Why is 3 hours considered long for a movie?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Film Art and Cinematography
Kynodontas — 8 months ago(July 14, 2025 02:24 AM)
This sounds like a very stupid question I know but I been watching Scrubs for the first time and 4 hours feels so freaking fast whenever I watch the show during the weekends. In addition I been practising Dark Stalkers and other fighting games seriously because I wish to go competitively so I been putting 3 hours a day during school days and 8 hours per day during the weekends (counting Friday) if I don't have any take home college assignments like essays. In addition for the past 2 months I been taking Polish lessons and been doing 6 hours a day last month now shortened to 3 hours every day as I advance in the language. And while we are at it, I play weekly seasons of Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer and a typical single game in these Tabletop stuff can easily exceed 4 hours that passs by like nothing.
So I ask why is 3 hours considered long for a movie? I mean having seen Gone With the Wind for a history class, I don't understand why my classmates were complaining its so long considering 3 hours goes fast playing Virtua Fighter like less than 10 minutes have gone by during the whole practise session and I can easily binge through 10 episodes of Scrubs? The Polish lessons were far longer than this (not to mention exhausting). And a 2000 points Age of Sigmar game easily eats up in the 4 hour range (and often can go on for even much longer!) so why is 3-5 hours consider a tiring long length thats often only associated with productions of the most epic and expensive budget that are 5 stars quality? -
Madotsuki_the-Dreamer — 8 months ago(July 14, 2025 02:41 AM)
A TV show like Scrubs has episodes that are just 22 minutes in length. Imagine the episode your watching sucks, well it will be over very quickly and maybe the next episode is interesting.
Now imagine watching a 3 hour movie with Brad Pitt where he ages backwards and at the end he turns into a baby right before he dies. Once you realize that the story being told is a real piece of ****, let’s say 20 minutes into it, well you have 2 hours and 40 minutes left of garbage you must sift through. -
Paul P. Powell — 7 months ago(August 27, 2025 11:47 AM)
I believe it is because there's only so long one's emotions can be engaged before an audience is exhausted.
'Tension' can only be applied for a certain interval of time, before human psychology clamors for 'release'.
The duration of performances (as a component of theater) goes back a very long way in history. I seem to recall Aristotle discussing such concepts in the
Poetics
.
Paul P. Powell, Pool Player