There are a handful of reasons why blockbusters are great: they make movies into an event, create something you can talk about with just about everyone, and are the perfect excuse to sit in an air-conditioned room in the middle of the summer. However, they often can get a little bloated. If you caught Barbenheimer at your local theatre, Barbie’s 1 hour 54 minute runtime felt a lot more tolerable than Oppenheimer’s three hours.
The summer of 2024 is bringing back flagship superhero movies, with Marvel premiering The Fantastic Four: First Steps and DC premiering Superman, the first movie helmed by studio co-president James Gunn.
James Gunn recently confirmed on his Threads account that Superman is 2 hours and 9 minutes long, including the credits and post-credits scene (or maybe scenes?). If you’re keeping track at home, this 129-minute runtime is almost exactly the same as Superman II (127 minutes) and Superman III (125 minutes). Superman: The Movie, on the other hand, was a good deal longer at 143 minutes, but the home video release cut it down to 127 minutes, so this runtime is very par for the course.
But Superman exists in a much bigger world than just its decades-old predecessors. This runtime actually puts it at the shorter end of the current DC Universe, movies — it’s only longer than Birds of Prey, Suicide Squad, and Justice League.
It’s only right Gunn kick off his DC blockbuster era with a shorter movie. During Zack Snyder’s tenure, movies could stretch well into the 2.5-hour mark, and that’s not even considering the four-hour Snyder Cut. Gunn has always been an exacting filmmaker — his movies seldom need reshoots — so it’s good to know he can keep the runtime to a doable number.
Hopefully, this is a trend that will continue, and we’ll get big, ambitious movie that don’t waste a single second, and, more importantly, don’t need the viewer to schedule in a bathroom break.
