Was the norm in the 70s, and into the early 80s. My memory is that the turning point to quick cuts was after MTV and music videos became popular (1982+). I remember old folks complaining about the “attention span” of young people.
Watching the old movies today, I do think that the 70s films are too slow and 90s+ films too aggressive with cuts. Would be nice to balance, or have important scenes breathe while others get chopped. Most movies are too long these days as well.
The film itself was criticized as “Blade Crawler” back in the day.
I think a lot of the change can be contributed to FX becoming cheaper, easier and better. It created a race to the bottom for the most visually spectacular movie. And when it’s cheaper, you can throw more in at the same budget. Then the next movie has to throw even more in to outdo their predecessor.
Though I’m not disagreeing that culturally we have been on a steep downwards decline with regards to our attention span.
Digital effects also look a lot worse (as in, less believable) than real special effects, pyrotechnics, etc., and I think the quick editing also has to do with that. You have to make a lot of cuts and shaky shots in order to not let viewers' eyes rest on the CGI's uncanny valley for too long and realise how wrong it looks.
I watched the first Rambo very late, only about two years ago, and I was amazed at how much better the explosions look than in any movie I've seen in the past two decades. You can afford to actually show what's happening when it looks that good.
I've noticed a similar thing in martial arts movies. You can save a lot of effort and money with the quick, frantic editing. The alternative is that the choreography and cinematography have to be really on point. If you just shake the camera around a lot and do a cut every second, you can get away with amateurish fighters doing whatever, nobody will really notice.
While trends are that movies are, on average, getting slightly longer, there are as many exceptions to that rule as there are examples of it, not just in the present day but also in the past too. And it can vary from genre to genre.
Also movie serials were actually the norm in early cinema. This isn’t some new trend invented by Jackson.
Examples of how the distribution is actually extremely varied:
Watching the old movies today, I do think that the 70s films are too slow and 90s+ films too aggressive with cuts. Would be nice to balance, or have important scenes breathe while others get chopped. Most movies are too long these days as well.
The film itself was criticized as “Blade Crawler” back in the day.