DRG

The Transformers films are the worst as far as pointless length. They keep getting longer for no good reason... honestly these things should be 2 hours max and since the stories are pretty much filler anyway I'd be happy with 1:45.

dugan

Wasn't this a common complaint about Kevin Costner's movies?

johnnysd

I like long movies with proper pacing. None of the LOTR movies feel long to me even in the extended versions. The Hobbit could have been a terrific 2.5 hour single movie amd covered everything in the three films, but several billion extra dollars is a good reason to have 3 films.

Interstellar felt like a four and a half movie cut to three that in a competent directors hands could have been done in less than 2.

The Godfather movies seem short.

Wolf of Wall Street was endless but kinetic and directed as only Marty could.

Short answer I would say no.

mndtrp

It's very rarely that I feel a movie is too long and a more generous editing hand would have turned it into a better film. However, it's typically movies that are mostly action sequences that feel like they go on too long. If it's a character driven film, I don't mind as much. Transformers (all of them) could have been shorter and not really lost much.

Coral

I agree that it all depends on the film. It's not the length, it's how you use it. (why does that sound familiar? )

For instance, Tarantino needs a new editor - big time. Someone who's not in love with his dialog as much as Tarantino is. Many scenes just drag on needlessly.

GoldenJCJ

Tarantino just used a new editor for Django Unchained. I can guarantee that he'll never use his original editor again.

Solid Snake

Kind of sad to hear it like that but... yeah.

inri222

IMO Django Unchained would have been better if it was 30-45 minutes shorter.

hanshotfirst1138

I've seen him at least partially admit that about his films, saying that he could cut out scenes which weren't absolutely, positively essential, but he "isn't an absolutely, positively essential kind of filmmaker." I think he like to let things breathe, and someone less charitable than I am might say he likes to hear himself talk. He's still a very worthwhile filmmaker who's movies I'll always check out, but the fact that he's the Weinsteins' personal King Midas means that no one is likely to say "Uh, Quentin? Why does this scene go on this long?"

PhantomStranger

Scorsese originally wanted something like four hours for Wolf of Wall Street when he put the first cut together. There are supposedly gobs of unseen material that were shot. Just because it worked on Goodfellas doesn't mean it will work again.

Solid Snake

I think Thelma did an amazing job in the editing of WoWS. That pacing went buy like crazy. She really is an amazing editor.

stvn1974

I can't imagine Tarantino's films cut down. Kill Bill has many scenes that you could probably cut out completely and still tell the same story but it wouldn't be the same. It would be like cutting out the entire bridge scene in The Good The Bad And The Ugly.

Christopher Nolan's films are too short. The Dark Knight needs another three hours to show how the Joker's men transported and hid enough barrels full of gasoline in the hospital so they could blow it up. Plus all of the other stupidity in his films.

PhantomStranger

It worked...for two hours.

DthRdrX

I don't understand why they keep making these that long either. Just balloons budget costs and throws out an extra showing everyday. Cut them down to around 100 minutes and they could bang one out every two years no problem and still do big numbers.

Rypro 525

Once a director gets a certain amount of prestige, the studios can't really force them to cut anything. Also with theaters that have 20 screens, they can put the extra long movie on 3 screens & not have to worry about the old "well it has to be shorter so more showtimes"

Rypro 525

After Basterds screened at Cannes, there was actual rumors that Harvey was furious at the reception it had gotten & demanded Quentin cut it down 45 minutes. Obviously that didn't happen (& the movie is actually a few min longer than the cannes cut)

Hazel Motes

a good movie is a good movie.

Here are some directors I thank god on my hand and knees were never "reigned in" at different points in there career.

Ingmar Bergman
Akira Kurosawa
David Lean
Michael Cimino
Francis Ford Coppola
Martin Scorsese
Sergio Leone
Andrei Tarkovsky


Imagine The Godfather as it was released was deemed bloated and ran under 2 hours like the studio originally wanted. I can't think of anything that could be more tragic cinematically. Not to mention the scores of great directors who WERE affected by this. Orson Welles, Michael Cimino, Sam Peckinpah, Samuel Fuller.

I think the problem with Michael Bay films don't come from the films running time, but from the fact that Michael Bay is a corporate vessel masquerading as a director, who couldn't direct a good film if he was promised his face would appear on Mount Rushmore.

If I had to choose between a megalomaniac director who has final cut and follows his vision to the end and and a good director who gives in to studios and group consenus and doesn't stand by his principles, I'd choose the former everytime. No matter how "bloated" the film may be.

inri222

DaveyJoe

Not a fan of Ridley Scott?

Solid Snake

Where would Scott fit into Chadm's statement? He's conformed to studio decisions cuz he isn't the power in there but he has also had his versions released later too...

DaveyJoe

Sometimes, I think Prometheus needs to be reworked. And Kingdom of Heaven Director's Cut should have been released in the theater. The movie suffered significantly by Scott caving in to the studio cutting it down. There are lots of people who still don't realize there was a good movie there before the cuts. Scott also should have stuck to his guns when it came to Paul Bettany in the lead role instead of going with the studio choice of Orlando Bloom. That is something that a home video release could not fix.

inri222

Something Ridley Scott never learned and which no kind of editing can help :

With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece. With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film.

- Akira Kurosawa

DaveyJoe

Yeah, there's probably no way to rework Prometheus into a good movie because the issues lie in the screenplay. Some added scenes might help explain some bizarre choices like Old Man Pearce and his relationship with Charlize, but there are just so many bad decisions in the script that will be impossible to overcome.

big e

I don't think Paramount really knew what to do with The Godfather. I forget where I heard this, but Francis Coppola said when Paramount bought the film rights to Godfather, no one at the studio knew how to translate the book material onto film. They hired Coppola with the feeling that since he was Italian, he could film the material better (although I don't know how true that is).

Yes, long movies have always been with us. There are long movies I wish were shorter and there's long movies that I couldn't imagine being cut down. Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge on the River Kwai, The Godfather, Amedeus, and A Clockwork Orange all flew by when I watched them. However, with some of these long movies, especially the pre-1970s classics, I think the directors had a far better grasp and feel for what they were making than today's modern directors do. Many of these films weren't just epic in length, they were epic in scope.

I say if you're going to make a three hour film, make it feel epic. Don't just shoot three hours of footage to have a three hour movie. Make those three hours feel like I'm on an adventure, not sitting on my couch watching people dick around for three hours.

I think with modern filmmakers, the "epic length" is a ego thing. I'm going to use Peter Jackson's King Kong as an example. There was absolutely no reason for that movie to be three hours long, but Jackson was coming off the success of Lord of the Rings and could get away with a three hour King Kong movie. Any other director would have been forced to cut the film down to two hours, and maybe rightly so.

This could very well be just me, but a problem I see with many movies that run way over two hours is that the story tends to loose focus and side characters or subplots creep in that seem to only exist for padding. I can't think of anything specific off the top of my head, but to me, it seems like sub-hundred minute movies handle their plots and characters much better and feel much tighter than many 2 1/2 hour plus films.

~~ PAL ~~

Perhaps not a fair assessment as I have never laid eye ball on a single frame of the Hobbit movies, but I simply cannot fathom how these movies would not be bloated when they used the shortest of the four books sourced for these Middle Earth movies and made three movies out of it. On the other hand, the three much more dense books were made into a single movie per each book.

My personal interpretation of the Hobbit movies are as cash grabs and didn't care for it, so I am taking a stance to not bother with any of them until all three are released. Only then would I evaluate and decide whether it would be something worth visiting.