The Marvels is a highly anticipated Marvel movie because it’s the follow-up to WandaVision, Ms. Marvel, Secret Invasion, and, for good measure, Captain Marvel. But it’s also part of the MCU’s most exciting sub-genre: the team-up movie, like The Avengers or Thor: Ragnarok. Nothing beats seeing how a couple of powerful heroes work together... or struggle to.
However, a runtime leak has revealed that while The Marvels may sport three times the heroes as Captain Marvel, the time you’ll spend in the theater could be significantly shorter. According to leaker @Cryptic4KQual, who’s correctly predicted the runtimes of The Mandalorian and Ahsoka episodes, The Marvels clocks in at 1 hour 38 minutes, or just 93 minutes before the credits roll.
The leaker notes this runtime isn’t final, but if it’s even close to the length of the movie that hits theaters, it will be the shortest MCU feature film by a significant margin. The Incredible Hulk and Thor: The Dark World are the title’s current co-holders, but they both clock in at a relatively hefty 112 minutes.
Such a short runtime would be a massive change for the franchise, but a welcome one. Hulk and Dark World both came out in the MCU’s early years, and its runtimes have inflated ever since. Even the massive event films, like the two-hour and 29-minute Avengers: Infinity War, are being matched by more straightforward installments like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which sported an identical runtime.
This could be the hard reset the MCU desperately needs, proof that these movies don’t have to keep growing larger and larger. A quick, effective story could prove far more attractive to casual fans than yet another epic, which could help fight the now seemingly ubiquitous Marvel fatigue.
In a world where three-hour movies are becoming increasingly common, and old-fashioned intermission cards not looking like they’re going to make a resurgence, a quick 98-minute adventure could be the perfect reprieve for Marvel fans — and their bladders.
