From Bond to The Batman, films are nearing the leg-crossing, buttock-numbing three-hour mark. Bring back the interval, says our writer, and a golden era of cinema will follow
According to Robert Pattinson, the most important accessory on the new batsuit was not the batarang, the bat lasso or the bat grapple, but a Velcro flap that allowed him to pee when needed. No such easy escape, though, for audiences of The Batman, who must display superhuman willpower and gird their loins for its 176-minute runtime. Given that it joins No Time to Die (163 minutes) and Avengers Endgame (181 minutes) in the ranks of recent blockbusters dicing with the bladder-busting three-hour limit, is it time we reinstated that staple of another era of maximalist cinema: the intermission?
It feels like a relic of a more civilised epoch. But, with more franchises than ever happy to take their sweet time, the intermission would be a welcome opportunity to hit the WC, as well as loosen the legs and buttocks and avail ourselves of refreshments, while musing with fellow cinemagoers on the semantics of grunge in The Batman. Elongated runtimes have become so common that many franchises, such as Avengers, The Hobbit and It, started breaking up unified stories into multiple parts anyway – effectively enforcing months-long intermissions. So why not make it official and, once a film tops the 150-minute mark, give us all a break?
