Never-ending stories: from Bond to Galbraith, why is everything so long?
Films are bum-numbers, books are doorstoppers – even podcasts go on for hours. What’s behind the rise of cultural epics – and is it time someone gave them a trim?
About halfway through Tenet, the mind-frying Christopher Nolan film, I began to wriggle in my seat. Twenty minutes later, I had to sit on my hands to stop myself digging around for my phone. At 150 minutes, not only was the film long, it felt endless. Nolan isn’t the only one stretching his legs. Other film-makers – and podcasters, authors and playwrights – are increasingly choosing languor and scale over brevity. The last Tarantino film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, pipped Nolan’s by 10 minutes, while the forthcoming Bond instalment – when it finally appears – is set to be the chunkiest ever for 007, at two hours 43 minutes.
Length seems to be in vogue in other genres, too: just feel the thunder from JK Rowling’s latest Galbraith book as it lands on a table. At more than 900 pages, it’s her longest crime novel, about the same extent as Hilary Mantel’s Booker-snubbed doorstopper, The Mirror and the Light.
There are some authors so grand they 'will simply not be edited' – Val McDermid
The number of minutes from 90 is an admission of failure – Stephen Frears
