As someone who has read almost every screenwriting 101 book out there (From Syd Field to Robert McKee to Blake Snyder), and as someone who has read Aristotle’s Poetics, I’m a strong believer in the phrase, “less is more.” For every movie that’s too short, I could name a dozen or so other films that suffer from being too long.

In all fairness, I believe that when you force a movie into a certain runtime, there’s a greater chance that the movie will be less than the sum of its parts. But not every movie that is three hours in length is automatically The Godfather, and while I’m about to generate some controversy for saying this, I have to say it. Not every Star Wars movie should be two hours or longer. In fact, I think this is what’s making Star Wars movies less interesting as of late. If you look at each trilogy and ignore the special editions, the original trilogy that is so highly revered is also the shortest one, with the longest movie being 132 minutes and also the weakest. The sequel trilogy on the other hand, is arguably the longest of the three trilogies and one of them is a whopping 2 1/2 hours!

Too many movies nowadays are bloated, and while there’s always a movie or two that gets away with a long running time (such as Avengers: Infinity War), I honestly wish more movies were shorter right now. Finding a movie that is only 90 minutes today is becoming an increasing rarity.