If you’re a Martin Scorsese fan, you know that Scorsese’s best movies have all largely long runtimes. Not that anyone should be complaining since his films truly stand the test of time. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t complainers out there who pointed a finger at the three-and-a-half hour runtime of his latest movie Killers of the Flower Moon. Although the Oscar-winning filmmaker defended it with a strong point that I can kinda agree with.
Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon has a runtime of three hours and 25 minutes. While some people may be hesitant about dedicating this much time to watching one single movie, the Hollywood director reflected on these criticisms to the Hindustan Times, and defended his runtime with a strong point that makes a lot of sense.
People say it’s three hours, but come on. You can sit in front of the TV and watch something for five hours. Also, there are many people who watch theatre for 3.5 hours. There are real actors on stage, you can’t get up and walk around. You give it that respect, give cinema some respect.
This prolific director is no stranger to providing his opinions on what great filmmaking is, as he’s spoken before about how cinemas “shouldn’t be invaded” by Marvel movies. Martin Scorsese has been a part of film history for the past 56 years coming into prominence during a time when new filmmakers were making a name for themselves. He granted us classics that had audiences racing into theaters like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Casino, Goodfellas, and much more. It’s true that no one complains about watching lengthy stage productions or binge-watching shows on their TV screens. If Scorsese needs his upcoming book adaptation to be this long in order to tell his story well, then so be it.
Let’s take a look back at Martin Scorsese’s history with long runtimes. If you examine a ranking of Scorsese’s longest-running movies, Killers of the Flower Moon is not his longest movie. It only falls #6 being 25 minutes longer than The Wolf of Wall Street. Longer than the Apple TV+ movie would be Scorsese’s documentaries like No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and George Harrison: Living in the Material World.
And you can’t forget about Netflix’s The Irishman which is actually three minutes longer than Martin Scorsese’s historical drama. You could argue that the runtime for the Oscar-nominated gangster drama was a problem because you’re asking streamers to sit at their homes for three-and-a-half hours to watch one movie without any distractions. But at home, you’re not obligated to watch it in one sitting if you don’t want to. So the same can go with Killers of the Flower Moon when it hits streaming. If you really want an excuse to complain about a long runtime, Scorsese’s longest movie he’s ever made is his personal documentary My Voyage to Italy which runs at four hours and six minutes! But if this was the length of time that the film buff needed to get his point across about Italian cinema, he had the right to make it as long as he wanted.
If audiences have the patience to binge-watch TV series or sit through long stage productions, Martin Scorsese believes you’ll be just fine watching his movie Killers of the Flower Moon in theaters or at home. Plus, if you feel you can’t watch this upcoming movie for that long in a theater when it releases on October 20th, just see it using your Apple TV+ subscription when the film drops there at a later date.