As the storytelling becomes more expansive and the spectacle increases in scope and scale, comic book movies have inevitably been getting longer and longer over the last decade. The days when you could tell a complete tale in two hours or less are well and truly over, with the overwhelming majority of the genre’s marquee titles reaching butt-numbing status.
Avengers: Endgame is the longest theatrically released superhero blockbuster ever made, stretching a whopping 181 minutes, but there was admittedly an awful lot of narrative ground to cover, and audiences clearly didn’t mind as it became the highest-grossing pic in history. Zack Snyder’s Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition, meanwhile, are both longer at 215 and 183 minutes, respectively, followed by The Dark Knight Rises at 164 minutes.
The lengthiest entry in the MCU that doesn’t involve Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is Captain America: Civil War at 147 minutes, but that was basically Avengers 2.5 in the eyes of many people. And while a lot of times it feels as though the films in question don’t need to be dragged out for as long as they are, fans should brace themselves because tipster Mikey Sutton is claiming that Spider-Man 3 is going to be the longest solo outing yet for the web-slinger.
The crown currently belongs to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which clocked in at 142 minutes and still almost collapsed under the weight of the attempted worldbuilding, and with three Spideys virtually guaranteed to appear as well as the requisite connective tissue tying it to the rest of the MCU, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to find out Spider-Man 3 is going to be a whole lot of movie when it arrives twelve months from now.
