Failings of the 3 hour film.

Few films need to be over 2 hours. Some rare exemptions are "Titanic" and " The Lord of the Rings." When a film starts creeping over the hour and a half mark, people start looking at their watches, yawning, start thinking about what they are going to do after the film and begin wishing they hadn't had so much soda to drink.

King Kong, I couldn't finish watching but I did skip to the end, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the story of a man who ages backwards, was so long, I began to age with him. Lawrence of Arabia, considered one of the great films, is still an unwatched film by me. I have the dvd, but the movie is 216 minutes long and it is taking forever to get to the meat of the story, the action instead there are a bunch of scenes of him riding through the desert.

When a screenplay is over 90 pages, there has to be a reason for it to be longer otherwise, you end up with a lot of unnecessary filler scenes that slow the story down. But then you don't want a story to be so short, it feels as if there is no tension or drama. For example, " The Seeker: Dark is Rising" started off so slow, then when it kicked in to gear, the seeker found everything so easy, it didn't seem as if he had to work for anything at all.

The classic page length for a screenplay is 120 pages, but not many people these days want to sit two hours in an uncomfortable seat. Especially if your target audience is teenagers.

When I write, I want the story to immediately dive into the deep end of the pool, no wading slowly through back story. I find there are more interesting ways to establish backstory and characters.