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Should More Movies Follow The Kill Bill Playbook?
Oct 30, 2025
Not that long ago, sweeping epics running over 3 hours in run time were rare. Today, with films like Avatar, Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer and The Justice League Snydercut, it seems too many movies are pushing past that 3 hour mark. Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and James Cameron continue to push the limits of how long an audience can sit in a movie theater. Which begs the question, have movies in general become too long? And will film studios ever step in to wrangle their directors?
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F*** it, let's go
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No, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, give it a chance. Give it a chance. Give it a few more minutes. When did movies get so long
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It seems like every film that lands in Cineplexes, whether it be a crowd-pleasing superhero adventure
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or highbrow prestige epic, is, at minimum, two and a half hours long
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which begs the question, why? If something takes you a full half a day to watch
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why not make it into a miniseries or a multifilm franchise? Why not do what Quentin Tarantino did with Kill Bill
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The notion of how long a film can be has waxed and waned over the near century of their existence
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Initially exhibited in short form contexts, the art of moviemaking quickly evolved over the first few decades of its life
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Eventually, the general consensus settled that a feature film or the main attraction that was not newsreel footage or animated short films would be constructed of roughly an hour of film
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Even this rough consensus wasn't exactly a concrete rule, though. You see, some films would have a runtime of well over an hour, and some, like Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr., which only ran 45 minutes, would have far shorter running times
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As the art form of film matured, these running times were beefed up to give moviegoers more of a delineated experience
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In the early days of the industry, movie theaters would just screen films, newsreels, and shorts on an infinite loop
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However, with the release of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, movie times and beginning start times were introduced in order to not spoil the climactic reveal
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And as we've continued to evolve, films have gotten ever more expansive, and some might argue bloated
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You ain't kidding. Film as a medium is always responding to the time and context that it's in
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Movies that were produced around the Second World War are inherently made in the shadow of that massive global event
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Today, films are competing for the most vital resource there is, attention
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And as such, need to will themselves into a level of prestige and importance
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that an extended running time is shorthand for. But maybe they shouldn't be
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Maybe they should focus on telling a story in the most entertaining and economic way possible
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Just like what happened with Tarantino would epic Kill Bill Hollywood is full of mythic behind the scenes stories and none are quite as great as how Kill Bill came to be Created from the ultimate marriage of star and director
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the concept of the bride and a vengeance-filled mother hellbent on ending a former employer's reign of terror
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was the co-creation of Uma Thurman and Tarantino. They concocted the idea for the story
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while they were filming Pulp Fiction in 1994. This concept would then be something of Hollywood folklore
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after Tarantino's meteoric rise to fame. Everyone wanted to see the star and director of Pulp Fiction reunite
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However, it took almost six years for Tarantino to actually sit down and start working on the script
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Most of the actual writing for the project was done in the year 2000 when Tarantino was living in New York
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While there, he was spending copious amounts of time with Thurman and her young daughter, Maya
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This influenced the writing of the film and fundamentally reshaped what Tarantino had originally been trying to write a story about
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The idea of a simple revenge movie in the mode of Death Wish or I Spit on Your Grave
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evolved into an epic love story of a mother's commitment to her child
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The film would ultimately have massive action set pieces, colorful characters, and a purportedly over 200-page script written in a non-traditional manner
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After Tarantino had shot his love letter to Kung Fu, Bruce Lee, and the beauty of motherhood
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there was a bit of a hiccup, though. The project was just too long. This was partially because of the overly involved action set pieces
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and partially because of the non-traditional prosaic manner the script was written in
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Don't touch it or I'll stick another one right in your cheek. Which led to more film being produced
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than the typical one minute per page truism of a traditional script
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So when it came time to premiere the film, it was split into two halves. Kill Bill Volume 1, released October 10th, 2003
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and Kill Bill Volume 2, released April 16th, 2004. The project re-cemented both Thurman and Tarantino
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as industry titans. It's also worth noting that these films are always discussed by Tarantino and Thurman
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as two halves of the same film. They're a single unit. This is a distinctly different approach however from the somewhat modern trend of splitting final franchise installments in half to milk money out of a loyal fan base Films like Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2 Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2 and Hunger Games Mockingjay Parts 1 and 2 are all exhibited this way out of purely
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financial motivations, not creative pursuits. In the mode of so many other modern films
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there is an extended cut of Kill Bill that exists, dubbed Kill Bill the Whole Bloody Affair
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which first premiered at Cannes in 2004. The combined edition outside of its premiere has
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only ever been screened for one week in 2011 at Tarantino's personal movie theater
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The New Beverly in Los Angeles. The total running time of this version of the film is 3 hours and
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58 minutes and features numerous extended sequences and uncensored gags. Tragically, the only way to really get this edition of the film is on the bootleg circuit as there is still
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not yet an official home video release. All that being said, this is the way to do things if you're
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a filmmaker with a grand vision. Just be honest and say you're making a single film in multiple
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installments or just say it's a miniseries. The Irishman, three hours and 29 minutes
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Killers of the Flower Moon, three hours and 26 minutes. Zack Snyder's Justice League
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four hours and two minutes. These aren't movies that are fun to experience. They're endurance
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tests. Cinema is supposed to move us, to transport us to other worlds, to allow us entrance into
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other people's perspectives. But we shouldn't have to run a marathon or eat up half an entire
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workday to do so. Recently, during Killers of the Flower Moon's all-too-brief theatrical window
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some European theaters and one U.S. theater in Colorado started showing the film with an
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artificially inserted intermission. Seems like a reasonable enough request, right? How long does
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Scorsese think we can hold it after all? This is a film that, after you include the requisite half
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hour of coming attractions, is probably coming in at over four hours worth of runtime after all
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And yet, Apple and Paramount took this very seriously. They sent cease and desist letters
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to all the theaters and chains. Why? Because they claim it violates the artist's intent
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Look Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest filmmakers to ever work in the medium no question but come on Scorsese longtime editor Thelma Schoonmacher thinks so at any rate She told the Standard UK I understand somebody running it with an intermission That not right That a
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violation. I have to find out about that. Even Scorsese himself thinks these run times aren't
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an issue, saying people say it's three hours, but come on. You can sit in front of the TV and watch
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something for five hours. Also, there are many people who watch theater for three and a half
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hours. There are real actors on stage. You can't get up and walk around. You give it that respect
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give cinema some respect. And in their defense, there is a case to be made about the theater
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chain cutting up the movie and inserting an intermission in terms of where does that end
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If a theater is on hard times, do they have the right to cut up Avengers Endgame and put a
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commercial for their concession stand in the middle? No, obviously not, which is why it needs
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to fall on the authorial voices to create films that aren't 10 years long. In fact, according to
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Statistia, the average runtime of the top 10 highest grossing films of 2023 was 143 minutes
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or 2 hours and 23 minutes. This is a full 30 minutes longer than the average highest grossing
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movies of 2020. This, compared to the 1980s, is almost a full hour longer. Avatar The Way of Water
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was released with an astonishing runtime of 3 hours and 12 minutes. It was the highest grossing
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movie that year. Want to bet what the longest and highest grossing movie of 1980 was? Ghost
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two hours and seven minutes. So bloated running time short, films are just too long, and their
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length isn't justifiable. The industry needs to wake up and understand that longer doesn't mean
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better. In an era where box office returns are struggling, superhero fatigue is real
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and extended runtimes are causing theater regulars to stay away, it doesn't exactly
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paint the best picture of the film industry's future. But then again, things have been dour
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before, and movies have pulled through. Maybe the answer is right in front of our faces
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Maybe it's shorter films. Maybe it's pulling a Tarantino and splitting these epics into multiple parts
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Only time will tell