While there have always been long movies, it has become more common in recent years to see widely available, mainstream films that surpass the three-hour limit.
Such an excessive runtime used to be afforded to only prestigious auteur projects like The Godfather: Part II or Once Upon A Time In America.
However, the last few years have seen films generally surpassing a three-hour length, like The Batman, Oppenheimer, and Killers of the Flower Moon finding both immense commercial and critical success.
In this way, it should be noted that length doesn’t have to be a detriment to enjoyment if a film justifies it in some way.
Some stories are so packed with detail that they require an extended running time to have it told completely.
Although one of those films was originally intended to be a miniseries, the 1993 Civil War film Gettysburg stands as the longest American theatrical movie in history.