The 'Ideal' Length Of A Movie Has Been Revealed - But It Makes No Sense
The masses have spoken, and it may be great news for theaters looking to squeeze more show times on their marquees: the average American craves a movie length of around 92 minutes. That's right — no epic marathons, no three-hour bladder-busting ordeals. Just a neat and tidy hour and a-half from the opening title to the end credits, give or take a few minutes (plus the requisite half-hour of trailers beforehand, of course). We're talking about movies like "Monsters, Inc.," "Clerks," "Beetlejuice," and "Toy Story 2."
The data comes from the polling experts at Talker Research (formerly OnePoll U.S.), who asked 2,000 Americans in an online poll how long their preferred movie experience is. The results are debatable, as we'll see in a minute. Regardless, the dramatic preference for shorter cinematic experiences is a shot across the bow for countless movie visionaries who have become comfortable with and enamored by the idea of releasing two and even three-hour films on every conceivable topic.
It's not even like 92 minutes was first place, and a three-hour movie came in a close second, either. A meager 15% of respondents claimed they wanted to watch a movie longer than 2.5 hours. The number that wanted to go beyond that point? 2%. The people have spoken. Scorsese, Russos, Spielberg, and Jackson — it's time to tone things back and create more bite-size stories.
Before we hail 92 minutes as the new benchmark for filmmaking success, though, we need to look at one significant counterpoint.
The 'ideal' movie length doesn't make any sense, commercially speaking
The claim that 92 minutes is the "ideal" movie length raises some questions when weighed against commercial reality. According to Rotten Tomatoes' top 50 highest-grossing movies of all time list, seven out of the top 10 come in around or well above the 2.5-hour mark.
Most of these aren't just big-money makers, either. They're fan favorites. We're talking about both of the Avatar movies, "Titanic" (James Cameron shows up a lot in that top tier), and a trio of Avengers films — including the pair that took down Thanos and led to at least one of the times the purple villain died in the MCU.
Of the three that come in under the 150-minute mark, "Jurassic World" and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" are still over two hours. "The Lion King" (the live-action version, which was so successful it's spawned a prequel, "Mufasa") breaks that mark, but just barely, coming in at 118 minutes. None of the films come even close to 92 minutes.
It isn't until we get to "Frozen 2" at number 13 that we start to get well below the 2-hour mark. Even then, though, Elsa and Anna's sequel lands at 103 minutes, stretching 11 minutes past the poll's ideal length. It isn't until we hit number 16 that we finally find the movie that cracks the code. "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" unexpectedly blew box office expectations away and wasn't all that long. In fact, the $1.362 billion video game sensation clocks in at precisely 92 minutes.
Why movie length is such a hot-button issue at the moment
The question of whether or not 92 minutes is actually an ideal length for a movie is a proxy discussion for a larger cultural conversation at the moment: namely, are movies getting too long too often? The Guardian reported in late 2023 that an unauthorized intermission in the middle of Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" had gone over well with moviegoers in the UK. The 206-minute experience is long by any account, and the ability to stretch one's legs and go to the bathroom appears to have been a welcome one.
In a talk at the Middleburg Film Festival around the same time, Alexander Payne added fuel to the fire, saying (via IndieWire), "You want your movie to be as short as possible. There are too many damn long movies these days." The director of "Sideways" and "The Descendants" did clarify that long movies are fine as long as they warrant that extra runtime, saying, "If your movie's three and a half hours at least let it be the shortest possible version of a three half hour movie." He pointed to movies like "The Godfather Part II" and "Seven Samurai" as long yet tight movies that didn't need to be cut down any further, concluding, "So there's no ipso facto judgment about length."
Ironically, Payne's latest film, "The Holdovers," is well over two hours, putting it to editorial question by his own standards. Nevertheless, his point still stands. Not all movies have to line up with a specific runtime. If they're going to run long, though, they better have the quality and story to back it up — not to mention a properly sanctioned potty break.