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Put the Movies on Ozempic

I’d been warned that “Project Hail Mary,” about an accidental astronaut trying to save humanity with the help of an alien who’s basically a boulder with limbs, spanned more than two and a...

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Frank Bruni

Opinion

Put the Movies on Ozempic

April 20, 2026,

5:04 a.m. ET

Credit...

Ben Wiseman

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Frank Bruni

Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.

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I’d been warned that “Project Hail Mary,” about an accidental astronaut trying to save humanity with the help of an alien who’s basically a boulder with limbs, spanned more than two and a half hours. But somewhere around the two-hour mark, I became convinced that I’d heard wrong.

The central relationship seemed to have run its, er, rocky course. I felt like I’d been in space longer than the crew of Artemis II. I’d laughed, misted up, savored Ryan Gosling’s sweetness and snark and then savored them some more. Surely, the movie was ready to release me.

Not even close. A sequence that I thought must be the big finale led to another sequence that I thought must be the big finale and then to another after that. In a highlights reel of fake climaxes, “Project Hail Mary” would have several scenes keeping company with Meg Ryan’s

ersatz eruption

in “When Harry Met Sally.”

That 1989 movie, by the way, clocked in at 95 minutes. “Project Hail Mary,” which came out last month and has been a huge hit, clocks in at 156. And that’s hardly the outer limits for science-fiction, superhero and action extravaganzas over the past decade. We’re in an age of serious cinematic bloat. It’s not Hollywood stars who need Ozempic; it’s their showcases.

I liked “Project Hail Mary” until I didn’t, couldn’t, wanted to get on with my life, wanted to hit the men’s room, wanted to hit whoever had edited (or, rather, failed to edit) this needlessly epic adventure. I had a similar reaction last year to “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” whose charm curdled badly as it crested two hours and then two hours and 15 minutes on its way to a running time of two hours and 24 minutes. Memo to the movie’s makers: There’s a difference between Benoit Blanc and “Ben-Hur.”

It’s as if Hollywood is punking us. How else to explain stretching a Tom Cruise stunt-a-thon to two hours and 43 minutes and then calling it “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning

Part One

”? The italics are mine; read them as a primal scream. “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” lasts two hours and 49 minutes. It’s supposedly the end of impossible missions, but nothing ends anymore. By the current illogic of interminable narratives, there will surely be a “Mission: Impossible — One More Reckoning for the Road,” and it will be longer than the audiobook of “Middlemarch.” Cruise’s first “Mission: Impossible,” from 1996, is one hour and 50 minutes.

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