this comes from my other thread on seeing Passenger 57 which is 84 minutes and i think, think, i saw in theater.

excluding animated features, how long does a movie have to be for you to feel comfortable paying for when going to a theater?

i do like to get my money's worth and short movies don't always do it for me when i'm paying full price at a theater. i tend to like at least 90 minutes and above, especially when enjoying thoroughly. usually only see the ones i want, can be picky.

so does length even factor into your decision?

ps) you can vote for more than 1 answer.

Roger Ebert said something about this a couple of hundred times. My answer is his answer.

I'm the opposite. The shorter the better. I try to avoid movies in theaters that are over two-and-a-half hours unless it's something I really, really want to see. I was fine with INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and DJANGO UNCHAINED, but HATEFUL 8 was too long for me. It had an intermission yet I didn't have to go to the bathroom then so I didn't. As a result, I had to go afterwards and had to miss some maybe important, maybe unimportant dialogue during a scene in the last third of the movie.

i thought all 3 were masterful and saw them all in theater. didn't mind length of The Wolf of Wall Street and loved it or any of The Lord of the Rings movies...

It doesn't really matter to me as long as I'm interested in the film.

I tried to watch it on cable and couldn't get past five minutes.

Any length is fine, but I have a hard time watching longer movies at home, so I'd rather watch those in the cinema when I can.

This is the boring answer. However it’s also the correct answer.


That being said, I’d probably wait for some 4+ hour film, that’s going to require a commitment to watch, when it was available on DVD or Blu.

Time doesn't matter to me.

The length of a movie has got nothing to do with my decision to see it in theaters.

Growing up there was one theater in town that specialized in the big, over long movies. It was relatively small as theaters go in the 60s but had the screen and the tech to exhibit it properly. It showed the roadshow versions if there was one. A movie would be shown for months, however long until the next movie of that type was released.
Doctor Zhivago, My Fair Lady, Sand Pebbles, Hello Dolly, Sound of Music, etc. They got them all.
At intermission the theater would clear out. In the lobby a table was set up with free coffee and donuts. Coffee is the last thing I'd drink at one of these shindigs. Anyway, they would announce that intermission was ending and everyone would file back in. I don't really remember, but the intermissions were pretty long. 15-20 minutes maybe.

We've gone over this on this board before. I totally disagree with Ebert's statement and people here have said I misunderstood it. My argument remains that many good movies are good because they've been cut down to the right length and many bad movies are bad because scenes were taken out of them that make them incomprehensible, i.e. because they're shorter than they should be.

^
This

Isn’t that what the quote said? Sounds like you nailed it, you just have a more cynical view of it.

IIRC, the quote was "No good movie is too long, no bad movie is too short." Or did he say, "One small step for man, one giant step for mankind"? Either way, maybe you guys are right and I'm misunderstanding it.

I think that Ebert's line "No good movie is too long, no bad movie is too short" is about the audience reaction to the theatrical release of a film. It's not that length and pacing can't play a role in the quality of a film, but for a good film, it's going to be exactly as long as it needs to be, while a bad movie can't be over soon enough.

It's like the old restaurant patron joke, "this food is awful, and the portions are too small!" To argue about movie length is to ignore the bigger picture of whether or not it was a good movie.

However, this doesn't mean that Ebert was saying a good movie could be made better by making it longer. In this day and age of extended cuts and director's cuts that add material back in, sometimes people may assume the longer cut is better because, hey, more. But Ebert himself famously hated the movie The Brown Bunny in its festival cut, but praised a significantly shorter cut of the film.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-brown-bunny-2004
Another way to look at the Ebert quote is that a good 2 1/2 hour film will breeze by while watching it in the theater. Unless you need a bathroom break, you may barely be aware so much time has passed by the end of the movie. On the flip side, an awful 84 minute movie may leave you squirming in your seat, furtively glancing at your watch every few minutes as the seconds seem to take eons to tick by.

That said, there's probably an upper limit to how long most people are willing to sit in a theater for a single showing. I like the Lord of the Rings movies, and largely prefer the extended cuts of those films, yet I didn't go to the marathon screenings of all 3 movies because I didn't feel like spending 10+ hours in a movie theater in one day. The original, lost, 8 hour cut of the silent movie Greed was also probably an exercise in endurance for the audience. Nowadays that'd be split up into episodes to binge watch while at home on the couch, able to pause at will.

When my then girlfriend dragged me to see Titanic, I thought my back would break and my bladder would pop before the movie ended. I haven't been to a 3 plus hour film since.

The only time the length of a movie is a consideration is if I'm going to a late show. If that's the case, and if I'm choosing between a few movies, I will usually opt for a 90 minute movie over a 140 minute movie, for example. But that's just because then I'm less likely to fall asleep.

If I'm going at a time of day when that isn't a concern, the runtime makes no difference to me.

But no, there is no minimum runtime needed in order to justify a ticket purchase.

How long was the Episode I trailer?

I’ll never pay more than 10 cents per minute of screen-time. It gets tough haggling with the people in the box office, but I think it’s only fair.

^

I think that book The Five Love Languages is good. I've found most people gravitate to at least one when they hear the list and if they take the quiz it tends to match up (or if it doesn't, they understand why after some processing). The five love languages are: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.

Mine is quality time. It matters to me and it matters an incredible amount. Length of time means nearly nothing if the quality is there.

Give me quality over quantity, any day.

There's an app called Runpee that lets you know when during a particular movie is a good time to go take a pee break.
http://runpee.com/

Anything over 2 1/2 hours should probably have an intermission, but theater owners aren't going to go for it, since it lengthens the running time and reduces the number of times they can play it per day.

I'm grateful for multiple options in the poll. I quickly chose that time isn't a factor along with questioning whether Oldboy was high.

Same here.