High time cinemas introduced interludes

Martin Scorsese made some interesting comments in an Indie Wire article, in which he defended the hefty runtime for Killers of the Flower Moon, his next film.

The director has a reputation for insulting mainstream entertainment, particularly big-budget comic book movies. He thinks the comic book genre is destroying cinema by making younger audiences believe that comic book movies are all that exist in the industry. Naturally, reporters take every opportunity to raise this topic because fans of the comic book genre respond so passionately to Scorsese’s comments, which boosts traffic for the publications in question.

The director’s most recent comments are not nearly as controversial. Nonetheless, they have sparked an interesting debate about the appropriate length for movies. Killers of the Flower Moon is three and a half hours long.

First, cinemas don’t appreciate long films because they limit the number of showings a cinema can schedule. Secondly, many moviegoers cannot sit still for that long, or so they claim. Scorsese mentioned in the Indie Wire article that some viewers watch 3.5-hour-long plays without moving out of respect for the actors on stage.

He also highlighted the popularity of binging, where viewers consume 10-hour seasons of a show within a single sitting. Although the comparison to streaming is ridiculous because you can pause a TV show to use the bathroom, grab a snack…

Cinemas are different. You can’t even argue that Millenials and Gen Z have atrocious attention spans because they typically consume entertainment a few seconds at a time through mediums like TikTok. Admittedly, the film’s quality is a deciding factor. I can watch the four-and-a-half hour Director’s Cut of Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King without leaving my seat because that movie is a masterpiece.

In comparison, it took me three days to watch all four hours of Scorsese’s The Irishman because it could not hold my attention. But Scorsese is right. Three and a half hours is not too long for Killers of the Flower Moon.

Every project has an appropriate length. Some of you will watch Killers of the Flower Moon and say it was too short. Others will watch The Marvels later this year and complain that it was too long at 1 hour 45 minutes. That said, Scorsese is also wrong.

Many viewers have already expressed disinterest in watching Killers of the Flower Moon on the big screen, because they can’t hold their pee for three and a half hours and taking a five-minute pee break means missing crucial information that may affect your ability to enjoy the rest of the film.

Funnily enough, I spent years dismissing this issue; I could not understand how adults could fail to hold their pee for two or more hours. But after seeing Scorsese’s comments and reading the frustrated responses from viewers, I researched the matter and discovered that it can take as little as five minutes for your body to process water.

In other words, if you drink a 500ml Coke at the start of a film, the desire to pee may overwhelm you within the first hour. With that in mind, cinemas should consider introducing intermissions. We got one for Avatar: The Way of Water. I stayed in my seat, but nearly a quarter of the cinema left.

I guess you can’t make everyone happy. Intermissions can work if you keep them short. Cinemas are incentivized to introduce them because many viewers refuse to watch long films in the cinema. They prefer to wait for them on streaming where they can pause. Companies may woo those individuals back to the cinema by introducing intermissions.

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