on Netflix that’s over three and a half hours.
3 Waste It: Transformers: Age Of Extinction Loses Itself In Endless Action
In many ways, Michael Bay’s take on The Transformers’ franchise represents the problems with excess and spectacle that have started to infect blockbusters and sequels. All of the Transformers movies are loud, overly busy, and full of needless action, but some of them are still able to strike a balance.
Transformer: Age of Extinction is the fourth entry in the franchise and a disappointing way to celebrate everything that’s come before it. Transformers: Age of Extinction is a very bloated two hours and 45 minutes long, but it feels even longer. It doesn’t understand how to properly pace itself.
2 Worth It: Boyhood Crams Over A Decade Of Filmmaking Into Almost Three Hours
Richard Linklater has worked hard to solidify his status as an ambitious filmmaker, and Boyhood is arguably his most comprehensive project to date. Filmed over the course of 12 years to offer an unprecedented level of authenticity through the growth and maturity of the film’s lead, Ellar Coltrane, Boyhood is such a unique experience.
The film presents humble slices of life through the development of Coltrane’s Mason, and considering the sheer amount of footage that Linklater assembled, it’s honestly impressive that Boyhood is only 2 hours and 46 minutes long.
1 Waste It: Meet Joe Black Is A Normal Movie That Has No Business Being Over Three Hours
There’s a simple idea at the core of Meet Joe Black: a temperamental arrangement between an elderly man and the personification of Death takes an unexpected turn when Death falls in love. It’s a story that works, but there’s no reason for it to be one minute longer than three hours and lengthier than Brad Pitt’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
At the time, audiences were a lot more understanding of the bloated nature of Meet Joe Black since it was also packaged together with the first look at The Phantom Menace, a novelty that no longer means anything.
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