Movies Getting Longer (But Just Barely)

James Joyner @ Gone Hollywood | Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Somebody has taken the top fifty movies, as ranked by IMDB, for each decade and produced the graph at right.

Andrew Sullivan, who I gather has just seen the “Sex and the City” movie and found it long, quips, “They don’t all have to be endless.”

But Andrew is only two years older than I am, which means contemporary films he’s likely to remember date from no earlier than the very late 1960s. Since then, the range has been within +/- 2 minutes, a duration not likely to register in the consciousness of the average moviegoer.

“Sex and the City” in particular ran for 148 minutes, a whopping 19 minutes (or 14.7 percent) more than average. That’s noticeable but likely objectionable only if the movie isn’t particularly enjoyable. By contrast, “Iron Man” was a measly 126 minutes; I’d have been happy for an additional 22 minutes worth.

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