5 of the longest movies ever – but are they worth watching? From Oppenheimer and Avatar 2 to Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame and, of course, The Godfather Part 2, these classic films all run over 3 hours

Nov 3 , 2023

Lily Gladstone (left) and director Martin Scorsese on the set of Killers of the Flower Moon. Photo: Apple TV+ via AP

After the double whammy of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, we’re getting a bit sick of epics – but these 5 modern classics all top 3 hours

Oscar-winning director Alexander Payne recently complained ‘there are too many damn long movies these days’ – so would you set aside 16 hours to watch the films on our list back-to-back?

Alexander Payne, the double Oscar-winning writer/director of Sideways and The Descendants, ruffled some feathers last week while promoting his latest film The Holdovers at Virginia’s Middleburg Film Festival.

The source of the controversy? The director’s not entirely unreasonable assertion that “there are too many damn long movies these days”.

American director Alexander Payne is not a fan of the current trend of overlong movies. Photo: Zuma Press/TNS

Payne was diplomatic enough not to single any specific films out as the source of his ire, but it may not be entirely coincidental that his comments came on the US opening weekend of Martin Scorsese’s 206-minute Western, Killers of the Flower Moon.

The film has been widely praised by critics, though audience assessments, despite being positive on the whole, are neatly edited down by Rotten Tomatoes to “engrossing in spite of its slower pace and extreme length”.

Payne’s comments also came just a few weeks after a summer that saw an incongruous box office showdown between a sub-two-hour dayglo romp about a plastic doll, and Christopher Nolan’s three-hour nuclear epic Oppenheimer.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer runs a cool three hours. Photo: Universal Pictures

The only director Payne did actually single out for naming and shaming was himself, conceding that his 133-minute latest is “still a little long”. He went on to offer some salient advice to his fellow filmmakers, asserting that “in the editing you want it to be as short as it can possibly be, but no shorter”.

Below, we take a look at some three-hour-plus marathons that could possibly have benefited from Payne on consultancy duty in the editing suite. Or perhaps we’re being too harsh, and this patience-testing selection truly warrant their considerable demands on our precious free time.

If you watched these five films back-to-back it would take you 16 hours, so with eight hours put aside to sleep, that’s a whole day mapped out. But are they actually worth the effort?