With films today having an average running time of 2 hours or more, it’s normal viewers might need a break in between to run to the bathroom though not without missing the movie. 15-minute long intermissions have long ago faded from American and UK cinemas since the ‘80s. Its original purpose was a convenient tool for movies projected from reels of film back in the day. The intermissions allowed projectionists time to switch between reels without having the audience sit awkwardly in the dark and instead allowed them to exit the theater during this time. These intermissions have since been dropped from films as cinemas wanted to fit in more movie screenings in a day. In the 21st century, directors like James Cameron don’t make movies with intervals in mind, especially a visually immersive film like Avatar: Way of Water. This is one of the few films this year that had theaters reach out about break in between given its long running time of 3 hours and 12 minutes.
The proposition for cinema intermission mainly applies for films like Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer which target an older audience that might want a break from a three hour film. With 10-second video clips on social media apps, attention spans are getting shorter and movies are ironically getting longer. Cinemas are still struggling with settling back to normalcy after the pandemic, with the decrease of moviegoers due to accommodating to films being released on streaming platforms. But by allowing the audience to stretch their legs in between a long film, there is a chance it may lure viewers back in.
Leave a Comment