Why do modern movies cut so much faster than old ones?

Compare a film from the 1930s with a recent action movie and you will notice the pace, even without a stopwatch. Since the 1930s, the average shot length in feature films has decreased from 8 to 11 seconds to 4.3 to 4.9 seconds. In the 1980s, double-digit average shot lengths virtually disappeared, and films influenced by music videos, such as Top Gun and Pink Floyd: The Wall, ran at 3 to 4 seconds per shot.

This style is called post-classical editing: shorter shots, faster cuts, and more jump shots and close-ups than the classical editing of films before the 1960s. The film scholar David Bordwell calls the trend intensified continuity: the shots are shorter, scenes are built up by closer framing, more extreme focal lengths are used, and there are more camera moves. A dialogue scene today may be only tight close-ups, with the establishing master shot abandoned.

The story that gets told is "MTV did it". Director Lawrence Kasdan says that the generation that grew up on MTV and 30-second commercials can process information faster, and therefore demands it. Not everyone agrees: Alexander Payne points out that quick edits can be found in The Wild Bunch, long before MTV.

The change also altered what films show. In 1940s films, someone going from one room to the next was shown opening and closing every door. Today, it is not uncommon to show someone leaving one place and arriving at the next without showing how. Editors who once labored to preserve the illusion of continuous time and space now fracture time and space at will.