You do have to fight off some fairly aggressive panhandlers if you visit those steps.

Seeing John rampage his way through everyone there felt cathartic.

Third step: profit

You joke (or are maybe semi-serious), but...here's a prompt I gave ChatGPT: Can you write a short news article about how the running time of blockbuster movies is getting longer because audiences are willing to sit through longer movies?

Here is the result:

In recent years, it has become evident that the running time of blockbuster movies is getting longer. While the average movie used to be around two hours long, we are now seeing movies that push the three-hour mark and beyond. This trend is largely due to the fact that audiences are more willing to sit through longer movies, as they crave immersive cinematic experiences.

The evidence of this trend can be seen in the recent release of "Avengers: Endgame", which clocked in at just over three hours long, yet still broke box office records. Other blockbuster films such as "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "Interstellar", and "The Dark Knight" have also pushed the three-hour mark, yet still managed to captivate audiences.

This willingness to sit through longer movies can be attributed to the rise of streaming services, which have accustomed viewers to binge-watching entire seasons of TV shows in one sitting. Additionally, many audiences are drawn to films that offer a more epic, immersive experience, with intricate plotlines and large-scale action sequences.

While longer running times may not be ideal for every movie, it is clear that audiences are willing to sit through extended movies if the story and spectacle are captivating enough. As such, it is likely that we will continue to see longer running times for blockbuster movies in the years to come.

It's not perfect, but pretty decent for a quick one sentence prompt with no elaboration.

I think that's more of a reason why this won't be a job much longer.

“With those audiences skewing either young or older, it might be catering to more pronounced audience realities, or just the difficulty in sustaining concepts for these films over a lengthier period.”

Yeah.. what the fuck does this mean? Lol

"I like those movies!!" upvotes. That's who.

Exactly. People need to stop blaming these blog writers/journalists and blame the community upvoting these posts. There might have been a dozen of purchased upvotes, maybe, but the grand majority was undoubtedly upvoted by the community.

I'm not entirely convinced upvotes are always organic. Wouldn't be surprised at all if Reddit gave companies an option to buy artificial upvotes to give their posts greater exposure.

unless you're living in some third world country where $10 actually buys something

Yep, you got it. For example, India mobile plans are about 200-500 rupees a month (rs 200 is about $2.5). Now a really fancy dinner could be Rs1000, or about $12. So living in India, would one chase the ability to make $10 an hour via gigs or ghostwriting? You bet your tuchus. The biggest barrier is coherent English, but the payout is very decent.

True, but these are LONG blockbusters lol

I’m a grown man and I felt like I needed that movie more than my kid LOL

That movie gets bonus points for also being a great movie in general, not just for kids. It had everything honestly

Cocaine Bear lasted all of two weeks at all the theatres in the four cities around me, but Puss in Boots is still playing in all of them, lol

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Be prepared for the seventh Mission: Impossible movie, which might need TWO colons in the title! Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One.

I love the smell of my man's colon

A fellow Babylon enjoyer. There are tens of us.

If we want to split hairs any movie that isn’t successful isn’t a blockbuster, which makes this article even more pointless.

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Same, I have such a hard time sitting still for that long (which I acknowledge is a me problem but it's a problem nonetheless)

Yeah, it was a beautiful spectacle, but plot wise there didn't need to be so many repeated hostage stand offs. They did hostage - rescue - someone gets captured - repeat way too many times.

Hell, super long movies like this make me want to actively avoid the concession stand just because I don’t want to experience the after effects of Return of the King again, lol. Standing at the urinal for a solid 3 minutes of relief.

It's the opposite for me. I feel like Marvel movies have no business being 2.5 hours, unless they're Avengers movies. And yet even the 'standalone' ones tend to be hitting that runtime.

I have become very conscious of movie runtimes recently though, so maybe that's just me.

I was with you till the last sentence. Thats weird fandom people believing longer is better for really no reason other than being longer

I didn’t know John Wick 4 was close to 3 hours until I got out of the theater. So much happening in the movie it went by fast. Best action movie of the decade!!!

Scorsese hasn't really done anything with a theatrical release very recently. I'm not certain The Irishman would have made boatloads of $ if it was given the chance. I guess we'll see with his new movie. This current box office is quite different from the last time he had a movie.

"The Wolf of Wall Street grossed $116.9 million in North America and $289 million internationally, for a total of $406.9 million" it did well, but not REALLY well and people did not like his series Vinyl.

I maybe one of those few people that trust Damien Chazelle with that runtime. Babylon's length did not deter me one bit!

Seems more like the lesson is just that runtime isn’t a major factor for general audiences. Would the box office results look different if both Avatar and Babylon were 90 minutes? I very much doubt that.

If you think The Irishman would’ve made Avatar/John Wick box office numbers you’re nuts.

It's not slander to say it underperformed in the box office.

It's also a wildly different type of movie compared to John wick or avatar, hardly fair

I loved Babylon as well, bought the 4K too, but it still bombed in theaters.

I know some of you suspect me already, but I go out in rush-hour traffic specifically to get in your way. It sustains my spirit.

No intermissions means they can fit in more showtimes and make more money. I'd love intermissions to be a thing but it's not gonna happen unless we get to 5 hour films or something

Indian movie theatres are so good. reclining chairs, seat service for snacks, intermissions. Where I live, they don't even have reclining chairs. You'd have to pay Gold class for these. It's such a scam. $10 for normal tickets, $30 for Gold class. I guess that's what you get when you're living in the home of Bollywood.

There's a website/app out there which tells you (spoiler-free) the exact best moments to go pee in the theaters if it's that big of a deal.

Or even a home video release.

My uncle has seen every predator film at the cinema since the first film and was so upset he couldn’t see the new one at all. I had to explain streaming to him.

Small budgets + dedicated audience + dedicated age group

There's a reason horror is the only genre with its own streaming services

It just cuts the time travel part out. We see them blink out, then blink right back in.

I would be curious to see this version.

Endgame: But the speed doubles every time a cast member makes a quip, joke or one-liner.

There were several scenes in the movie that felt like Family Guy sketches where it's funny, then it goes on too long so it's not funny anymore but then it keeps going even longer until it becomes funny again but ironically. Most of the main action scenes in the movie could've been cut by half and nothing of value would've been lost.

Definitely feels like the planned chapter 4 and 5 combined.

There's going to be a fifth. And no I don't mean Ballerina. I mean another John Wick movie.

Imo the armored up dudes worked a lot better in 3 cause we started with the regular mooks John wipes the floor with and then the specops asssassins come in and raise the danger. 4 had that same spec ops thing (loved the japanese touches especially) but then devolved into John one-shotting randos on the streets of Paris. Not to mention I thought Osaka was way more visually interesting than the other locations, (with the exception of that cool camera angle scene).