‘Avengers: Endgame’ Is Too Long
It's about twenty minutes shorter than 'Lawrence Of Arabia', for reference.
Marvel Studios has spent ten years building one of the most ambitious cinematic universes in Hollywood studio history — a universe that will forever be changed by the upcoming Avengers: Endgame.
The Lord Of The Rings; the sprawling iterations of Batman… In terms of sheer plot density, such franchises pale when compared to the Marvel exercise, which is now so culturally ubiquitous as to be a genre unto itself.
Marvel heroes have complex, ever-changing relationships to one another; separate, distinct universes are forever colliding; and extracting hero motivation — much less the actual movie plots themselves — requires a massive investment of time and several handy spreadsheets.
mcu stans trying to cram in every marvel movie before end game comes out pic.twitter.com/oEAppU98Rq
— robert franco (@responsiblerob) March 25, 2019
All of which means that the upcoming Avengers: Endgame, some kind of conclusion to ten years of cinematic plotting, was always destined to be extremely, extremely long. After all, it’d be one of the boldest troll moves in history if Marvel boss Kevin Feige brought a saga to a close with an 89 minute long finale, and say what you like about Feige, but he’s not a troll.
But some might be surprised by just how long Avengers: Endgame is set to be. According to a Marvel announcement, the film will be a whopping three hours and two minutes. At that length, it’s set to be a little bit shorter than Lawrence Of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, and about the same running time as Terrence Malick’s Tree Of Life — and Tree Of Life covered the formation of the entire universe itself.
Tbh Marvel shouldn't cut Endgame from a 3 hour runtime. They should actually lengthen it. 10 hours. Idc. Lemme see them do daily things. Maybe Iron Man eats a bowl of cereal for thirty minutes. Lemme see all of it. 50 hour movie.
— Josh Wahab (@Josh_Wahab) March 16, 2019
Needless to say, your reaction to this news will depend entirely on exactly how fond you are of the Marvel franchise up to this colossal endpoint. But hey, at the very least, that running time confirms what we’ve all long known — like ’em, loathe ’em, or have no idea who the heck any of these pantsuited acrobats are, Marvel movies are events.