Reports are coming in about the Justice League runtime, and it’s too long. Much, much too long.
While the DCEU might have finally made a good decision (JOSS WHEDON ON BATGIRL!), that doesn’t mean the bad decisions have ended. Case in point: Justice League will reportedly be 170 minutes long.
How long is 170 minutes, exactly? That’s two hours and fifty minutes. We’re just under three hours, folks. Three hours of a movie nobody is confident will be any good.
Look, this can go either way. We can either be like “170 minutes is a long enough run time for them to introduce the characters, find the threat, assemble the team, have a great big fight and wrap things up nicely!” or we can be like “three dimly lit hours of Batman punching people? Ugh.”
What movies have a similar length, you ask? Well let me tell you.
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Justice League will be longer than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, for one. That movie clocked in at a measly two hours and thirty minutes. It’ll also be longer than Django Unchained, Silence and each Star Wars film. It’s longer than Suicide Squad by almost an hour.
Justice League will be the same length as Steven Spielberg’s Oscar nominated epic Saving Private Ryan.
Justice League will barely be shorter than a standard Peter Jackson movie. King Kong is only 20 minutes longer (still one hour longer than any movie has the right to be tbh), and most of The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies clock in around the same time.
Honestly, Peter Jackson barely has the right to make every movie three hours long. Sure, some of them are really good (LOTR) but a lot probably didn’t need to be so over inflated (Hobbit).
If Martin Scorsese wants to make a three-hour movie, I’m game. Spielberg? Sure. Tarantino? Heck yes.
Zack Snyder? Let’s see if you can handle a good one hour and 50 minute movie first, then we’ll talk about long run times. Sometimes less is more, Zack.
Update:
Snyder has since snarked about the IMDb rumors with the following tweet:
@thejonberg Forgot to tell you that I screened the first cut of JL for IMDB. Thought that was standard WB procedure. No?
— Zack Snyder (@ZackSnyder) March 31, 2017
Next: 15 Changes the DCEU Needs To Make For Its Upcoming Movies
Justice League (all two hours and fifty minutes of it) will be in theatres this November. Be prepared.