'Chamber of Secrets' Running Time-160 mins

[Guest]

As someone who works in the UK film industry, let me just correct the original thread. Odeon, as well as every other exhibitor in the UK, were given a 160 minute running time so as to go on advance booking from October 1st. This has now been confirmed as the final running time give or take a minute. The running time that all exhibitors have includes roughly 18/20 minutes of additional ads and trailers. Hope this sets the record straight.

[Romão 2,274]

That should be enough to make a fairly faithful adaptation of the book.

[Rogue_Leader 2]

Well that is better than like nearly 3 hours as originally reported. I still feel the film should be cut to 120 minutes.

[Morn 8]

Don't you like a good experience to last?

[Rogue_Leader 2]

Ummm I would prefer the movie not overstay its welcome. I mean a movie does not have to be 3 hours long to be great ya know?

Quality over quantity ALWAYS

[Morn 8]

Quantity is a quality.

[Rogue_Leader 2]

So is "hesitation" and the ability to hold back.

[Romão 2,274]

In the case of Harry Potter, quantity is indeed quality.

[Morn 8]

Exactly, quantity is like quality squared, if there was quality in the first place.

[Romão 2,274]

But there's huge amounts of quality in the first place.

[Ross 1]

Exactly, quantity is like quality squared, if there was quality in the first place.  

There's an old Spanish saying that goes something like: "That which is good, if it's short, it's twice as good."

-ROSS, who thinks that's a very good saying.

[diskobolus 3]

Exactly, quantity is like quality squared, if there was quality in the first place.  

There's an old Spanish saying that goes something like: "That which is good, if it's short, it's twice as good."

-ROSS, who thinks that's a very good saying.

Hmm.. some would say that's no true in one particular context....

[Dole 17]

I think that this whole argument is kind of pointless. There are movies like Gone With the Wind which run over 3 hours but are gripping and entertaining every second, while there are shorter films like Jurassic Park III, which was only 90 minutes, which are boring and redundant. As someone else posted earlier, it's not the quantity but the quality.

Dole

[Ross 1]

Exactly, quantity is like quality squared, if there was quality in the first place.  

There's an old Spanish saying that goes something like: "That which is good, if it's short, it's twice as good."

-ROSS, who thinks that's a very good saying.

Hmm.. some would say that's no true in one particular context....

Oh yeah . . . .I didn't think of that. Has never worried me.

-ROSS, whose opinion of the saying has lowered.

[Morn 8]

That saying must be for people with very very very short attention span.

[Lurker 5]

Exactly, quantity is like quality squared, if there was quality in the first place.  

Morn, you are hardly the person to be discussing quantity over quality.

Neil

[Morn 8]

I wasn't discussing quantity over quality. I was discussing quality with quantity. banghead

[Romão 2,274]

Since the book is so good, and since the longer the film is the closer it will be to the book, then in this case quantity means quality, and least in theory.

[Ren 75]

*naughty*

so you are saying that the shorter it is, the better it is???????????? :wow:

[Ray Barnsbury 8]

*naughty*

so you are saying that the shorter it is, the better it is???????????? :wow:

Naughty indeed.

I think I'll leave that well alone . . .

Ray Barnsbury

[Morn 8]

Mmmm, naughty.... Ren

[tpigeon 3]

guys, 155 minutes is still pretty stinkin' long. what difference does that length make? i mean, if it's a great movie, it's a great movie. i've seen great movies that were 90 minutes and i've seen great movies that were 250 minutes. i'm sure Columbus knows what he's doing.

Ted

[Morn 8]

I tell you what the difference is, the longer it is, the more value you get out of your movie ticket. And the more minutes of the movie you have to enjoy.

[tpigeon 3]

I tell you what the difference is, the longer it is, the more value you get out of your movie ticket.    And the more minutes of the movie you have to enjoy.

that is entirely untrue in my opinion. greatness is not measured by time. i saw Punch-Drunk Love today, and i got my money's worth, more than my money's worth. it is an extremely good movie, clocking in at 97 minutes i believe. Magnolia is 180 minutes and i got my money's worth there as well, because that too is a great movie.

Ted, who think that p.t. anderson is one of the best young directors today, along with christopher nolan, m. night shyamalan, and curtis hanson

[Morn 8]

What would you rather, enjoy the movie for 90 minutes or 190 minutes? :?

[tpigeon 3]

that depends on the movie, of course. if its paced well at 190 minutes, then that one. but the longer a movie is, the harder it is to sustain and pace. i've always felt that pace is much more important than the running time. running time honestly does not matter to me. there are definitely times i won't watch a movie jsut because it's three hours long though. so in answer to your question, it all depends.

something like Harry Potter i do want to go on forever, in a way. but it is possible to make that kind of stuff drag. i mean, these types of movies historically aren't as long as the HP series thus far. they are simply not meant to be that long. Sorcerer's Stone was rich and full of all kinds of great details, but i don't think i would have liked it to be longer. i thought it was a perfect length. that's all i'm basing this on, since i haven't seen Chamber of Secrets yet.

Ted

[Morn 8]

Ohh, of course I am assuming it's well made, as I have said or at least implied, quality comes before you deal with the quanity. Anyway, I think it probably won't be hard to make a long movie of a detailed book.

[tpigeon 3]

Ohh, of course I am assuming it's well made, as I have said or at least implied, quality comes before you deal with the quanity. Anyway, I think it probably won't be hard to make a long movie of a detailed book.  

i agree with you there. hopefully you're right about it being good too. i absolutely loved the first film and i hope the second one will be equally as good.

Ted

[Ren 75]

i'll pray every night that Ron doesn't make me cringe with the comedic relief.

[Marian Schedenig 8,158]

Yes, Ren.

I tell you what the difference is, the longer it is, the more value you get out of your movie ticket.

Not in Austria. Perhaps it's different in Australia, but we have to pay more for a ticket when the film is longer. Works somewhat like those reuse fees for music, you have a standard length of about 90 minutes or so, and for every 10 or so more minutes, you have to pay a little additional money.

Sorcerer's Stone was rich and full of all kinds of great details, but i don't think i would have liked it to be longer.

Hmm. I like the first movie very much, but the first time I saw it, I was a bit disappointed. I had to get used to the way they linearized the plot. I know fans of the books who still don't like the film very much. In my opinion, it's about as good as it could possibly be at it's length, but it could have been a bit better at one hour more or so - provided they used the additional time well. Stuff like the Norbert subplot or Snape's potions shouldn't have been cut, and I would have liked to have the mystery unfold slower, like in the book. Plus they left out lots of school stuff, and the books get much of their tension out of alternating between pressure on Harry by Voldemort and pressure on him by school.

Don't get me wrong, I love the first movie, I can't imagine it being better - except if they made it longer.

[Justin 2]

There's an old Spanish saying that goes something like: "That which is good, if it's short, it's twice as good."

-ROSS, who thinks that's a very good saying.

So you'd agree with that statement in the context of, say, any Williams score.

Justin -Who thinks that some things are good long but 4 hours of Hamlet is toooooooo LOOOOOONNNNGGGG!!!!

[tpigeon 3]

well, one thing people must realize is that movies are different from books. there is not a single PERFECT adaptation out there. it's how someone else envisioned the book. a film is an entirely different medium than a book. the same story must be told in different ways to make each of them better. people can argue about this Lord of the Rings and Jurassic Park all they want, because they all have their differences from the books that inspired them. but they are well told stories as films, and i think people allow their bias to get in the way when they're favorite little deatil from the book wasn't in the movie. automatically, it seems, they dislike the movie. why would you want to go see a movie that's an exact interpretation, line by line, of something you've read?

Ted

[Marian Schedenig 8,158]

But the movie should either stay true to the spirit of the book, or present a cleary different view on the topic. When a movie tries to reproduce the original book, it's difficult to leave too much out, particularly if the story threads are so complex as in the Potter novels. LOTR has been called unfilmable for a long time, but the more I think about it, the more I believe that it's easier to adapt for a movie than the Potters. In LOTR, you can leave out parts without saying they didn't happen, more or less. In the Potter books, nearly every single word is important, and if you leave a scene out, you have to put half of it somewhere else - or make the story simpler.

The one problem I had with Potter (now I'm used to it) is that two of the most important things about the book had to be largely neglected: The Voldemort/School counterpoint as I call it (the alternating pressure on Harry I mentioned above), and the slow solving of the mystery. Aside from that, HP:PS is a very good adaption of the book. FOTR is a pretty brilliant adaption, a few (very few) things that bothered me, but most of the changes were very clever, and some things were even improved (I never really felt sorry for Boromir in the book). JP is a nice movie, but can't compare to the book. Parts of the book are probably unadaptable, but they shouldn't have focused quite as much on the dino action and neglect the deeper points that much, and at the same time cut some of the best dino action parts.

Marian - hoping what he's trying to say is understandable.

[Ren 75]

definitely Marian,

i still think some of the things they left out of PS, are unsettling.

[tpigeon 3]

FOTR is a pretty brilliant adaption, a few (very few) things that bothered me, but most of the changes were very clever, and some things were even improved (I never really felt sorry for Boromir in the book)

i agree. i want to know why they didn't have Tom Bombadil in the movie. he was my favorite character.

Ted :cry: , watching the World Series

[Rogue_Leader 2]

How the hell are the kids going to be able to sit through a 160 minute movie??

To think they were going to make it three hours!!! :wow:

I'll bet all the kids will become bored after 2 hours no matter how good the movie is.

They have short attention spans.

[Morn 8]

Bah, the attention span will be more effected by pacing and editing rather than length!

[King Mark 3,624]

And HP and the Sorcerer's stone wasn't much shorter...

K.M.