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Not Long Enough

post #1 of 14
8/24/10 at 2:50pm
Thread Starter 
Have you ever watched a movie and felt that the running time hampered the director's intended scope? I've noticed over the last couple of years critical praisings of the shorter, tighter running time, but personally I've always, more often than not, subcribed to the "bigger is better" Kevin Costner school of thought. Shorter attention spans play a part, no doubt, and of course there's the studio's desire to sneak in the extra showings, but I miss the days of the John Sturges and James Cameron running times. (3 hour summer block busters? yay!) I can't be the only one sometimes left frustrated and wanting more. What say you?

(A recent example of a longer cut I'd geefully welcome: Kick-Ass)
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post #2 of 14
8/24/10 at 5:30pm
In this day and age of $15.00 movies (in L.A., at least), it's tempting to yearn to "get your money's worth" with running times, but I rarely see a movie that needs to be longer and see a bunch that could benefit greatly from a modest trimming.
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post #3 of 14
8/24/10 at 5:35pm
"Piranha 3D" needed another 15 minutes of giant piranha goodness.
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post #4 of 14
8/24/10 at 5:37pm
I understand that the insanely kinetic style would have suffered greatly, but the Scottaholic in me wishes Vs. the World would have taken some time to play out a few quieter moments from the books. That being said, I think what we received was absolutely 100% the scope wished for by Wright.
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post #5 of 14
8/24/10 at 5:46pm
Men in Black 2.

Not that it needed to be any longer, once the credits started rolling I clearly recall saying aloud in the theater "is that it?"

Trust me, at 11 years old, I wanted more "aw hell naws" and jokes about video games out of Will Smith's mouth.
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post #6 of 14
8/24/10 at 5:52pm
I'm usually a fan of conciseness but Eastern Promises stuck out as one that really would've benefited from a little fleshing out towards the end. The final act whooshes by before you know it and it ends up leaving a bunch of key plot developments to happen offscreen for no reason. The movie isn't even 2 hours, so it's not like they couldn't have spared the time.
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post #7 of 14
8/24/10 at 6:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattioli View Post
I understand that the insanely kinetic style would have suffered greatly, but the Scottaholic in me wishes Vs. the World would have taken some time to play out a few quieter moments from the books. That being said, I think what we received was absolutely 100% the scope wished for by Wright.
I've never read the books, and I totally agree. Just a bit more fleshing out of some of the characters.
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post #8 of 14
8/24/10 at 8:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ratty View Post
In this day and age of $15.00 movies (in L.A., at least), it's tempting to yearn to "get your money's worth" with running times, but I rarely see a movie that needs to be longer and see a bunch that could benefit greatly from a modest trimming.
This is my opinion as well. Of the last four movies I've seen in the cinema, three -- INCEPTION, THE KILLER INSIDE ME, and BROOKLYN'S FINEST -- suffered fatally from overlength (the fourth, THE EXPENDABLES, would have been dull and technically incompetent at any running time).

The last movie I can remember not being long enough is THE THIN RED LINE, and that's only because I had read the novel and was looking forward to seeing story threads that never made it to the final cut. I can imagine for many who hadn't read the novel, the running time (nearly three hours) would seem excessive.

SEXY BEAST and Walter Hill's THE DRIVER are examples of movies that are perfectly structured and paced at or around 90 minutes. I wish there were more like them today.
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post #9 of 14
8/24/10 at 9:55pm
Speaking of Walter Hill, I've always felt, even though it's pretty perfect (to me), we could have done with an extra 20-30 minutes to STREETS OF FIRE. There's not a lot of character development in that movie.
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post #10 of 14
8/25/10 at 1:01am
It's not whether a movie is long or short enough; is it the right length?

Inception was the perfect length for the story it tried to tell.

The Dark Knight could easily have lost 20-30 minutes and been a better film for it.
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post #11 of 14
8/25/10 at 1:44am
My first viewing of Inception, my jaw literally dropped when I looked at my watch and realized how long it was. I did however, feel the time during the second viewing.
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post #12 of 14
8/25/10 at 2:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu View Post
Speaking of Walter Hill, I've always felt, even though it's pretty perfect (to me), we could have done with an extra 20-30 minutes to STREETS OF FIRE. There's not a lot of character development in that movie.
Hill wrote archetypal characters for STREETS OF FIRE. To develop them any further, IMO, would have gone against the movie's style. I think this is true of many of Hill's scripts, including THE DRIVER.
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post #13 of 14
8/25/10 at 2:26pm
Thread Starter 
Mal: Brooklyn's Finest was a recent film that came to mind that needed to be longer. It needed that extra 15 minutes to an half hour to pull off the Prince of the City-sized ambitions. The various character threads didn't quite have the weight for climatic coming together to have impact of a 70's classic.
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post #14 of 14
8/25/10 at 3:04pm
Can see your argument, El, but I would be more in favor of taking one of the characters (maybe just Gere's, since I found his the most interesting) and developing a single, 90-100 minute plot.

I think with a lot of recent movies having concurrent threads (CRASH and BABEL come to mind) the filmmakers don't have enough material going in and so cram the script with characters and draw insignificant parallels.

Or maybe I'm just an old grouch who prefers the '70s.
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