The Biggest Thing Missing from Films Today

As a film critic, optioned screenwriter, let alone an avid film fan since the 70s, I’m frequently asked what I miss the most in movies these days. In a word?

Pacing.

Call it fallout from MTV, Michael Bay, or TikTok, but most films simply move too fast, are edited almost frenetically, and barely take the time to breathe as they tell their story. And whatever the genre, the sense of ebb and flow, fast and slow, indeed the speed and rhythm at which the story unfolds, is today told in far too rushed a manner. It feels like the determination of how quickly or slowly scenes, actions, and information are delivered to the audience are being done by someone with ADHD rather than an experienced screenwriter, director, or editor.

Frankly, such over-energized pacing is ruining storytelling. It creates bad habits in viewers, too. They all want it fast and easy now. Audiences want to be told the plot idea within a movie three, four times now to make sure they get what’s occurring, as Matt Damon recently grumbled.

Dazzle us with technique and whiz-bang theatrics. Why show one big-ass chase or fight scene, when you can show five? Energy levels feel supersized too in all such ventures as well, and it makes for movies that are overstuffed with bluster and bombast rather than well-thought-out plots, richer characterizations, and greater substance.

In the recent Wuthering Heights remake, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, the characterizations are noisy, the production design is all dialed up to an 11, and even the lust from the two seems based on crashing into each other in rainstorms and windy gusts rather than two people ripping bodices.

But what’s a screenwriter to do when pitching to studio execs who fear that any subtlety will be lost on an increasingly distracted audience?

I remember pitching a horror movie executive once on a vampire script I’d written, and before I got done rattling off my logline, he’d interrupted me to ask if there was bloodletting on every page. I said no, and he started to shut me down because that’s what he was after. I asked him how blood on every page without ebb and flow could last for 90 minutes without seeming ludicrous. He didn’t care about it making sense, he just wanted non-stop, edge of your seat plasma splashing everywhere. I even asked him for an example of such, and he volunteered Saw. I told him the first film was quite subtle in its violence and bloodletting, opting for building its chills via the dread of death, not actual death. I opined that such is always more terrifying than mere gore even if Tom Savani is providing the effects.

He didn’t know who Savani was and our conversation ended right there.

And if it’s not blood on every page, it’s action every 10 minutes. If it’s not the elimination of relaxed transitioning to keep people on edge with smash cuts, it’s eliminating titles or anything else that reads as a lull. Too much plot, too many characters, too much score, hell, that makes a film special, right? No, it doesn’t. It mostly makes a film noisy, but try telling that to the powers that be that think CGI is the greatest thing since Marilyn Monroe’s bosom, or that A.I. can create the next Jennifer Lawrence, and the world will show up to watch such pseudo-animation. (“They did it for Avatar, didn’t they?” they’ll harangue.) And dammit, if people don’t know how to pay attention anymore and need a steady stream of shiny objects like a cat, then we’ll meet them where they are and make it easy for them to go from one jolt to the next.

Is that any way to make a film? And yet, we’re circling in on such as norms.

I suppose we all should recognize this faster, bigger, brasher world as it has been with us for some time now. I remember when I was a kid in the 1970s being told that the computer would make life so much easier that we’d soon be enjoying a “leisure society.” It would be one with four-hour work weeks and tons of down time for hobbies since workloads would be diminished by technology. (In fifth grade, I wondered if machines would soon start brushing my teeth like George Jetson on his cartoon program.)

But ultimately, the exact opposite happened. Technology saved time, sure, but companies got greedy, thinking that they didn’t need so many employees because of computers, so they cut the work force and soon, every employee was doing the work of two while computers added to their workload by helping open new doors of consideration regarding marketing territories, global reach, broader audiences, etc.

Today, almost everyone working in corporate America is doing the work of three employees. So much for leisure, right?

And from there, the race never stopped. Pacing was left in the dust. The demand for productivity sped up even more. Global marketing became the goal of everyone. 24/7 access became a necessity. The Internet taught us to click and digest everything in byte-sized pieces. 400 TV channels became the standard versus the four of early television. The FCC allowed commercials to be cut from the standard 60 seconds to 30 seconds, so audiences were inundated with twice the shill. And TV shows went from 26 minutes of content in a 30-minute pod in the 1970s to 22 minutes of content in the 1980s to make room for more commercials.

We were under siege and we didn’t fully realize it.

By the time MTV turned songs into mini films, we were all brushing up against ADHD. Televised sports went manic, throwing all kinds of graphics, stats, color, and bombast at viewers to avoid any lulls in the action. News followed suit with Fox News breathlessly making every hour one that was chock full of breaking stories, loud opining, and arguments de rigeur. (Paddy Chayefsky sure saw that coming, didn’t he?) Commercials were tested and those that mentioned the product name the most got the best recall scores. Movie trailers gave up two-thirds of the film away to lure audiences in by showing “the best parts.” And studio readers and screenplay contests told us our scripts better be grabbers a mere five pages into our story or it would end up on the dismissed heap.

This is exactly how pacing in storytelling died. It was a funeral foretold for decades.

By the time Michael Bay left the world of directing breakneck commercials to direct breakneck action pictures, the dye was cast. Quick cuts. Cameras constantly moving. Stories cutting out exposition. Dialogue being shortened to a few sentences. (Sylvester Stallone once mused that the perfect screenplay would have one word in it. Hey, Sly, was that word, “Yo”?) All these trends became increasingly the norm of action and started to infiltrate other genres as well. Soon, tiresome tricks were employed to keep audiences engaged. One of the worst tropes ever is now standard issue from films to TV miniseries to the average episode of NCIS. Start with a dramatic scene from the middle story to grab that audience. Such front-loading of the form is a cheap and often misrepresenting ploy, but hot damn if it doesn’t do the trick most every time for a gullible audience.

Can you imagine if a smart and elegant thriller like 1975’s Three Days of the Condor was made today? The original film from director Sydney Pollack had a modest, steady tension to it, punctuated by brilliant moments of incredible danger and even death. But could a thriller take almost 15 minutes to introduce its first set-piece today? Doubtful. But that was the case in Condor, as Robert Redford’s CIA wonk did a lunch run and missed all his literary brownstone colleagues getting gunned down by professional assassins. Today, most directors or writers, certainly executives, would want the film to start with that slaughter and then flashback to how we got there.

Interestingly, with Redford’s passing in September of 2025, I revisited Condor and was even more impressed by its discipline and refusal to ever go off the rails. It’s a conspiracy thriller, sure, but it’s cool, steady one; one that builds character via time and pacing, including showing them literally thinking for many seconds at a time taking up valuable screen time.

Such thoughtfulness applies to Redford’s hero Joe Turner, as well as his nemesis Joubert (a hit man played with so much Zen by Max von Sydow, he could have his own ASMR channel.) Both are thoughtful, cautious men; the kind who think before acting. And having such intellectual characteristics forces both to turn their cat-and-mouse game into something more akin to chess.

Would such character building, intellectual gamesmanship, and a cool, deliberate pace pass muster in the thriller world today? Could Redford, one of our greatest actors, even have such a career as he had given that his reactive style of acting is hardly the norm in these noisy times?

Probably not. After all, taking one’s time just isn’t the acceptable anymore, nor is vulnerability of characters, let alone someone who fears handling a gun. Let’s hope Hollywood never remakes Three Days of the Condor. They’ll ruin it.

Stakes are so diminished these days as well. Where are genuine stakes when a superhero cannot be defeated? (I’m taking to you, MCU and DC.) Where are the stakes in any franchise character who will always live to fight another day? (It’s why the first John Wick is the only one that really worked thoroughly.) And when the stakes aren’t about saving the world, but merely about falling in love or building a friendship, is it any wonder that filmed rom-coms and movie comedies have all but died on the vine?

There is hope though.

For starters, my editors at Pipeline recognized pacing as a growing problem in the film world and encouraged me to write this article. Additionally, evidence has shown that cineplex audiences are feeling the fatigue from over-inflated, over-hyped, and hyper-active tentpoles, and once again, craving something far more grounded, original, and not another sequels or reboot. Formula has never been less attractive. That’s why Barbie, Oppenheimer, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Sinners, and One Battle After Another have made such an impression on moviegoers worldwide and gotten them back into the theaters. They’re big movies, of course, but they felt vital, substantive, and even unpredictable. They had pacing too; not every scene was dialed up to 11.

What also is an encouraging for narratives slowing down and telling their stories with more deliberation is the uptick in media lawsuits. Yes, legal actions are filing fast and furious against social media companies for their brazen attempts to manipulate algorithms to keep audience attention spans addicted to the rapid-fire diets offered on the likes of Meta and TikTok. Reels, short form videos, and truncated storytelling may make for great click bait, faster income based on shorter run times, and lots of likes leading to breakout stars, but such material is getting thin and becoming societally problematic. Teenagers have become addicted to such forms of info, not to mention anxiety-laden, depressed, with atrophying bodies far beyond their years. Face it, we’re all being manipulated like rodents on a wheel. Over 40 states have filed lawsuits against Meta alone alleging that its platforms are designed to deliberately addict children.

Perhaps this gives all those in the entertainment field a genuine opportunity to reassess their work, their audiences, and better ways to connect. A good story, well told, with proper pacing, seems like a natural way to engage audiences, but that takes talent, will, and expertise. It isn’t the low-hanging fruit that an algorithm can deliver. And if A.I. is going to be a useful and respected tool, let’s make sure its primary purpose isn’t to put people out of work or let algorithms turn them into Pavlov’s dog. Let’s use A.I. to find information faster, determine strategies that help the world more thoroughly, and build safer systems for touching people’s lives without abusing the privilege. And let’s do it at a pace that makes A.I. a good story as well, not the villain it’s become to most people these past years.

It reminds me of the words of wisdom from my late, great grandmother, “Slow down and don’t eat so fast. You want to enjoy your food. And that starts with actually tasting it.”

*Featured image created by Jeffrey York