Do not be afraid of Blade Runner 2049s 3-hour runtime

Aux Features Film

Blade Runner 2049 is a very good film. It is also, we should remember, nearly three hours long. Those 164 minutes are a visually stunning exploration of a finely realized, deeply melancholy future America, sure, but they’re also 74 minutes longer than the Ideal Movie Length—the one everyone agreed upon before Peter Jackson came a-knocking in the early ’00s and opened the floodgates so everything from Judd Apatow comedies to superhero punch-ups could wreak havoc on theatergoers’ circulatory systems.

Comedian, writer, and Twitter’s Best User Demi Adejuyigbe is well aware that trailers cut with review accolades aren’t enough to convince people of a film’s merits. So, he has performed the important public service of letting potential viewers know that 2049 is a movie about not just the limits of robotic consciousness but also our collective butt cheeks.

As good as the clip is (and it, like so many of Adejuyigbe’s tweets, is very good), don’t be put off by the idea of spending a large portion of your day watching 2049. It’s the rare super-long modern movie that both deserves to take up as much time as it does and is paced well enough that it’s not a chore to sit through.

That said, if 2049 prompts new conversations about re-introducing short theater intermissions, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. For now, we are still biological humans and can’t properly ponder a sci-fi future while dwelling on the much faster-approaching dystopia building in our bladders at the same time.

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