We have all felt it: that numbness in the back and legs, a full bladder, or desperately avoiding checking your watch to see how long is left of the film.
But the experience seems to be happening more and more for cinemagoers, who say the growing trend for long movies is putting them off going altogether.
In the past year, blockbusters including The Batman, Avatar: The Way of Water, Babylon, Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon all hit the three-hour mark (with the latter clocking in at a whopping 206 minutes).
But now, cinemas are taking matters into their own hands – by bringing back the 15-minute intermissions that were popular in the UK until the early 1980s.
According to the cinema chain Vue, screenings of Killers of the Flower Moon that include a break halfway through have been a huge hit with customers, who have appreciated the opportunity to stretch their legs or go to the toilet.
“Our recent market analysis showed customers would like to see the return of intermissions,” Vue’s chief executive, Tim Richards, said. “And so far, we’ve seen 74% positive feedback from those who have tried our interval.”
According to Richards, Vue was inspired by a precedent set by a handful of UK operators during Oppenheimer. “The way I see it, cinema is no different from live theatre and a lot of other sporting and entertainment fixtures,” he said.
“There aren’t many events left where you’re sitting in one spot for several hours. When you go see an amazing show at the theatre, the intermission doesn’t distract from it. In fact, it makes it that much more enjoyable because you get a little bit of a break and you can’t wait to get back in.”
In particular, Richards said, younger and older audiences appreciated breaks. “Certainly, because of the very positive response we’ve had, I’m hopeful we’ll be able to offer intermissions more frequently with movies going forward.”
The move came as criticism of overlong runtimes continued to mount. This week, Sideways and The Holdovers director Alexander Payne criticised the phenomenon during an appearance at Middleburg film festival in the US. “You want your movie to be as short as possible. There are too many damn long movies these days,” he said.
Though Payne did not cite any particular offender, his comments came on the opening weekend of Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which critics have said could have benefited from a tighter edit. A review in the i newspaper said the film was “ruined by its inordinate length”.
For his part, Scorsese has passionately defended the runtime of his film, saying “you can sit in front of the TV and watch something for five hours … there are many people who watch theatre for 3.5 hours … give cinema some respect.”
And the gamble to make a long movie often pays off – most of the highest-grossing films in history fall between two and three hours (and every best picture winner at the Oscars has surpassed 90 minutes).
But while long movies have been staples throughout film history – think Titanic, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With the Wind, Ben-Hur or The Godfather II – they used to be the exception to the norm. These days, it’s not just magnificent works of cinema that push runtime limits – even superhero franchises have got longer.
When the film website What to Watch looked at the runtimes of the top 10 movies for the past five decades, it found the average length was 141 minutes in 2022 and 131 minutes in 2021, compared with 110 minutes in 1981.
It’s no surprise, then, that audiences have longed for the return of intermissions. Writing in the Guardian last year, Phil Hoad called them “a relic of a more civilised epoch”.
“No one’s going to pretend that bringing back intermissions would suddenly reverse the post-pandemic malaise of movie theatres in the face of Netflix, Disney+ and others. However, especially compared with the degraded home viewing experience, interrupted by social media every 30 seconds, they might help bolster the status of cinemagoing as a prestige event,” he said.
Richards echoed this, saying the issue wasn’t one of long films but how cinemas can make the experience better for audiences.
“We had a lot of customers who said they felt intimidated by the length of Killers of the Flower Moon. A lot of people actually write to me directly, and we have 100 million people going to our cinemas, so this is a lot of feedback. But when they found out we had an interval, they signed up.”
Richards said intermissions “never went out” and were common practice in other markets, including in Europe, Asia and South America.
“Some of the most successful movies of all time are long movies. This isn’t something new. For us, it’s about providing an element of choice and giving our customers the best possible experience. A large number of our customers just love a comfort break.”
Some of the longest popular films in history
Cleopatra
248 mins (4 hrs 8 min)
Gone With the Wind
238 min (3 hrs 58 min)
Dances With Wolves
236 min (3 hrs 56 min)
Once Upon a Time in America
229 min (3 hrs 49 min)
Lawrence of Arabia
216 min (3 hrs 36 min)
Ben-Hur
212 min (3 hrs 32 min)
The Irishman
209 min (3 hrs 29 min)
Apocalypse Now
202 min (3 hrs 22 min)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
201 min (3 hrs 21 min)
The Godfather: Part II
200 min (3 hrs 20 min)
Spartacus
197 min (3 hrs 17 min)
Schindler’s List
195 min (3 hrs 15 min)
Titanic
194 min (3 hrs 14 min)
