Movies

How Does The 'Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2' Runtime Compare With Other Superhero Movies?

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 runtime
By Hoai-Tran Bui

"We're really gonna be able to jack up our prices if we're two-time galaxy savers." Like their prices, it looks like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 will be jacking up their runtime, too.

With less than two months to go before it hits theaters, the sequel to the runaway 2014 Marvel hit revealed its official runtime — the latest piece of new info after those new stills from the other day and a sneak peek into the visual effects behind Kurt Russell's character, Ego the Living Planet.

According to Event Cinemas, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 will be clocking in at 137 minutes (2 hours and 17 minutes). The first Guardians of the Galaxy ran 122 minutes (2 hours and 2 minutes), making the sequel 15 minutes longer than the original.

This makes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 the fourth longest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie yet. Those first three slots are taken by:

  • Captain America: Civil War (2 hours 27 minutes)
  • The Avengers (2 hours 23 minutes)
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron (2 hours 21 minutes)

    • For context, the shortest MCU movie so far was Thor: The Dark World at 1 hour and 52 minutes. I know, shocking for a movie that felt like it went on forever!

    It makes sense that the longest-running Marvel movies are ensemble films — there are more characters to develop, more subplots to pack in and more pressure to have that one big action setpiece that mimics a comic book splash page. It is troubling, however ,that three of the four longest ones have all been released in the last two years. There is such thing as a movie being too long!

    Though if you're worried about this becoming an exponential problem for Disney/Marvel, don't worry, they still have nothing on the DC movies.

    Warner Bros. boasts the five longest-running superhero movies of all time, all of them clocking in at more than 2 and a half hours. The DC superhero movies were, like Bane, born in the dark, and they will keep you there for nearly three hours. Here are the runtimes of the DC movies in order:

  • The Dark Knight Rises: 2 hours and 45 minutes
  • Watchmen: 2 hours and 43 minutes (though the "Ultimate Cut" easily pushes the movie to the top at a whopping 3 hours and 35 minutes)
  • Superman Returns: 2 hours and 34 minutes
  • The Dark Knight: 2 hours and 32 minutes
  • Batman v Superman: 2 hours and 31 minutes (the extended edition, if for some godforsaken reason you ever watch it, is 3 hours and 3 minutes)

    • So, movie runtime conspiracy theorists — if you exist — worry not about Marvel and their slowly increasing movie time lengths. There may be one too many fight scenes or you may wish that farm subplot was cut out, but at least they don't chew minutes for nearly as long as DC does.

    Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, in its jacked up glory, flies into theaters May 5, 2017.

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