![]() ![]() Indeed, the biggest film in recent memory that utilized one was the 70mm version of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, which was an explicit throwback to the roadshows of yore and got a limited run alongside a more conventional release. Today, there's absolutely no industry need for an intermission on any film the marketing or mechanical reasons do not exist anymore. ![]() Any nostalgia from the practice comes from fond memories of the film, not the methodology itself. ![]() Here, it wasn't an attempt to heighten the cinemagoing experience, rather a product of technical limitations. Before digital, films were typically projected on 35mm film, made up in reels of around 10 minutes in length. Many screens would have two projectors side by side to switch reels seamlessly (see Fight Club and its discussion of cigarette burns), but others with just one projector would spool the individual reels onto a larger one. However, films over two or so hours couldn't fit on a single reel and so it needed to be replaced mid-film and thus an intermission was introduced. In fact, if anybody born after 1980 grew up seeing movies with an intermission, that's more a sign of the limitation of their local theater. The majority of people getting excited for Avengers: Endgame - definitely its target audience - were born when intermissions were long gone. Both of these practices fell away decades ago: the roadshow was a product of Old Hollywood and went away almost completely by the end of the 1960s, while B-movies haven't been an industry standard since the 1970s. There were also " roadshow" previews where a movie literally traveled around America before a standard release that heightened this even further. They did this with gigantic, lavish productions with tough runtimes and an intermission to create the sense of going to a theater. In the 1950s and 60s, when TV threatened the movie industry, Hollywood attempted to boost the prestige of going to the cinema. The more common dates back to the age of B-movies that played before the main picture there'd be a gap between the two films included in the ticket. The second, and the one that has the more grandiose associations, is that of roadshows and epic movies. Historically, there were two reasons for an intermission from Hollywood's side. The majority of positive reactions to an intermission in Avengers: Endgame have highlighted how it would see a return to the days of yore, but that belies the real reason intermissions existed in the first place. ![]()
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