Oh, boy: “Speaking to Digital Spy, director Andy Muschietti confirmed the film is currently coming in at 2 hours and 45 minutes, a solid half-hour longer than its 2017 predecessor.” It’s not that I object to spending two hours and forty five minutes to watch IT: CHAPTER 2. It’s that I object to the loss of the intermission as a common cinema courtesy. And this isn’t the first time the new trend for longer films has been a complication, either; when AVENGERS: ENDGAME’s run-time got revealed, I more or less had to plan out my bathroom breaks extremely carefully, and ahead of time. If they’d just give us a five minute break in the middle…
Look, I refuse to apologize for this. I’m almost fifty. I’m allowed to have a bladder that’s getting along in years, too.
The largest drawback to cinematic intermissions is multiplex Theatre design that prioritizes turnover rather than audience experience. A 10 minutes break in every viewing (the shortest practical time to cycle a decent sized theatre through a restroom) Ada an extra hour to the working day and complicated traffic flow.
Hopefully the growing trend toward boutique viewing experiences, with reserved seating and even waiter service, gets theatre moguls to start thinking like minor league baseball owners – cut down on the admission price and make it back on the ancillaries.
Hmmm. Almost three hours for the portion of the story that, if past performance is any indicator, is not as good.
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I am not saying the adult portion HAS to be sub par, but part of the horror of the IT story, and especially the first part, is that the monster targets, and we see it through, the eyes of children. That amps up the terror quite a bit. How many true horror films or stories can you think of where kids are the protagonists and we see the entire story at their level?
The second movie I ever saw in the theater was Ben-Hur, which had an intermission, also 3 hours and 40 minutes of runtime.
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What? No, I’m not that old; I grew up in the town that Ben-Hur’s author lived in, and on the 100th anniversary of the book’s release, they showed the 1959 classic at the local theater.