Many times, the main thing standing in the way of a movie achieving its true potential greatness is actually the length of it. Usually, it is common for a movie to have its greatness stunted due to outside forces behind the scenes (i.e. sometimes it’s the writer, other times it’s the director, others it boils down to studio interference, etc.) but not every instance is that deep. In fact, such instances don’t always contribute to bad movies.
There are perfectly good movies out there that would have been great movies had they not been so long. Not every audience member wants to sit through a two-hour movie. Having to do so may drastically affect how they judge the rest of the movie. Some two-hour movies are just better suited to being chopped up by a third of their runtime.
10 First Reformed: Too Many Ideas Make It Too Long
First Reformed is nearly two hours long at 113 minutes, but don’t be surprised if it feels longer than that since the movie is jam-packed with so many different themes and ideas. This movie wants to cover everything, ranging from politics to religion, not to mention the main plot concerning Ethan Hawke’s Pastor Toller comforting a reluctant father asking his wife to have an abortion.
Clearly, there’s a lot going on in this movie, and off the back of a tremendous performance from Hawke, the movie has its high points. Unfortunately, because it bounces around into so many different topics, it lacks a clear focus to solidify its greatness.
9 Life: Too Ambitious For Its Own Good
Life is pretty ambitious for the average comedy-drama. Nearly clocking in at two hours, merely 10 minutes shy of 120 minutes, this movie sought to tell a Shawshank Redemption-esque story of falsely imprisoned convicts serving life in prison. In telling this story, the movie tries to mix Murphy and Lawrence’s slapstick comedy with heavy-handed drama with complex characters.
Because it’s so long, the movie has two things working against it. The mix of two completely different genres divided audiences, but the biggest issue is the first act, which drags on and is largely irrelevant by the time the movie’s over.
8 The Tomorrow War: Peaks 90 Minutes In
Judging by its 78% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes, casual moviegoers certainly enjoyed The Tomorrow War a smidge more than critics did. What likely would have closed the divide a little bit is if the movie had been a half-hour shorter, especially since the movie peaks 90 minutes in.
At around the 90-minute mark, Dan and the older, future adult version of his daughter, Colonel Forester, fight off The Whitespikes. Dan is distraught to see Colonel Forester sacrifice herself so that her dad can go back to the present. In the present day, he’s sent home after duty and is embraced by the modern-day infant version of his daughter, but he’s too distraught with PTSD to enjoy the family reunion because he knows his daughter’s future fate. This would have been a fascinating, bleak way to end the movie, but of course, there are another 40 minutes left to tie up loose ends and the movie ends up overstaying its welcome.
7 One Night In Miami: Cut To The Chase
One Night in Miami… is just five minutes shy of being officially two hours, but with how long the first act drags, it might as well be 120 minutes on the nose, if not longer. This movie takes its sweet time establishing and introducing its four central characters, but each character is a famous historical figure who needs no introduction.
The first act as a whole was unnecessary and only achieves at making the movie longer than it needs to be. Most audiences would have preferred the movie to just cut to the chase and bring this famed foursome together as soon as possible.
6 Being John Malkovich: Not Everyone Can Handle Two Hours Of Weirdness
This delightfully bizarre romp received a lot of love from critics and fans upon its release. Yet, when award season came around, the movie merely received three Oscar nominations. Granted, they were in big categories: Best Supporting Actress for Catherine Keener, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director. One would expect a movie of such high praise to receive nods for awards like Best Picture, or at least an acting nod for its title character.
It would appear that two hours might have been too long to expect everyone to enjoy its weirdness. Two hours of such complex lore was too much for everyone to comprehend, but they can at least appreciate its original writing and visuals to reward them. This would have been more digestible for the average audience at 90 minutes.
5 Blood Red Sky: The Longer It Goes, The Worse It Gets
Blood Red Sky is one of Netflix’s latest original entries where a single mother and her son board a plane that has been hijacked by terrorists. After being bitten by a mysterious monster some nights earlier, she must unleash her inner monster to protect her son.
The movie has gotten generally positive reviews across the board, but without spoiling anything, the popular consensus is that while the movie starts off great, it goes off the rails by the end and moviegoers end up liking the second half a whole lot less than the first half.
4 The Game: Length Makes The Ending Even More Disappointing
The Game has one of the more controversial movie endings that could ever come out of Tinseltown. Even those who love the movie tend to hate how it ends, where after spending the last two hours in a psychologically draining game of life and death, the protagonist discovers that it was all just that: a game orchestrated by his friends and family for a surprise birthday party.
It may be safe to assume that if the movie was a little shorter, the ending would have been forgiven, but when so many people invest so much time into such a high stakes plot, people are naturally going to be frustrated to learn none of it was real.
3 Super 8: Nostalgia Isn’t Enough To Justify Runtime
Upon its release, Super 8 was hotly anticipated by hardcore movie lovers and those fans of the classic ’70s-’80s era sci-movies of old. Yet, 10 years later, Super 8 hardly gets praised in the same vein as the movies it seeks to replicate for nostalgic purposes. It’s mostly endured a legacy of being overlooked and underrated.
Perhaps it is because the movie might just be too long. Some of the best sci-fi movies it seeks to emulate were 90 minutes long, and for this movie, 10 minutes shy of two hours is just too long to enjoy.
2 Black Widow: An Overdue Character Study Has Too Much Going On
Moviegoers have waited for the better part of the last decade to see Black Widow finally get her own movie and when she finally got one, Marvel threw everything on the table for a two-hour and 13-minute long epic bonanza. But maybe an epic bonanza was too long for a movie that already had overwhelming expectations.
People still like it as a good movie for the most part, but it’s also compacted to the brim with different themes, lore, and ideas that end up getting overlooked in the long run due to all the action going on in the foreground. Cut some ideas and the runtime and maybe a wider consensus would have enjoyed this.
1 Gunpowder Milkshake: Action-Packed, But Not Enough Story
Despite amounting to a positively fresh 62% on Rotten Tomatoes, Netflix’s latest premiere Gunpowder Milkshake has a consensus rating that suggests “it runs dangerously close to being a pure sugar rush with no substance.”
While Gunpowder Milkshake is filled with fun action regardless, it admittedly uses most of its runtime to add to the action pile rather than the story and character development. Which is perfect for action enthusiasts, but can be harder for casual fans to sit through two hours of all action and no story. Popcorn flicks like this are usually better suited for a 90-minute runtime.
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