Three hours and 26 minutes. That's the length of Martin Scorsese's new movie, Killers of the Flower Moon. It's a daunting number to be sure, especially for audiences that have become accustomed to controlling the pace they watch something and if they need to take breaks at home on streaming services. But for some who watch Killers of the Flower Moon at the movie theater, it is causing them to long for a bygone tradition — the movie intermission.
In fact, some movie theaters around the world have taken it upon themselves to insert an intermission into Martin Scorsese's movie. The Guardian has cited reports from the movie theater chain Vue getting positive feedback from moviegoers who saw a showing of Killers of the Flower Moon with an intermission.
There's just one problem: Martin Scorsese did not make Killers of the Flower Moon to be played with an intermission. To insert an intermission into his movie is disrespectful to him and everyone involved in the project.
Three-plus hours is a long time to sit in one place. I'm not writing this from the position that intermissions are pointless or would ruin the experience. I saw a re-release of 2001: A Space Odyssey years ago that had a full-on intermission (15 minute break and all) and I loved that experience just as much as when I watched the movie straight through for the first time at home (watching on the big screen certainly helped).
But 2001 and many other movies with super-sized runtimes made before the 1980s were made with an intermission built in by the filmmakers. That is not the case with Killers of the Flower Moon.
If you need evidence, take it from the studios behind the movie and Scorsese's long-time editor, Thelma Schoomaker.
Variety reported a week after Killer of the Flowers Moon release that Paramount Pictures and Apple Original Films reached out to movie theater chains that added an intermission to their showings of Killers of the Flower Moon (including the previously mentioned Vue). They told the theaters they "have violated their contract by splitting up the film" and told the chains to play Scorsese's movie as intended.
Schoonmaker, who edited Killers of the Flower Moon and has a working relationship with Scorsese that dates back to 1980's Raging Bull, said to The Standard in the UK, "I understand somebody's running it with an intermission which is not right."
I wholeheartedly agree with both Schoomaker and the actions that studios have taken in this instance. As I said in our Killers of the Flower Moon review, the movie is entertaining and important, telling a dark part of American history that has been overlooked for much of the last 100 years. But it's not like every second of the movie worked for me — a few parts of the last act slowed things down in my opinion and made me slightly more aware that we were hitting the three hour mark. But for the most part the movie shoots along and is an enthralling experience. I'm certainly glad I saw the movie as Scorsese, a filmmaker who has a purpose for everything he does, meant it to be seen.
Whether or not a nearly three-and-a-half-hour movie should have an intermission is beside the point. A theater chain should not take it upon themselves to decide to stop Killers of the Flower Moon from playing in the way that Scorese and Schoonmaker, two moviemaking legends, intended. Do these theater chains know where Scorsese would have put an intermission had he wanted one? Doubtful. So who are they to make that kind of call?
While I always recommend people see movies on the big screen whenever possible and strongly suggest that be the case for Killers of the Flower Moon, if the runtime intimidates you so much that you're not confident you could sit through it for one reason or another, hope is on the way. Sooner rather than later the movie is going to be streaming on Apple TV Plus (a premiere date on the streaming platform is still unknown). You can wait for that and then have total control over when and how frequently you need to pause the movie because you're in your own home. Would it still be better to watch it straight through? Probably, yes. But I don't think Scorsese or Paramount is going to come knocking down your door to enforce anything then.
Also, why is this bubbling up now with Killers of the Flower Moon? As we've researched ourselves, movies are getting longer, with the average runtime of the biggest movies of 2021 coming in at two hours and 11 minutes. Some of the most popular in the 21st century have clocked in at over three hours. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was just five minutes shorter than Killers of the Flower Moon and had no intermission; Avengers: Endgame cracked the three-hour mark and ran straight through. If you'd argue that those movies are more action packed, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, which while told in a gripping way only has one "action" sequence, was three hours too, yet people sat through it without a break and you heard nary a complaint.
While the removal of intermissions may have been in no small part a financial decision (allowing theaters to get more showings of these movies per day), instituting them in today's landscape needs to be the choice of the filmmaker.
Remember Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight? The movie was two hours and 48 minutes and shown straight through in most circumstances. However, Tarantino also arranged a special cut, The Hateful Eight Roadshow version, that did include an intermission. That should prove that if an influential director — like a Tarantino, Scorsese or Nolan — wants an intermission, then they can find some way to get one in their movies.
It's not a secret how long Killers of the Flower Moon is, so you know what you're getting into and should be prepared for that. The last thing that should be done is interfering with the work of a filmmaker because people think sitting for three hours is too demanding.
