Why were most Eighties action, adventure and comedy movies 90 minutes or less?

[water49]

Can somedody tell me why most Eighties action, adventure and comedy movies were 90 minutes or less?

I was watching Teen Agent (UK title) aka If Looks Could Kill last night (Sunday 11th) and I thought how a potentially clever and innovative movie was spoiled by wrapping everything up in less than an hour and a half!

My reasoning (so far) is that movie studio executives were terrified that if a movie was longer than 90 minutes they'd start to pick out the plot holes in the script, so therefore it was an incentive to get them in and out of the movie theatre quick - plus they could also see another film that day/week.

You only have to look at most of the teenage movies like John Hughes films and buddy-buddy comedies (48 hours, etc)

I've worked out the eighties action movie timescale like this: in 90 min

00-15 min - establish characters, initial location
15-30 min - establish bad guy(s), second location, plot, 'good' guy(s) motivation
30-45 min - first set piece, what bad guy(s) can do, travel to second location
45-60 min - travelling scene to final location (preferably set to soft-rock music )
60-75 min - good guy(s) meet/are captured by bad guy(s), final evil plans are announced
75-90 min - IMPORTANT: all HELL breaks loose, 'good' guy(s) escape, gunshots, fighting, a climatic battle between the main bad guy (THAT MUST END IN 5 MINUTES!) and escape from (preferably exploding and burning location), cue more soft-rock music, roll credits...

Now these days IT'S ALL DIFFERENT (sorry about the caps use!), people complain if movies aren't long enough! Kids can happily sit through two and a half hours of Harry Potter (I know I couldn't) and fans all over the world salivate over extended editions of the Lord Of The Rings movies (why?)

But with with 90 minutes thing, you KNOW I'm right, right?





Right?