Movies are getting quite long, don't you think?
 

The Lord of the Rings (extended edition) - 12 hours, 6 minutes (It's technically one book in three volumes.)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - 4 hours, 36 minutes
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - 4 hours, 1 minute

Of course, these are adaptations that span multiple parts. But aren't almost all of the top grossing films from 2012 well over two hours? I'm willing to bet it's because fans of the original books want accuracy with as little from the book cut as possible, which leads to a lot of material that isn't really appropriate for the big screen.

It's not a bad thing if the movies have a lot of material to work with and keep you engaged, though, like the Harry Potter two-parter mentioned above. It's just annoying when you have to consider how much time to put aside to see a movie that could very easily waste your time.

Too lazy to take a look at my Avengers DVD, but I know it went on for a while. Django Unchsined did too.

To be fair, the increasing film times is, well... good, I think. If you're viewing it at the theaters at least, I can't help it's nice to get more entertainment for your payment.

Adding onto this though, it seems Hollywood is beginning to take in the idea of splitting longer movie adaptions in parts- it means not such a painfully long running time, more accuracy and less cutting of contents (something I know fans certainly like to see) and the film creators effectively get double or more profit from a single adaption, albeit with double the production cost- in a way, everyone wins at some level. But that's just my take on it, I suppose.

That's probably right, but if a movie is too long, it tends to get split - with price doubling to match.

I suppose nobody wants a super-condensed version, after all. Pacing is pretty important is most kinds of media - too fast, and the "can't catch up" syndrome rears its head.

I think long movies are good and bad. The good thing is that it gives the director more time to make the film as good as possible. The bad thing is that you might get bored with the film droning on for a while.

That's why the Hobbit is going to be a three-parter. It's a book filled with vivid details and quite some action, and fans would be disappointed if they just left all that out to fit it within time restraints. Then it'd be a failure of a movie like the Lightning Thief which turned out almost nothing like the book. And when I went to see the Hobbit it had almost nothing cut out, and I was very impressed. I think it's a great thing that the times are getting longer, and if the movie caters to the fans then you wouldn't get bored. It's only a bad thing if it's long because of disgusting filler material.

To be fair Cat all the movies you named are based off very long books in which case they need to put in as much detail as possible.


As for Django Unchained Quentin Tarantino loves making his movies as long as possible but that doesn't matter because he is awesome.

Usually it's typical for bad movies to be too short or under 90 minutes and have to resort to showing the outtakes over the credits or just rolling them really slowly. Although oddly the best film out this weekend is also one of the shortest.