Avengers: Endgame 3-Hour Runtime Will Likely Stick

Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been waiting for Avengers: Endgame for what feels like an eternity. The MCU is celebrating it’s 10 year anniversary with a film that’s going to shake everything we’ve known and come to love. The jury is still out on whether or not that’s a good thing.

The truth of the matter is that regardless of what fans are dreading, the film is just months away now and we’re going into it expecting some big losses. Of course, the term big losses is something Marvel fans are used to at this point. That’s especially true after Avengers: Infinity War when Thanos’ snap cost us some of our most beloved heroes.

As we look ahead to what we could expect in the next film, we know that for it to cover all the bases, it’ll have to be a lengthy one. That’s not a sentiment that’s got us complaining, either.

We sat through 2 hours and 40 minutes of heartache during Infinity War (give or take the 20 or so minutes that made us laugh), so we’re beyond prepared to sit through a longer film if it means redemption.

For now, it looks like redemption is sitting at 3 hours and we aren’t mad about it.

Speaking to Collider recently, the Russos talked about the movie’s current run time, early screenings, and staying true to the substance and message of the film.

“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.”

The Russos touch on the fact that the film is still a work in progress, so there’s no true way to know, yet, how long the run time will actually be. It does feel, to them, like 3 hours of ‘real estate’ though and we understand why.

If this truly is goodbye to some characters or even goodbye to the way we know them, we don’t want it to be rushed or less than they deserve. We want the emotional, real, and lengthy version.

You can see Avengers: Endgame in theaters on April 26th.