Martin Scorsese Fires Back At One Killers Of The Flower Moon Criticism

«Killers of the Flower Moon» isn’t the first time Martin Scorsese has been at the center of discussion about movie runtimes. Similar conversations took place with 2019’s «The Irishman,» which also clocked in around 3.5 hours. It’s clear Scorsese is passionate about these stories and wants to tell them as comprehensively as possible. And that was a massive undertaking with «Killers of the Flower Moon» because, even though it’s based on a book of the same name by David Grann, significant changes were needed. 

The book is told from the perspective of Tom White (Jesse Plemons) and the FBI, providing an outsider perspective. But the film dedicates much more time to the Osage people, something Scorsese only realized later was essential. He told The New Yorker about an early draft of the project, «Our script was over 200 pages, and one night we had a big reading: myself and Leo [DiCaprio] and [the co-writer] Eric [Roth] and my daughter, a number of people. The first two hours, we were moving along. The second two hours, boy, is this getting a little long in the tooth, as they say. It was just getting to be — we really ran out of energy in the story.»

That’s when he recognized there needed to be more tangents focusing on the Osage people. He spent time in Oklahoma and made sure he did right by them. While it’s the same story as the book, new perspectives enter the fray, and if anyone knows how long a movie needs to be, it’d be a good idea to trust Scorsese.