With the simultaneous releases of Oppenheimer and of Barbie last Friday, the film summer officially began. The biggest box office hits of the year are all playing at the same time. In addition to these two event films, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Spiderman. Through the Spider-Verse, Indiana Jones and the dial of destiny And Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part 1 could stay in theaters for months.
Despite the apparent eclecticism of the selection, five of these six films (excluding Barbie) share an increasingly common characteristic among blockbusters: they are very long. If they all last at least 135 minutes, Oppenheimer throne at the top at 180 minutes. Avatar, released last December, is even 192 minutes long — a length that has proven irritating to many moviegoers and critics alike. Is a major trend taking hold in the industry?
“In any case, I noticed it in my daily practice, observes Helen Faradji, film critic at Radio-Canada. A few years ago it became more apparent with the Marvel movies, and I feel like they’ve infected everyone else blockbusters. »
According to data from the French magazine Teleramathe length of all feature films has, however, increased very little since the 1950s. However, among the fifty best-rated films each year on the magazine’s social network, Vodkaster (which is roughly similar to popular successes), “we go from an average length of one hour and forty-seven in 1968 to two hours and six minutes (i.e. almost twenty minutes more) in 2018”, specifies an article by Telerama.
Moreover, in the wake of the release of the last Avatarlast December, the newspaper The world has reconstructed a database of some 12,000 films released in France between 1950 and 2022 “to check whether extended films reflect a general trend or are simple exceptions”. The result ? Movie lengths haven’t increased much, but “a stretching trend” has been seen among “several (often successful) cinematic universes,” such as Disney, Marvel, Impossible mission Or IndianaJones.
Blame the platforms?
Box office champions therefore always last longer, and the reasons for this trend may seem surprising, as short videos are in vogue on TikTok and moviegoers are moving from theaters to streaming platforms.
“Paradoxically, this is the reason why we want the blockbusters become spectacular experiences. We still consider cinemas as the platforms of choice for these films,” says Thomas Carrier-Lafleur, critic and postdoctoral researcher in cinema at the University of Montreal. “Hollywood relies on a certain gigantism to justify going to theaters, and not only in duration, but also with special effects and epic narratives. Only comedies are spared from this trend, and we see less and less of them in the cinema”. One more time, Barbie is an exception.
At a time when movie tickets cost $15, fewer movie theaters are available to the public, and fewer films are released, “producers want to make sure that audiences get their money’s worth,” adds Helen Faradji. “Spielberg and Scorsese have long said that the future of popular cinema lies in the mega-spectacle. Larger screens are also built, seats that vibrate… The room becomes an American football stadium. »
Guillaume Lafleur, director of programming at the Cinémathèque québécoise, specifies that “commercial films must also position themselves according to what works the most”. Right now, according to him, it’s the playoffs. “The rhythm in the development of the dramaturgy of blockbusters more and more like the series, even the soap opera. Inevitably, this way of doing, which joins the novelistic form, where one develops more a taste for the story for itself, compared to the form, is part of the duration. »
” The story repeats itself “
This is not the first time that we have observed phenomena of this kind. “The cinema always evolves according to technology, explains Mr. Carrier-Lafleur. In the 1950s and 1960s, when television took hold, and then in the 1970s, when the advent of VHS, very long films were also among the top grossing films at the box office. »
The researcher spontaneously recalls lawrence of arabia (1962), the 218-minute David Lean classic, as well as hits from the 1970s that are considered early blockbusters, such as Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), both of which were two hours long—beyond the then standard of 90 minutes.
The 1970s also coincided with the emergence of the New Hollywood movement, where filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather) and Martin Scorsese (Freedmen) enjoy great critical and popular success with very long films. “Scorsese’s penultimate film, The Irishmanwhich was released on Netflix, revived this tradition, with the epic breath of Freedmen and of Casino. […] We should see more and more similar films, both on the platforms and in theaters, “says Mr. Lafleur.
“Long running times, which were perhaps more associated with superhero films 5 or 10 years ago, are therefore also increasingly common in auteur blockbusters, such as Dunes by Denis Villeneuve and the films of Christopher Nolan”, specifies Helen Faradji. So much the better, she concludes, if it is even easier and more pleasant to see them indoors.
This is what makes Guillaume Lafleur say that “history repeats itself, with old answers to new questions”.