The Runtime Threshold Exception
An examination of the unwritten agreement that a film running over two hours and thirty minutes is categorically different from one that does not, and what this has cost us.
Preliminary Findings: The Runtime Threshold Exception Domestic Media Consumption Research Unit August 2021
These findings are preliminary. They are also, the research unit acknowledges, unlikely to be followed by more definitive findings, because the phenomenon under examination has proven resistant to formal measurement.
Background
A runtime threshold exists in most households. It is not posted anywhere. It was never agreed upon. It emerged from accumulated precedent and now operates with the force of policy. The threshold is typically two hours and fifteen minutes, or two and a half hours, or somewhere in that range, and is enforced differently by different parties, and exceptions are granted on an ad hoc basis that no one can later explain.
Films under the threshold are watched. Films over it require a conversation. The conversation follows a predictable structure: someone mentions the runtime, someone else expresses mild concern, a brief negotiation occurs regarding the hour at which the film would end if started now, and a decision is reached that has little to do with the film's actual merits.
Three Consequences
Films exceeding the threshold are frequently started and not finished. The second half is deferred to a future viewing that may or may not occur. This creates a category of films that have been watched in a technical sense but not experienced, and about which the viewer has opinions that are based on the first ninety minutes only.
Films below the threshold benefit from an implicit endorsement they did not earn. A ninety-minute film about a subject of no particular interest is more likely to be watched than a three-hour film about a subject of genuine interest, because the arithmetic is favorable. Duration is functioning as a proxy for commitment, which is functioning as a proxy for how much the viewer trusts the film, which is not what duration measures.
Films at the precise edge of the threshold exist in a state of ongoing uncertainty. A runtime of two hours and eighteen minutes is discussed as though it were a negotiable fact, as though the film might be persuaded to shorten itself if the case were made clearly enough.
The Governing Rule
Once a runtime has been perceived as excessive, no amount of subsequent information about the film's quality, pacing, or relevance alters the classification. The film remains an undertaking. This is true even when the watcher has watched films of equivalent length for reasons that no longer seem compelling.
Contradiction
The threshold applies to films. It does not apply to television. A streaming series can run twelve hours across a season and is not described as an undertaking. The arithmetic is identical. The resistance is not.
The research unit has accepted this and moved on.