Avengers: Endgame’ Runtime is Still 3 Hours
Avengers: Endgame is going to be the longest film in Marvel history. This was never really in question, even before the Russo Brothers told us that their first cut was sitting at 3-hours. At the time, we figured the movie would eventually end up being longer than Avengers: Infinity War considering it’s the capstone to Marvel’s Phase 3. Infinity War clocked in at two hours and 40-minutes long, so we thought Endgame might end up being a hair more—say two hours and 45-minutes long? Looks like we were wrong.
Joe and Anthony Russo spoke with Collider about Endgame’s current runtime and said it’s still 3-hours long. Not only that, they confirm that Disney is okay with the length of the film. They also reveal the way test audiences have been responding to the film. Here’s their full quote:
“I think the studio is down with what the best story is. Right now, we think the movie is playing well and we’ve had great responses from our test audiences and we’re feeling very good about where it is. We’re still doing work to it. We’re not done with it. Again, this is a culmination film of 22 movies, it’s a lot of storytelling to work into it. Emotion is an intrinsic part of that to us. When you have to tell a really complicated story and you want strong emotional moments with the characters, it just requires a certain amount of real estate. This one, in particular, feels like three hours worth of real estate.”
Emotion is key. Anyone going to see Endgame in the theater is likely a Marvel fan. They’ve invested a lot of time (and money) into three phases worth of films. They witnessed the now infamous Thanos snap, and want to see how the surviving Avengers make him pay for it. Three hours is a long runtime, but it’s not unprecedented. The Godfather Part II was well over three hours, but that comparison is a bit absurd. A better reference would be Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which was the culmination of his epic trilogy and ran for two hours and 21-minutes. When you’re telling a story that ties up 22-films worth of narrative, perhaps three hours isn’t that crazy?
Featured image: Thanos (Josh Brolin) in Avengers: Infinity War. Courtesy Marvel Studios
