Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545125
30 C I N E M O N T A G E E D I T I N G I N T H E T W E N T Y - F I R S T C E N T U R Y (2002), or David Lynch's "Inland Empire" (2006), were still considered oddball one- offs. What's more, nearly all movies were exhibited on celluloid. Today, precisely the opposite is true: the overwhelming majority of movies, studio and indie alike, are shot digitally. There are several high-profile, high-performing holdouts who swear by film, including Christopher Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson, but even their movies may or may not be shown on film. Most people who buy a ticket to see Anderson's raucous parody of 1960s-style radicalism, "One Battle After Another" (2025), will see it digitally, even though it was shot in the antiquated VistaVision format. The widely praised "One Battle" is an aberration in content as well as style: To a degree that would have seemed inconceivable 25 years ago, the studios now depend on comic books, video games, and extant "intellectual property" to the exclusion of entire genres, including character-driven movies like "One Battle." Many of the most consequential changes to movies over the last quarter century can be viewed through the prism of post-pro- duction. Some of the shifts are for the good. For example, mainstream movies are now routinely released at lengths that would have once been considered excessive if not prohibitive, including "One Battle After An- other," which, at 162 minutes, is not a patch on 2023's "Oppenheimer" (180 minutes), 2022's "Avatar: The Way of Water" (192 minutes), or the most recent James Bond film, 2021's "No Time to Die" (163 minutes). Countless two-hour-plus superhero movies suggest that audience endurance is greater than it once was. Indeed, a generation ago, films of such lengths were not only more uncommon but often considered liabilities; the disgraced M i ra m a x p ro d u c e r H a r v e y We i n s te i n acquired the nickname "Harvey Scissor- hands" for his propensity to whittle down films, including, infamously, "Shall We Dance?" (1996) and "All the Pretty Horses" (2000). Meanwhile, writer-director Cam- eron Crowe was evidently under sufficient pressure to keep his classic comedy "Almost Famous," released by Paramount in 2000, at a manageable length that, mere months after that wonderful movie played in the- aters, he released a longer, rangier "bootleg cut" on DVD. Today, veritable "bootleg cuts" of movies often seem to be what play in theaters: In 1996, "Mission: Impossible" ran a lean, mean 110 minutes, while this past summer's "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning" unfolded over some 170 minutes. Why have studios become more tolerant of filmmakers who wish to incorporate scenes that might once have been flagged as "deleted"? The shift can be attributed to changing audience habits in the age of streaming. When someone binge-watches an entire season of "The Morning Show" o n A p p l e T V + o r N e t f l i x 's " S t r a n g e r Things," is it really so much to ask to sit for the 2024 musical "Wicked" (2024) for its 160-minute running time? While some contemporary movies feel padded, many others clearly benefit from this relaxation of standards governing acceptable running times. Even A-list filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino seem to be taking advantage: Once compelled to slice and dice his "Kill Bill" epic into a pair of discrete "volumes," Tarantino now luxuriates in running times P H OT O : P H I L C A R U S O / L I O N S G AT E "MEGA" MAN: Francis Ford Coppola directs Adam Driver, right, in "Megalopolis."