《小丑回魂2》本周在影院上映，講述了7個兒時玩伴在其緬因州故鄉與惡魔敵人周旋的驚悚故事。但對于一些觀眾來說，該影片中最恐怖的橋段與前作沒有多大的關系。

在當今這個超級續集滿天飛的時代，安德斯·穆斯切蒂提執導的2017年《小丑回魂》的續集時長達到了169分鐘。（有意思的是，穆斯切蒂提在最近的采訪中向記者透露，在電影公司介入之前，該影片的導演剪輯版甚至更長，達到了205分鐘。）這個時長不亞于一場觀影馬拉松，對于這部商業性質的華納影業驚悚片來說更是如此。

繼史上票房最高的恐怖電影之后（不計通脹），《小丑回魂2》有望在首映斬獲了1億美元的票房。一些分析師預測，如果它實現或超過了這個目標，該影片的票房可能會超過其前作的7億美元，成為今秋最熱賣的大片之一，同時也將成為恐怖片類目中有史以來最賺錢的影片。

要實現這一目標，該影片扣人心弦的情節就得長于大多數恐怖電影和影業公司的大片。保爾·德加拉貝迪安說：“影片時長真正顯示了《小丑回魂2》的嚴肅性。恐怖往往走的是緊湊路線。”但這一回，續集看起來像是一部權威作品。

《小丑回魂》的第一部還算簡短，只有135分鐘；但續集的時長多了足足半個小時，而且比經典的恐怖片《閃靈》（約146分鐘）、《驅魔人》（133分鐘）以及最近諸如翻拍電影《陰風陣陣》（153分鐘）等“權威”恐怖電影還要長。這部電影也只不過比ABC上個世紀90年代的《小丑回魂》迷你劇192分鐘的總時長短23分鐘而已，然而該劇只講了一半的故事。

但《小丑回魂2》的歸來恰逢大片制作年，期間，影片時長的變長并非僅僅只是流行那么簡單，同時還相當于一定程度的“事件型”電影制作。

長期以來，對于參加獎項評選的電影而言，不斷增加的時長一直與內容相關，試想一下，有哪部史詩級“權威影片”能夠在短短的90分鐘內結束，而且在這個注重商業化的爆米花娛樂大行其道的今天，這一理念似乎也成為了其構造者的指導思想。

2019年：超級續集年

最為知名的一個案例莫過于迪士尼毫無限制的漫威電影宇宙巔峰之作《復仇者聯盟：終局之戰》。作為時長182分鐘的影片，這部備受人們期待的大片為公司耗費了11年培養起來的鐵桿粉絲們畫上了句號，而觀眾們則對其崇拜有加。復聯4如今是電影史上票房最高的電影，在全球吸金近28億美元。

復聯4可能是固定受眾系列電影的終極案例，它是漫威電影宇宙時長最長的一部電影，即便比復聯3長33分鐘亦是無傷大雅。

復聯4導演安東尼·羅素對Deadline說：“這部兩小時的影片很好地講述了100多年中發生的故事。但其拍攝是非常困難的 ……我不知道新一代影迷是否會愿意看這種以講故事為主、時長兩個小時的電影。”

作為對羅素理念的佐證，今年大多數人們期待的續集似乎基本上都有延長，以至于大片的續集或翻拍電影幾乎沒有低于兩個小時的。德加拉貝迪安說：“我們陷入了一場影片時長競賽，以至于當前如果你的電影時長低于兩小時，業界都會感到震驚。”

在今年票房最高的電影中，僅有三部沒有超過兩個小時，但均為動畫片。118分鐘的《獅子王》并不能算緊湊，因為它比88分鐘的原版多了整整半個小時。100分鐘的《玩具總動員4》是該系列影片中最長的一部；《馴龍高手3：隱藏的世界》亦是如此，盡管較為緊湊，但依然達到了104分鐘。

讓我們看看《Hobbs & Shaw》，看清楚了，這是一部片長135分鐘、充滿了男性荷爾蒙和引擎轟鳴聲的電影。這部環球影業《速度與激情》系列的衍生作品盡管只有其前作的兩名主演參演，但也不妨礙其躋身超長電影隊列。《Hobbs & Shaw》之前的4部電影平均時長133分鐘，最長的達到了137分鐘，但遠遠超過了《速度與激情》前四部電影平均106分鐘的時長。該系列的轉折點出現在2011年，《速度與激情》第五部選擇了國際舞臺背景（以及道恩·強森），而不是城市犯罪和街頭賽車。

《疾速追殺3：全面開戰》時長131分鐘。該影片系列一開始講述了一個簡單的故事，一位男人誓要干掉一群殺害了其愛狗的人。隨后拓寬至神秘的戰爭殺手，并搭配了文藝范的動作元素。疾速追殺3則成為了一個無線戰爭模式的“序幕”，這一點有字幕為證。然而，它的時長比第一部足足多了半個小時（比第二步長9分鐘）。

《天使陷落》是杰拉德·巴特勒第三次出演純美式謀殺案影片，不同于前作的是，其時長超過了2小時。盡管《黑衣人：全球追緝》沒有威爾·史密斯和湯米·李瓊斯助陣，但也比該影片的前作長了9分鐘，達到了106分鐘。

盡管今年的《哥斯拉2:怪獸之王》口味明顯比2014年威武的《哥斯拉1》輕了不少，但續集也達到了132分鐘，超出前作9分鐘。（不可否認，這兩部都短于98年139分鐘的《哥斯拉》，而98年版便已經貼上了這個無可言喻的標簽：“尺寸確實很重要”。）

112分鐘長的《夏福特》既超越了理查德·朗德特里的原作（100分鐘），也擊敗了薩繆爾·杰克遜的準翻拍/續集影片（99分鐘）。即便原作考慮通脹因素，今年翻拍版的票房在三部當中也是墊底的存在。

即便是歷史上以短小精悍著稱的恐怖片（《小丑回魂》除外），也未能免俗，不過其時長的增長通常與其題材有關。《鬼娃回魂》翻拍版依然為90分鐘；《鯊海47：猛鯊出籠》亦是如此，時長89分鐘；《忌日快樂2》100分鐘。

就續集時長而言，今年僅有幾部影片短于前作。106分鐘的游樂場驚悚片《安娜貝爾3：回家》便比110分鐘的前作《安娜貝爾2：誕生》少了4分鐘（不過，這兩部電影都超過了99分鐘的《安娜貝爾》）。福克斯電影“X戰警”時代影評最差的一部電影《黑鳳凰》時長114分鐘，比前三部（《第一戰》、《逆轉未來》和《天啟》）的合計平均時長少22分鐘。

是什么導致了續集時長的變長？

電影公司，尤其是拍攝續集的時候，也會因不增加影片時長而面臨著不小的壓力。由于當前美國電影院的電影上映數量幾乎是30年前的兩倍，影院并不缺影片，而且從膠片向數字電影包的轉變也讓上映地在獲取電影副本時更省力，也更省錢。數十年前，在那個膠片稱雄、單熒幕影院主宰的時代，時長過長可能會導致每日電影放映場次的減少，繼而影響電影公司最終利潤。

當然，在當今的電影市場，像迪士尼和華納這樣的電影公司擁有足夠的資金，在某個影院加映播放場次，甚至讓電影再次回歸影院，例如迪士尼的《復聯4》，目的是為了提升票房。因此，電影公司無需再擔心影片時長影響電影最終收益的問題。

盡管續集的時間在變長，但在好萊塢眼中，系列電影制作并非是時長正在迅速擴張的唯一領域。在超級續集崛起的同時，導演驅動型超大規模電影制作也呈卷土重來之勢，好萊塢也正在豪賭那些具有突破性或有創意的天才導演，以確保觀眾能夠不斷地慷慨解囊。

加長影片并非僅限于電影續集

昆汀·塔倫蒂諾致敬1969年洛杉磯的血色情書《好萊塢往事》，是為數不多的能夠在競爭激烈的暑期檔票房中掀起軒然大波的原創電影，其時長達到了驚人的161分鐘。據稱，導演甚至在考慮將該電影剪輯成一部迷你電視劇。但這并非沒有先例，塔倫蒂諾對《八惡人》就這樣做過，他把2015年的這部修正主義西部片剪輯成了在Netflix播出的四集迷你劇。

暑期檔上映的阿里·艾斯特執導的新異教徒懸疑片《仲夏節》可能是今年最令人期待的獨立電影，這歸功于其2018年恐怖片《遺傳厄運》所獲得的突破性成功。《仲夏節》的時長達到了147分鐘，今年晚些時候又發布了該影片171分鐘的導演剪輯版。

然而，最無畏的“導演電影”還在后面；馬丁·斯科塞斯的《愛爾蘭人》是這位具有傳奇色彩的制片人為Netflix執導的一部具有深遠影響的史詩級犯罪影片，其片長達210分鐘，刷新了影片時長記錄，而且有人也開始呼吁，好萊塢可以考慮在影片中穿插幕間休息。

德加拉貝迪安說：“糟糕的電影看起來是又臭又長。好電影再長也看不夠。電影《曾經》本來還可以多拍15分鐘，要是這樣該多好。”

然而值得一提的是，加長版續集的大量涌現讓人們忽略了“哪些電影真的需要更長的片長”這個問題。德加拉貝迪安說：“對于一部3個小時的漫威電影來說，以及對于《Hobbs & Shaw》這類時長較長的題材來說，它反映了一個現象——電影公司希望盡其所能，在每一部電影中塞入更多的內容。”

這一舉措會導致故事膨脹的風險。德加拉貝迪安說：“如果故事并不好，加再多內容也好不到哪去，因此加長并不是好事。如果電影本身過于任性，那就必須給它畫好界限。”

但加長做法有可能在一定程度上源于流媒體平臺的顛覆性影響，這里既包括對好萊塢業務模式的影響，也涉及對娛樂形式本身的影響。Netflix、Hulu和Amazon Prime便是此類流媒體巨頭，它們發起了短、長篇電視劇這類新模式，并輔以高度可塑的劇季長度以及不斷變化的單集時長。訂閱用戶可以舒適地坐在家中，學著適應這類迄今為止從未體驗過的娛樂模式，在一兩次的小憩中消費數個小時的內容。

同時，好萊塢也在尋求效仿這一重要的娛樂形式，它在不斷擴大其電影的觀影時長，及其系列電影講述的故事范圍。將觀眾吸引至電影院，并運用大片的視覺效果和美學標準進行轟炸，一直是一個屢試不爽的方法；電影制作方也在不斷地承諾要制作內容豐富、有血有肉的續集。

德加拉貝迪安表示：“當你觀看這些超長電影時，你會發現這些精打細算的電影公司完全是在說一套，做一套。”他還說，這種拉長的片長應該作為鋪墊，從而講述更宏大的故事，而且但愿是更好的故事。

他說：“糟糕的電影看起來是又臭又長。好電影再長都看不夠。數量并不總是能夠代表質量，但如果兩者皆有的話，可謂是皆大歡喜。”（財富中文網）

譯者：馮豐

審校：夏林

It: Chapter Two floats into theaters this weekend, concluding the skin-crawling saga of seven childhood friends doing battle with a demonic entity in their Maine hometown. But for some viewers, the scariest thing won't have much to do with Pennywise the Clown.

In a year of super-sized sequels, Andy Muschietti's follow-up to 2017's It runs 169 minutes. (Amusingly, the film's director's cut, Muschietti told this reporter during a recent interview, was even longer at 205 minutes, before the studio got involved.) That's a marathon, especially for a film as commercially tipped as this Warner Bros. spooker.

Following the highest-grossing horror movie of all time (unadjusted for inflation), Chapter Two is on track for a $100 million opening. If it hits that mark—or surpasses it, as some analysts predict—it could pull in more than its predecessor's total $700 million haul and become one of the fall's biggest blockbusters—as well as the horror genre's biggest-ever money-maker.

But to do so, it will have to keep audiences enthralled for longer than the vast majority of both horror films and studio blockbusters. "The length really shows how much gravitas It has," said Paul Degarabedian, Comscore box-office analyst. "Horror is usually lean and mean." Instead, the film's built like a prestige drama.

The first It was a comparatively limber 135 minutes; this finale runs a full half hour longer, and is also longer than famously lengthy horror classics like The Shining (circa 146 minutes) and The Exorcist (133 minutes), as well as recent "prestige" horror titles like the Suspiria remake (153 minutes). It's also just 23 minutes shorter than the original 192-minute total runtime of ABC's '90s It miniseries—despite only telling half the story.

But Chapter Two arrives amid a particularly notable year for blockbuster filmmaking, in which longer runtimes are increasingly not only du jour but equated with a level of "event" moviemaking.

Sprawling length has long been conflated with substance when it comes to awards-bait films—name one historical-epic "prestige pic" that clocks in at a tight 90 minutes—and that same equation appears to be guiding the architects of today's more commercially minded popcorn pleasures.

2019: A Year of Supersized Sequels

Avengers: Endgame, Disney's no-holds-barred capstone to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is the most prominent example of this. With its 182-minute runtime, the wildly anticipated conclusion to an 11-year endeavor tested audiences, and they responded with complete adoration. Endgame now stands as the highest-grossing movie of all time, with a nearly $2.8 billion global take.

Possibly the ultimate example of a franchise boasting a built-in audience, Endgame didn't hurt for being 33 minutes longer than Infinity War, and the longest MCU entry by far.

“The two-hour film has had a great run over 100 years,” Endgame director Anthony Russo told Deadline. “But it’s become very difficult to work in… I’m not sure that the generation that’s coming up will see the two-hour film as the dominant form of storytelling.”

Bearing out Russo's theory, the year's most anticipated sequels appear to be getting longer almost across the board—to the point where it's almost unheard of for a major sequel or reboot to clock in under two hours. "We're in the middle of an arms' race in terms of the running times of movies," says Degarabedian. "Now, it's at the point where, if your movie is under two hours, it's shocking."

Out of the highest-grossing movies of this year, only three managed that feat, but all were animated. The Lion King, at 118 minutes, shouldn't be considered lean given that it's a full half hour longer than the 88-minute original. Toy Story 4, 100 minutes long, is the lengthiest of its franchise; ditto for How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, even at a svelte 104 minutes.

Look at Hobbs & Shaw—then continue looking at it, for 135 testosterone-soaking, engine-revving minutes. The sidequel to Universal's Fast & Furious series is among its most supersized entries, despite featuring only two members of the ensemble cast. The four films preceding it average 133 minutes, with the lengthiest drifting to 137 minutes. All are a far cry from the average 106-minute runtimes F&F's first four entries raced in with. That series' transitional point came in 2011, as Fast Five opted for international intrigue (and Dwayne Johnson) over inner-city crime and street racing.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum runs 131 minutes. Its franchise started as the simple tale of one man on a mission to kill some dudes who killed his dog. It has since broadened into a mythic saga of assassins at war, replete with balletic action choreography. The third entry, Parabellum is an Infinity War-style "part one," as evidenced by the subtitle, but runs a full half-hour longer than the first movie (and nine minutes longer than the second).

Angel Has Fallen, a third installment of Gerard Butler playing out All-American murder fantasies, is over two hours long, unlike its predecessors. And Men in Black International, though missing Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, found another nine minutes to tack on top of the franchise's previous record, 106 minutes.

This year's Godzilla: King of the Monsters—despite a markedly lighter tone than 2014's stately Godzilla—packs on, at 132 minutes, an added nine minutes. (Admittedly, both are tighter than the impossibly 139-minute-long Godzilla movie from '98, which carried the all-telling tagline "Size does matter.")

Shaft, 112 minutes long, outlasts both Richard Roundtree's original (100 minutes) and Samuel L. Jackson's quasi-reboot/sequel (99 minutes). When the original's take is adjusted for inflation, this year's reboot also made the least of all three.

Even horror, historically the meanest and leanest of genres (unless your name is Pennywise), hasn't been immune, though its gains are relative to its genre. The Child's Play reboot is still a tight 90 minutes; ditto for 47 Meters Down: Uncaged at 89 minutes, and Happy Death Day 2 U, clocking in at 100 minutes.

In terms of sequels, only a few from this year shrunk compared to their predecessors. Annabelle Comes Home, a 106-minute funhouse attraction, knocked four minutes off the 110-minute Annabelle: Creation (though both exceed the 99-minute runtime attached to Annabelle). And Dark Phoenix, the worst-reviewed X-Men movie in Fox's "first class" era, clocked in at 114 minutes, 22 minutes below the average length of the previous three films (First Class, Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse) combined.

What Allows for Longer Sequels?

Studios, especially when it comes to sequels, have never been under less pressure to keep movies short. With almost double the amount of movie-theater screens in the United States as around 30 years ago, there's no dearth of screens to play on, and the changeover from film reels to DCPs makes it easier and cheaper to get copies of movies to where they're being shown. Decades ago, when film reigned supreme and single-screen theaters were more prominent, a massive runtime could limit the amount of times a movie could be shown a day, hurting a studio's ultimate bottom line.

Of course, in today's movie landscape, studios like Disney and Warner Bros. also have deep-enough pockets to add more showtimes at a given location and even bring movies back to theaters, as Disney did with Endgame, to bump up the box office. As a result, longer runtimes hurting a film's final gross is no longer as much of a consideration.

Though sequels are getting longer, franchise filmmaking isn't the only arena in which Hollywood is seeing runtimes rapidly expand. Coinciding with the rise of the super sequel, mega-sized auteur-driven cinema is also making a comeback, with Hollywood betting big on talents considered either groundbreaking or seminal to keep audiences invested.

Longer Movie Runtimes Aren't Just for Sequels

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's lurid love letter to 1969 Los Angeles, was one of the few original movies to make a significant splash in the competitive summer box-office season, running a gargantuan 161 minutes. The director is even reportedly considered recutting it into a TV miniseries. It's not without precedent; Tarantino did the same for The Hateful Eight, retooling the 2015 revisionist Western into a four-episode miniseries for Netflix.

Midsommar, Ari Aster's new pagan-folk nightmare, went into the summer season as perhaps the most anticipated indie release of the year, owing to the breakthrough success of his 2018 blood-curdler Hereditary. The film stretched out to 147 minutes and a 171-minute director's cut was released later in the year.

The most audacious "director's movie," however, is still to come; Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, a sweeping crime epic the legendary filmmaker directed for Netflix, clocks in, as of this article's publication, at 210 minutes, taking long runtimes to the next level and renewing calls by some for the intermission to come back to Hollywood.

"A terrible movie can never be short," said Degarabedian. "And a great movie can never be too long. Once could have been 15 more minutes, and I would have been happy."

Still, the influx of scaled-up sequels in particular begs the question of which movies really warrant protracted runtimes. Added Degarabedian: "For a Marvel movie to be three hours long, for Hobbs & Shaw to be rather long for its genre, it's a reflection of studios wanting to pack as much as they can into every movie."

This can run the risk of bloating a story. "If it's not good," says Degarabedian. "It's more of something that's not good—and that's not good. If a movie gets too self-indulgent, a line has to be drawn somewhere."

But such an approach likely owes something to the disrupting influence streaming platforms have had, both on Hollywood business models and entertainment formats themselves. Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime are among the streaming giants pioneering new models of short- and longform TV storytelling, complete with highly malleable season lengths and shifting individual episode runtimes. Subscribers are learning to embrace these hitherto-unseen models of entertainment from the comfort of their homes, consuming hours of content in one to two sittings.

And Hollywood, seeking to program similarly momentous forms of entertainment, is expanding, in terms of both literal runtime and the scale of stories its franchises aim to tell. Seeking to get audiences out to theaters, playing up the visual effects and aesthetic scale of a blockbuster has been one tried-and-true approach; increasingly, the promise of a mightily substantive, meat-and-potatoes sequel is being made as well.

"It flies in the face of the idea bean-counters run studios when you get these super-long movies," notes Degarabedian, who says padded-out runtimes should be seen as an overture toward telling bigger, hopefully better stories.

"A terrible movie can never be short," he adds. "And a great movie can never be too long. Quality isn't always quantity, but when both are there, that's a win-win for everyone."