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Comment by cglong | Hacker News Reader

I went to a theater to watch Mission: Impossible last night. It has a really long runtime (2h 48m) and, toward the end of the film, I started seeing multiple people pull out their phones for a time check; I had to stop myself from doing the same.

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I think that has to do with excessively long movies and nothing to do with reduced attention spans.

Very, very few action movies need to be more than 100min.

> Very, very few action movies need to be more than 100min.

I’ve read somewhere that blockbuster movies are trending longer at the moment, because people are ever less willing to pay the high prices for cinema tickets, drinks and snacks, so movie studios need to offer a really big experience to make it seem worthwhile.

While I watched a lot of films on the big screen at school (I was involved in the film group), over the years I've watched fewer and fewer. These days my maybe once a year criterion is whether it's something I'd want to see in IMAX if I could. Though I'm not sure how much length has to do with it.

I'm honestly surprised that movie theaters have come back to such a degree. I suppose the lesson is that the pandemic didn't really change things all that much--certainly not to the degree a lot of people expected. Even more flexible work arrangements, much less fully remote work, is mostly in some bubbles.

I mean not that many films that I really want to watch come out per year, so if Oppenheimer is 3hs instead of 2hs or whatever then let it be; I'd rather spend one more hour at the theater and watch the movie knowing the director didn't need to cut an hour off the film.

(Although I do have to say Oppenheimer got somewhat tedious in certain parts)

This is true but it's getting to be too much. I want to see Oppenheimer in theatres but 3 hours plus travel is just killing it for me.

Don't forget the ads. They have gotten obnoxiously long. The last time I went, the ads for products and trailers went on for 45 minutes with an intermission so they can sell ice cream and snacks. I haven't been to the movies since.

Years ago I went with a friend to see Transformers. He is an absolute massive Transformers fan, so he insisted that we arrive no later than an hour before the movie would start. Me and my girlfriend meet up with him and a few other 90 minutes before, got our tickets, went for dinner and arrived about when the commercials ended and the trailers started. My friend was completely out of it, in his mind we missed part of the experience. I think he's the kind of customers the movies want.

For me, I just get my ticket in advance and show up about 20 minutes late, seems to work out fine.

I bought a projector and a popcorn machine, haven't been to the movies since.

I have those and it doesn't compete with IMAX and cinema sound, so I still go to the movies.

You can't pause or rewind a movie. For that reason alone I would never go, and only watch at home.

are you able to distinguish the quality from watching on a high quality TV?

I 100% can. I also do not care, cause ability to pause matters more.

What kind of a projector?

> I think that has to do with excessively long movies

Anecdotal experience but we (n=2) didn't have the urge to pull out our phones on Oppenheimer (180 minutes).

Oppenheimer is not an action flick. :)

Movies with a compelling story keep your attention, but with action, your brain can only take so much stimulation. Unless it has a really compelling story, your mind will wander.

Oh man. I wish more directors knew this. I remember watching one of the fast and the furious movies. It had like a 30 minute long action sequence. That is long enough for the adrenaline to wear off and now it’s all just tedious. I think i literally yawned during what should be edge of the seat action. I’m convinced what it needed was more breaks in the action, or at least more changes in tempo.

Action movies try to keep your attention with ear-splitting volume levels instead.

It's incredibly difficult to keep a viewers attention for 3 hours without them taking a single break, even if they are compelling. I was starting to get antsy in general around the 2h 30m mark.

Sounds like it would be a better movie split into 2 or 3 sittings.

3 hours is probably getting towards the upper limit but it's hardly historically anomalous. Lawrence of Arabia was over 3 1/2 hours and other "epics" of that era were often in the 3+ hour range. (Though movie theaters often had intermissions which most would probably never do today.) Live theater (with an intermission) is often in that range as well although many newer plays seem to be more like straight through 90 minute length.

ADDED: I originally read sittings as parts but if you mean intermissions, I agree. That's what long movies used to do and it's pretty standard for live plays much over two hours.

Definitely with the intermissions. But I really mean that I often like to stop a long movie, think about it awhile, and then come back to it later. This is how short TV series work, for example. This is also how books work, by their nature. It's a kind of "intellectual digestion" - an intermission is good, but a night's sleep is even better.

Yeah, but no way really to do that for a theatrical release. You can have a Part 1 and a Part 2 spaced a year+ apart if the total length is 3 1/2 to 4 hours a la Dune. That's not what you're asking for though.

Agreed. Went to watch Mission Impossible, i pulled out my phone once right at the beginning to put it on silent. My friend might have checked his phone three times for any texts/time maybe.

All I'd like to add to this conversation is a request to not treat all humans as "the average human" as deduced by any scientific study.

I must admit that the fifth vibration finally got me to check my phone during Oppenheimer. Bio pics are generally accepted to have long run times compared to action flicks though.

> Very, very few action movies need to be more than 100min.

Not to mention an action scene gets really really boring after about 2min. Just more and more of the same. Then add the usual hyperactive editing popular in modern blockbusters and it's like "Yo can you slow down a little? I'd like to actually see a punch happen sometimes"

They're just bad now. You never get bored in Die Hard or a Jackie Chan flick.

Pretty sure most films made in 1988 were also bad.

Sure, most of everything is bad. But there were good ones, a lot of them. Especially in the late 80s and 90s.

take your time and watch das boot director cut

New movies are just long for no reason. I feel like 1.5hr was typical before. Longer ones like Star Wars 5 and Lawrence of Arabia were worth, but now everything is 2h at least. Marvel movies are the worst offenders, often 3hr with maybe a decent plot the first hour followed by filler action.

Also, somehow the art of making dialog audible was lost in the 2010s, to the point where everyone uses subtitles at home now.

>Also, somehow the art of making dialog audible was lost in the 2010s, to the point where everyone uses subtitles at home now.

Yeah, I don't have the world's greatest hearing but I basically always keep subtitles on. I forget what I was watching a few weeks back but I was basically continuous cranking the volume up so I had a chance of understanding the mumbled dialog and then down when some avalanche of sound threatened to destroy what was left of my hearing.

My regular reminder that 2001: A Space Odyssey was only 2h 23m, and that movie had an intermission at the cinema. Tess of the d'Urbervilles? 18 minutes longer than M:I, and that one had an intermission, too. Ghandi had an intermission, but $DEITY, no human bladder can hold that much so it was kind of required.

Your Marvel movie is approaching 3 hours, and no intermission? Fuck that, I'll watch it at home while your CEO whines that no one goes to the movies anymore.

(Wait a minute, Oppenheimer is three hours long? Sorry, ChrisN, but that's one's getting streamed in my living room, too.)

> (Wait a minute, Oppenheimer is three hours long? Sorry, ChrisN, but that's one's getting streamed in my living room, too.)

That's a smart decision. Oppenheimer was a good movie (I give it a B+), though very long, and the director (or editor?) gives the audience very few moments to take a breather. I'd have enjoyed it more if I knew I could pause to take a leak or fast forward through the boring part about the affair.

Wasn't intermission because movies was on physical rolls (sorry, don't remember correct name) which had a maximum length and they needed an intermission to change roll?

No, soft drinks sold at cinemas in the 60s were much larger than they are today, and no one could hold that much fluid for much more than two hours.

The answers you seek are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_mark, specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_mark#Use

And the answer to your question, as you now know, is still "no".

I think this says more about the quality of the movie than it does people's attention spans. A movie that doesn't keep you sucked in until the end is just a bad movie.

Look at Avatar (2009) vs the sequel. The original was ~3 hours long, and a pretty ok movie. Kept the attention of everyone in my family from beginning to end. The sequel was 15 minutes longer, but we gave up before the end of the first hour because it was atrocious, particularly the paper-thin "dude, bro" writing.

Avatar 2009 had cutting-edge visuals, but by the 1.5hr mark I was bored. I don't remember the ending, might've walked out.

The look of the original Avatar was something you had never seen before but the story was essentially a reworked version of the overrated Dances with Wolves. The latest Avatar is basically a remake in an aquatic setting and it has none of the visual freshness that the original had. I dutifully watched it when it hit whatever streaming service but it was sort of a waste of time.

~3hrs is a long-ass movie! I'm fine with epics, but, yeah, it most circumstances I'm looking for a ~2hr experience, especially if I'm having to sit in a theater. I don't think it's an attention thing, I just don't think most movies require that long to tell their story and/or show a few cool action set pieces.

M:I:DR has some very weird editing in the train sequence as a consequence of the production wildly over-scoping it originally, so I'm not surprised some people would end up with their sense of how much more movie is left totally thrown off.

In contrast, I watched Oppenheimer and it felt like the time just flew by.

I think part of it was the movie being mid

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