[tkocmathla]

> There’s a feeling in Hollywood that audiences have short attention spans and must be assaulted with fresh novelties. I think such movies are slower to sit through than a film like “Shawshank,” which absorbs us and takes away the awareness that we are watching a film.

This resonates with me and is a really concise way to explain why, to me, a 2 to 2.5 hour long Marvel or Transformers movie feels like an eternity, while a movie like Shawshank never has me checking my watch.

[jcynix]

Ghibli movies are a different class of movies, but the exact thing that you describe "absorbs us and takes away the awareness that we are watching a film" is what happends to me. The story is so intriguing that I even "forget" that I'm watching a painted movie.

[ted_bunny]

Spirited Away contains an accurate review of itself in the title!

[canadiantim]

I like the use of happends in this context, a good mixture of tenses

[port11]

I agree with sibling that Kurosawa does this very well.

My take: Marvel movies have a loooot going on. That might just be draining after a while, since the human brain isn’t wired for constant arousal. Old school action movies are still quite fun to watch and don’t felt that long, perhaps because were given time to ‘rest and digest’ the action.

Marvel has no clue, just keeps pumping and pumping. I especially liked the animated Spider-Man movies, but am super tired of a 2.5h smorgasbord of nonstop action. Even John Wick has a cadence.

[esafak]

I made the mistake of watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. I just could not keep up and walked out early on. They had dialed everything to 11 and never let up.

[tootie]

Kurosawa did this better than anyone. He could make you sit through 2.5 hours of grinding drama and make it feel like barely 5 minutes have passed. Ran (1985) was like that.

[mpalmer]

Slow media or die!

The particular niche of television Vince Gilligan has carved out for himself is endlessly fascinating to me.

With three shows over the course of 20 years, each more detached from the sensationalism of its predecessor, he (and it must be said, the creative team surrounding him, usually more than half women) has trained an audience to appreciate slower TV that takes its time and nevertheless works from moment to moment. On this count alone, he has my undying respect, as I think it's the biggest sort of success an artist can hope to have, to advance your point of view and come to be valued for it in itself.

[illwrks]

I think a part of it is down to demographics with disposable income. Teenagers have a taste of freedom and some pocket money and the next gimmick films is a good way to spend it. It's the same as they mature into 20 somethings. In their 30's they may be more career focused and have less time, a good chunk of them will tire of novelty and move towards more interesting/arthouse films. When kids come into the picture there's even less time and money so things change again, then the cycle repeats.

So, at least from my opinion, "new" will always be a good sales tactic to catch attention.

[stamourd]

"it was long at 142 minutes"

How times have changed