After 17 years, the MCU has proven that its sprawling cosmic stories are better served by longer rather than shorter movies. After Avengers: Endgame clocked in over three hours in theaters, the topic of the MCU’s runtimes became a bone of contention among cinema goers. Avid fans like myself are more than happy to sit through three hours of high-octane and heart-rending swashbuckling narratives as long as they boast a certain level of quality. On the other hand, it is easy to see why more casual fans of the franchise might be perturbed by unprecedented run times.

Marvel then flipped the script in 2024 by releasing the shortest MCU movie to date with The Marvels. Unfortunately for the studio (and fans who saw this as a turning point for the franchise), this movie became the MCU’s biggest flop. While there are several reasons The Marvels failed, I do think this unique feature of the movie speaks to a larger consideration for Marvel to mull over when it comes to cutting movies down, and past experience should give rise to an epiphany ahead of huge upcoming projects.

Most Of The MCU’s Most Popular Movies Are Longer

Every Avengers Movie Is In The Top Ten

The best movies in the MCU boast many similar qualities, but one of the more surprising is their longer run times. Avengers: Endgame, for instance, is the longest movie in the MCU and the genre as a whole, the four-hour yet unreleased Zack Snyder’s Justice League notwithstanding. It is also the MCU’s highest-grossing movie, bagging $2.7 billion for Marvel Studios, and one of its highest-rated. The correlation between popularity and length extends beyond this one example, however.

In fact, each of the MCU’s highest-grossing franchises has representatives on this list, including the Avengers, Black Panther, Spider-Man, and the Guardians of the Galaxy. The data shows that an extended period sitting in a cinema seat is not enough to turn audiences off seeing a genuinely compelling MCU movie, with worldwide fans eager to witness the full story. This speaks to the notion that telling stories that span several comic book issues in the space of a single movie deserves sufficient space to be told.

Interestingly, the opposite effect can be seen with the MCU’s three shortest movies. In order of length, The Marvels, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor: The Dark World were not the best-received MCU movies, while the shortest two are the lowest-grossing MCU movies. This tracks with some of the criticisms leveled at these movies pointing towards certain aspects being missing, such as references to the wider MCU in The Incredible Hulk, or a failure to flesh out Asgard in Thor: The Dark World.

Captain America: Brave New World has added to this trend. Clocking in at 1 hour 58 minutes, Captain America: Brave New World is the MCU’s joint-seventh-shortest movie alongside Ant-Man and the Wasp and has proved particularly divisive. Critics weren’t exactly won over by the latest MCU movie, and its running total at the global box office (at the time of writing) is $392 million, making it currently the MCU’s fifth-lowest-grossing movie. Still, longer run times don’t make MCU movies unᴀssailable.

Of MCU’s Longest 10 Movies, Only 1 Flopped

Eternals Was A Shaky Start To A New Saga

There is a glaring outlier in the list of Marvel Studios’ longest-running and widely acclaimed movies: 2021’s Eternals. In fact, Eternals marked a turning point for Marvel Studios’ Multiverse Saga as the new cast of characters failed to inspire as much enthusiasm as previously lesser-known figures like the Guardians of the Galaxy. Eternals is currently the MCU’s sixth-lowest-grossing movie, and remains one of the worst-rated movies in the MCU.

While I think Eternals is criminally underrated, it shows how one of the main criticisms of the movie – the sheer number of characters it attempted to spotlight – wasn’t rectified by a longer run time. In fact, its length might have helped to contribute to criticisms, as its attempts to give enough screen time to each Eternal and deliver exposition on their millennia-spanning history felt like more of a slog. With that being said, Eternals was a particularly ambitious project and an exception to an emerging rule that MCU movies generally need bigger run times to thrive.

The MCU Needs Longer Movies To Make Full Sense

Covering So Many Comics Needs Longer Run Times

One of the key challenges for Marvel Studios is effectively communicating the lore and details of larger-than-life characters who boast decades of comic book history in the space of just one movie. This is a fine line to tread, but shortening run times to make their cinematic outings more bite-size feels both needless and unwise. The clever use of time jumps in Avengers: Endgame didn’t hamper the storytelling at all, and it still deserved every minute of its more than three hours of storytelling to effectively bring the Infinity Saga to a close.

Despite missing the mark, Eternals took the right approach early in the Multiverse Saga in its attempt to facilitate the breadth of its ensemble cast. It is particularly rare for an MCU movie to spotlight just one character these days, and The Marvels helped to prove that a short run time made it difficult to care about new characters like Monica Rambeau when she was essentially shoehorned into the mix with minimal character development in WandaVision. The same can be said for Kamala Khan when it comes to MCU moviegoers who skip out on watching Disney+ shows.

It’s no wonder that each of the Avengers movies so far boasts the longest run times. Not only do they capably spotlight each of their main stars, but they take the time to secure the interconnectedness of the MCU inherent in their premises. The Multiverse Saga is suffering by failing to tie its composite parts together, and releasing a movie with longer run times (as Spider-Man: No Way Home demonstrated) is necessary to ensure it can capture the breadth of the wider MCU narrative.

Avengers: Doomsday & Avengers: Secret Wars Deserve Longer Runtimes

They Have A Lot To Cover

This is why Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars need run times to rival their predecessors. As aforementioned, a lack of clear throughline as typically telegraphed through Avengers movies has hampered the Multiverse Saga and put substantial pressure on these two movies to pick up the slack at the tail-end of the saga. The need to make Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars as long or even longer than the Avengers movies of the Infinity Saga is further strengthened by the wider context.

To put it mildly, the MCU‘s Multiverse Saga is vast. A length nearing three hours feels necessary if Marvel hopes to acceptably spotlight the many, many characters it has introduced since the Infinity Saga. Unfortunately, this is no mean feat, as Eternals helped to prove that a longer run time isn’t all it takes to produce a popular movie that features a large ensemble cast.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

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Created by

Kevin Feige

First Film

Iron Man

Upcoming Films

ᴅᴇᴀᴅpool & Wolverine, Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, Blade (2025), The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Avengers: Doomsday (2026), Avengers: Secret Wars

First TV Show

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Upcoming TV Shows

Agatha: Coven of Chaos, Ironheart, Daredevil: Born Again, Wakanda, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Marvel Zombies, Wonder Man, Vision Quest

Cast

Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Edward Norton, Paul Rudd, Tom Holland, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Brie Larson, Chadwick Boseman, Sebastian Stan, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Pom Klementieff, Josh Brolin, Karen Gillan, Clark Gregg, Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Simu Liu, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Angelina Jolie, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Richard Madden, Barry Keoghan, Gemma Chan, Ma Dong-seok, Brian Tyree Henry, Kumail Nanjiani, Lauren Ridloff, Lia McHugh, Jonathan Majors

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Upcoming MCU Movies

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  Thunderbolts*

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  May 2, 2025
  

  
  
  
  

  
  

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  The Fantastic Four: First Steps

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  July 25, 2025
  

  
  
  
  

  
  

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  Avengers: Doomsday (2026)

  
  
  
  
  

  
  

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  MCU Spider-Man 4

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  July 24, 2026
  

  
  
  
  

  
  

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  Avengers: Secret Wars

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  May 7, 2027
  

  
  
  
  

  
  

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Source: TheNumbers