and Avengers: Endgame is chock-full of superhero drama and action that was monstrously popular. Gone With the Wind, despite how troubling many aspects of it are, is efficient at its colossal 221-minute runtime because of everything it packs into it – luscious visuals, multiple all-timer performances, and a plot of epic scale. To put it plainly, the amount of quality material must stay at a constant ratio to the length of the film, and when it doesn’t, the film becomes a redundant drag. Note how a movie being boring doesn’t usually relate to the runtime itself – there are 90-minute movies that are immensely boring, too – which proves that a more brief length does not correlate to the entertainment gained from a film. If a movie is boring, it is just as boring at three hours as it is in just over one. So, if the length of a movie doesn’t matter in comparison to efficiency, why do many people still disparage longer films? I assume that audiences may think that longer films have a high-
er propensity to be boring; misusing a lengthy runtime has certainly plagued films in the past. Or, alternatively, the widespread availability of films on streaming platforms may just inspire shorter choices, because there are countless 90-minute films to choose from. Some platforms have attempted to combat this by breaking lengthy movies into a miniseries of equally long episodes, like Netflix’s extended version of The Hateful Eight, though I don’t think this will make an ultimate difference in the consumption of the medium, and neither will any other method of breaking a film into chunks. Nothing will change how the film was made, and therefore neither does it change its efficiency. None of what I’ve described, though, will kill the long movie. So, cinephile, don’t fret: there will always be long stories to be told and filmmakers willing to tell them. As long as we have short movies, we will have long ones. Let’s just hope they’re efficient. ee
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