Movies

I think that it's a few factors. Some movies that were longer started to be accepted, like the summer blockbusters creeping longer and longer and people not complaining much about the length. Then streaming picking up more and more, and with habits of binging it became apparent people were happy to sit for longer and longer times watching content (shows, documentaries, movies) and then with COVID and people looking for things to occupy their time longer content was welcomed more.

Though with your list of things you don't like in films I'm not sure you really like films at all? Talking scenes are usually important for dialogue exposition, reflecting the characters mindsets etc, but why do you hate fight scenes and comedy scenes? What kind of movies do you like?

Sounds like you just don't like movies, that's fine plenty of other ways to consume stories

In my experience most movies still clock in around 90 minutes to 2 hours. Yes, there are a lot more movies that hit the 2.5 to 3 hour mark now, but that's certainly not the norm. The simple answer as to why they keep making them that long is that people keep watching them. If everyone suddenly decided they weren't willing to sit through a 3 hour movie anymore, then studios would stop making them.

From your list of things you find unacceptable in films though it seems almost like you just don't like movies in general, or only very specific types of movies anyway. There are tons of great shows out now that range anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour per episode, maybe you would enjoy those more?

The studios paid a lot of money for all that CGI so they damn sure are going to use all of it.

My favorite part of movies is when characters can just exist as themselves.

So more unnecessary talk scenes for me please!

I think it definitely has something to do with monetary factors.

Rising ticket prices mean that the audience expects a cinematic event for their money. Like if you are spending as much as $100 as a group for tickets and snacks/drinks, would you be satisfied with a short 90min film or would you rather have a spectacle like avatar?

And from the studio side there are all the factors that also lead to the death of the mid-budget movies. You are already spending a ton of money on marketing and for the general audience it's probably a "winner takes all" scenario. The mid-budget movie with its similar sized marketing campaign can't compete with something like a Deadpool 3. And if you are spending big on marketing you might as well spend more to make sure you hit. And stuff like good CGI that is expected nowadays is also not cheap

Additionally larger overall budget+returns give you growth. the amount of days in a year is fixed, so there is only so many release windows that make sense without movies cannibalizing each others returns. Even if you can only dream of the margins of some low budget horror movies.

Not a horror fan myself, so I actually don't know if that's the case, but I could imagine that niche genres that don't need that much marketing campaign (and don't have a potential audience large to support a larger one) will still have shorter run times.

Gotta find some excuse for bloated budgets