the ninety minute movie is on life support
and we all need to work on reviving it
Hello to my nearest and dearest. I’m truly over the moon with how many of you have given me feedback and shown your appreciation on this blog. I cannot even begin to articulate how much it means to me that anyone has taken an interest in my weekly ramblings, and for that I will be forever grateful <3.
To any newcomers, welcome to what I have falsely advertised as an intellectual debate, and what you will find to be a biased mind dump of my least articulate thoughts surrounding the topic I have conjured up for this week. By the headline, you can see that we’ve arrived at something highly contentious. As a newly reminted Letterboxd user (that’s right, I have regained access to an artifact I have been unable to login to since 2019 when I made my favorite movies G-Force, Stuart Little 2, Cats vs Dogs and Underdog while at a national film convention), I feel so passionately about this that I was compelled to make my controversial movie opinion in print for longevity. And here’s my Letterboxd follow me: https://letterboxd.com/umsterling/
I’ll start simple: I’m a sleepy girl. There. There’s nothing wrong with an endless desire to be a lady in waiting that could collapse on a chaise lounge fanning herself dramatically. And for that reason alone, I should not be subjected to any type of media that exceeds the length of time I would spend if I ever dared to run a half marathon. So here are the perpetrators: the obvious superhero cookie cutter 3 hour explosion with second wave feminist humor, the holy grail directors of fifteen and twenty years ago making a dramatic comeback and falling utterly flat, and every remake, prequel, sequel, book adaptation, live-action piece of garbage in theaters near you.
Why am I so angry about this? If it wasn’t obvious already, I studied humanities in college. All my screenwriting professors were insistent on our final screenplay projects being in the range of 90 to 120 pages long. Interesting considering I haven’t seen a new movie within those parameters since middle school. Every major studio has made detrimental cutbacks on the films they roll out simply because when weighing the options between a Marvel movie that could gross over a billion dollars in two weekends and an art house movie by a first time director that might barely break even, the financial decision is obvious. However, relying only on the economic perspective of whether a film should be made, rather than creating a compelling and moving story, is stupid. Art and media don’t exist exclusively for profit. I would hope any serious filmmaker would simply view that, like fame, as a by-product of their success and not the motivating factor. I cannot say anything about how awful this formulaic strategy of releasing films that will only be blockbusters is detrimental to the industry and creatives any better than James Gray did here, so I encourage you all to watch this interview clip:
A few days ago, I was struggling to even think of movies released in the last year or two that existed outside the sequel, book-adaptation, unfact-checked biopic, remake, cluster-fuck universe, and polled my peers on Instagram to send me their favorite movies of the last year that met these requirements.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (9 votes)
Barbarian (2 votes)
Tár (1 vote)
TENET (1 vote)
Crimes of the Future (1 vote)
Entergalactic (1 vote)
CODA (1 vote)
Power of the Dog (1 vote)
While all these movies are fantastic, most people also mentioned they struggled to even think of movies that fit my specifications. The market is oversaturated with films they know will succeed based on the interest they can drive by the audiences that prior movies or books or other parts of the franchise can bring in. This strategy ultimately makes the process of being a newcomer to the industry and getting your films made more difficult. Not only are you fighting a losing battle where you already won’t generate competitive profits for a studio, but you need to create something so bland that it’s palatable for children, families, and the masses to enjoy without thinking critically.
There are multiple theories that address the basic plots to storytelling, illustrated in the infographic above. Additionally, these can be broken down more intricately, in either Georges Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations, Christoper Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots (in which he discusses nine basic plot types, but dismisses two), or Ronald Tobias’s 20 Master Plots. Whether we distinguish the difference with emotional arcs or types of stories, the message is the same: every story we are telling has already been told before. If that’s the case, why is it taking so long?
The 90-minute runtime is the original requirement for a film to be considered a full length feature. It was the initial cut off time for a film to be shown in cinemas at the introduction of silent films (later increased to 120 minutes). As of now, Avatar 2 is set to be 3 hours and 10 minutes long. Avengers Endgame was 3 hours and 2 minutes. When you view the list of the highest grossing movies of all time (without inflation), what you’ll sadly find is an onslaught of Marvel, Jurrasic World, and more of the same features that all drag on for ages to have the same exact resolution every fucking time. This is not a hero’s journey hate post. I love a thoughtfully told hero’s journey or chosen one story as much as the next person. However, it’s hard to continue liking the trope when there is a perpetual onslaught of carelessly thrown together films of that genre raking in it at the box office three times a year for what seems like the rest of our lives.
And this doesn’t mean there is nothing commendable or admirable about a superhero narrative. I even went through my own Batman obsessed phase in middle school, wanted a Guardians of the Galaxy cake for my sixteenth birthday, and yes, briefly included a few re-blogged gifs of some obscure ships on my Tumblr in 2014. But that was before this was the only kind of movie available to watch. Not only has this media cycle removed the quality of films being released, but also poorly adjusted the genres of films available to us. A girly romantic comedy isn’t profitable. A niche coming of age feature isn’t profitable. Nothing will ever be worth making when stacked up against Thor 4 Muckbang Gaurdians of the Ant-Man-Verse (featuring a 15 second cameo from Robert Downey Jr.).
What’s in theaters now, you ask? The Black Panther Sequel. The Puss in Boots (Shrek spin-off movie) Sequel. Black Adam. Glass Onion (a Knives Out Sequel). Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (book adaptation). I’m just tired. In comparison, of the top 250 rated narrative features on Letterboxd, almost none of them fit within this genre of what I’m calling the “marathon blockbuster.”
Considering we live in a society where watching television without also being on your phone is as commendable as reading, everyone should support movies literally halving their run times back to ninety minutes. If a studio is looking for budget cuts, maybe removing half of the content from the script and cutting days of filming is a good place to start. Will this not at least partially make up for the financial risk of taking on a project not backed by the Russo Brothers? (Edit: After the publishing of this post I have been urged by my friend Zoe to mention that the Russo Brothers did create their own production company, AGBO Films, with the intention of reviving mid-budget features.) This is not to say a long movie can’t be good; there are plenty of 2 hour plus films that need the time for their medium to tell a moving and gut-wrenching story. But, opening the window for a short movie to return is a great place to start with reintroducing the art of cinema back into society.
If a director or screenwriter can’t get their message across without it taking up an eighth of your day or abusing your precedented interest in the universe, maybe they’re not that great of a storyteller.
See you next week x (I guess I’m posting on Mondays now?)