Why in the galaxy is Star Wars: The Last Jedi going to run so long?

If reports are accurate, then Star Wars: The Last Jedi could approach the upper limits of blockbuster movies in terms of length. Why?

Star Wars News Net has amassed what appears to be reasonably credible evidence from multiple parts of the theater industry that Star Wars: The Last Jedi could actually become the longest movie in the franchise.

SWNN doesn’t link this to a couple points that yours truly think could be pertinent, though. First up, we know, from Rian Johnson himself, that the film has been completed as of about a week ago. Now, as SWNN does note, this is coming from the effective middleman between we the fans and Lucasfilm, which means that they might not be in a position to have accurate information.

That would indicate a fairly quick turnaround for Lucasfilm and Disney to communicate for a movie that doesn’t even have its second trailer out, after all, although that does assume that they didn’t know just how long the movie was going to be until it was done, which … seems a little suspect.

There is a second counterpoint, though. The theaters are presumably gearing up to have a lot of screens booked solid when this movie arrives and want to know how many showings they can fit in to semi-normal operating hours for a theater and still have time to clean them in between the hordes of fans moving in and out. With two and a half hours supposedly being the time (and there will be fans who stay through the credits), that means a tight schedule. That somewhat calls into question SWNN’s argument that it’s unlikely for this exact time to be true.

But all that aside, what could be the more interesting point is something else Johnson has talked about. Granted, this comes from before the movie reaching the end stage, but presumably this is something fairly static. Remember the whole wipe transition conversation?

Yes, The Last Jedi doesn’t have as many wipe transitions. Granted, not every scene in Star Wars movies has a wipe transition. It’s just that there are usually a lot of them, like 42 in The Empire Strikes Back. (We didn’t count. Johnson did … or had someone count for him.) For now, we have reports of a lengthy film and confirmation that there aren’t a lot of wipe transitions.

Is it possible that that means we can have long sequences, not unlike some of those in The Force Awakens like the introduction to Rey? The reason we bring this up is because Johnson also pointed out that TFA has the now second-fewest wipes.

Next: Forces of Destiny is back Oct. 1

All these little details are starting to add up for The Last Jedi ahead of that Dec. 15 date.