Why Doctor Strange 2's Runtime Isn't Concerning (Despite Expectations)
Despite expectations, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ shorter runtime isn’t concerning. After the hefty runtimes of Eternals (156 minutes) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (148 minutes), expectations were set for the plot of Doctor Strange 2 to have a runtime in line with its recent predecessors. Now that it has been confirmed to be 126 minutes, a key question has surfaced: is that enough time to fully tackle this story?
While recent comic book movies may have been longer, the average MCU movie runtime clocks in at around 2 hours and 12 minutes, only 6 minutes more than Doctor Strange 2. The first Doctor Strange movie, for instance, is just 1 hour and 55 minutes. Spider-Man: Far From Home is only 3 minutes longer than Multiverse of Madness will be. Even the director of Doctor Strange 2, Sam Raimi, has never made a film longer than 2 hours and 19 minutes.
Related: Doctor Strange 2 Proves Civil War's Biggest Lie About Scarlet Witch
It is the MCU’s team-up movies that hold some of the longest runtimes, from Avengers: Age of Ultron with 2 hours and 21 minutes to Avengers: Endgame at an impressive 3 hours and 1 minute. This isn’t surprising, as the more characters there are to cover, the more time is needed to give them all their due. Doctor Strange 2 has an impressive cast of characters, including Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch and the debut of Xochitl Gomez as America Chavez, but it is not a fully-fledged Avengers film, and therefore won’t need as long to give its characters their chance to shine or tell an impactful and well-constructed story.
One of the advantages of the MCU’s set up as a transmedia franchise is how characters can move between properties. A character introduced in one film may come back in its
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