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Film Students Are Having Trouble Sitting Through Movies, Professors Say
(www.hollywoodreporter.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
336 points (97.2% liked)
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Love that people complain about the length of movies while simultaneously happily siting through eight, hour+ long episodes of Stranger Things over two evenings.
Especially when many hours could have easily been left on the cutting room floor of most streaming shows, but they need to streeetch the runtime so that the writers can meet their contractual, or whatever other internal requirements.
My favorite is when they they say something like "it starts getting good in season 3". Like I'm going to watch tens of hours of a show that kind of sucks just to see if it actually starts getting good or not?
Of course, the reality is that they aren't really watching the show like I would - as in, they aren't sitting down and giving it their undivided attention. The show is on, but they're also on their phones the entire time, or it's on in the background and they are doing something else, or whatever. Probably one of the reasons why the show feels like it's full of filler - they need to make sure that someone that's only sort of paying attention can still follow what's going on.
or they just have more patient and different standards than you do.
tons of shows are bad or awkward in their first season, and then go on to become blockbusters later on as the creative team finds its stride. that's just part of the process. Very few shows are banger from start to finish because of all the complexity involve in creating a show over multiple years.
Personally I really enjoy watching how a show changes over time as team members, cast members, etc come and go. Part of my enjoyment of a show is the process of the show changing, for better or worse. And it's interesting to compare seasons and episodes against each other as they vary in quality.
I'm pretty sure that's actually true.
Doesn't surprise me at all, really. Seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy too, because if you make a show like that, then someone who sits down and actually tries to watch it is more likely to start getting bored and starts to get out that second screen.
The other issue, particularly with movies, is a lot of this stuff is created with the idea of making it easier to translate to other languages, hence things like the overly simplified dialog.
Because a movie is a constant continuation, where as each episode has a hard end and you can stop and decide if you want to continue or stop.
Except that if you look at the stats, most Netflix viewers binge watch (88% here), and most engage in long binges (70% here reported 5 episodes or more at a time), binge watching is by all accounts 'the norm' for streaming service users.
So while you may be able to 'decide if you want to continue or stop' the statistics show that the vast majority of people end up watching much, much longer than a movie runtime - which was my point.
because most people put it on as background noise, like they did with TV.
half my my 'binge watching' is me falling asleep and waking up four hours later and the show is still going on. And then the next day I go back to where I was, usually 5-6 episodes back.
People tend to be more willing to do a lot of something if it’s broken up into smaller parts.
As an example, my great-grandmother used to always cut desserts and appetizers into smaller sizes if she noticed they weren’t being eaten. No one would take a large slice of cake but lots of people would take a small slice and then another small slice after. My grandmother took that advice from her and so did my mom, and it really does work very well. Same applies to movies and tv shows.
yeah this is just that large singular tasks tend to demand more of us than multiple smaller tasks.
Though there is nothing stopping anyone from pausing a movie partway through and returning to it later.
Even though I said that, I am more reluctant to start watching a movie because of that time commitment, but I have done that when I did start some movies but wasn't really feeling like I could stay interested in the moment.
true, but it sucks.
a movie is meant to be consumed as a unified whole. so is each tv episode. it's typically more immersive when you watch it whole.
I know a lot of people who hate watching just part of a movie. I’m one of those people too, though I also don’t really like tv shows normally. I’d rather a standalone film over one in a series as well. If I’m going to watch something, I want it to start and end in the same sitting, and ideally be 90-120 minutes, though there are exceptions of course.
Yeah that's a good point. It's a psychological hurdle.
Doesn't mean people are attentive throughout though. I think it were Netflix execs that are currently pushing writers to constantly reiterate plot points because people aren't paying attention.
I read the same, and I feel like that is a negative feedback loop.
Like the more the content is written so that people don't have to pay attention and plot and scenery is verbally stated by actors, the less people will feel like they need to pay attention.. and then they'll turn to their phone.
Its gonna come back to bite them when they dumb the content down and people realize they don't actually need to pay for Netflix to run in the background, and can instead just have YouTube videos of people reciting the plot to them while they doodle on their phones.
Not to completely invalidate your point but streaming shows are pretty formulaic in terms of pacing, with convenient break intervals, and are seldom very deep. Films are harder to break up around a bathroom trip or decide to put on hold until another day.
Not to completely invalidate your point but have you ever noticed the [pause] button when you're watching a movie?
The exception is for cinema films, and any cinema film over two hours long (which is very rare) will generally have an intermission. Not that we were limiting the discussion to cinema entertainment anyway.
I read the other day that Netflix goes out of their way to restate the premises vocally and frequently as possible, and has as much plot duplication as possible so that people can still enjoy it while they're watching their phones.