It's not your imagination: From the Dune films, to The Batman, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Oppenheimer, the biggest blockbuster movies really are getting longer. Maybe it's due to directorial excess, or the need for everything to be filled with enough backstory to spin up a franchise, or simply because it's harder to get people out to theaters so studios want to make it seem like every big film is an event. (And yes, some movies also really do need to be that long—but did No Time to Die really need to be that long?)
And sure, long movies are sometimes great, but length isn't always (or even often) an arbiter of quality. Heck, some of the greatest films in history—across decades and a wide swath of genres—tell their stories very effectively in 90 minutes or less.
