Stern could release Ghostbusters with a piece of whiteboard to write your scores on in leiu of a display and most of you still would sprain your wrists trying to pull out your wallets fast enough.

Displays are nice, but in the end the GAME matters.

Hobbit 1 = lame
Hobbit 2 = decent
Hobbit 3 = pointless filler

I blame digital projection. There's no cost penalty anymore for distributing long-ass films, so self-indulgent directors don't cut anything.

The last Transformers movie was almost as long as Dances with Wolves. WTF?

And not just the print cost. Going much past 2 hours meant a third can had to be shipped to hold more than the standard 6 reels (2 hours)

Avatar is more of a Ferngully: The Last Rainforest ripoff, just not enough people have seen or remember that movie to notice.

LOTR films could barely fit the books into 3 hour movies, so the movies moved quickly and had efficient storytelling.

The Hobbit films took material that would have barely made a 3 hour movie and bloated it into nearly 9 hours, thus the movies feel long.

I have nothing against long movies. Only movies that are long for no reason.

Right, it's like short ball times!

However it only seems like they play the "short movie more showtimes" card when they've got a sure-fire bomb like Jonah Hex or Uma Thurman Avengers, then it gets chopped down to 90 minutes.

In the old days (when movies only ran noon-9:30) that would only gain you one 1 more showing per day. Now they have morning shows, 11 PM shows, midnight releases and more screens than ever (combined with shorter runs per movie) So that helps offset length a lot.

I think we're also seeing many directors with more clout than restraint (Michael Bay, Peter Jackson, Gore Verbinski) who can turn in a 150-160 minute edit and not have it edited down to something reasonable by the studio.