They should give you a choice when you file ; 20 years, no more, transferable or ; Lifetime of the copyright holder but is public domain upon death. Nontransferable.
IMHO, there should be a difference between a commercial concern copyrighting works and an individual.
Most things don’t need long protection, but there is great value in copyrighting movies, popular fiction books and TV shows.
There should be a set time frame for general copyright. If I as a photographer want to copyright my work, I get some set period of time for a reasonable fee with an opportunity to renew. If the work is valuable enough to renew, the renewal fee is very high.
If a movie production company wants to copyright their movie in perpetuity, they can pay a percentage of the production cost. It would make sense for the producers of The Hobbit to pay 1 or 2 percent of the production cost for permanent copyright protection, even though it would be several million dollars.