When Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 blasts into theaters this week, it will not only bring James Gunn‘s version of the Marvel space team to a close, but also deliver the longest runtime for a Guardians movie yet.
The third and final installment of Gunn’s trilogy clocks in at 2 hours and 29 minutes, which makes it considerably longer than recent Marvel entires like Doctor Strange 2, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, which all came at roughly 2 hours. However, Guardians 3 is on par with Marvel epics like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Eternals, which used similar runtimes to unfold their massive stories.
Despite making the jump to Warner Bros. Discovery, where he’s now over-seeing a revamp of the DC Universe, Gunn has been taking great pains to make sure his Guardians ending is the best possible film it can be. The director reportedly oversaw the creation of 600 versions of the film to ensure audiences are experiencing the optimal picture and sound no matter what theater they’ve chosen to watch Vol. 3.
Plus, it’s the first MCU film to drop an “F-bomb,” so Gunn undoubtedly wants to make sure everyone hears it clearly. You don’t want to let a historical moment like that get lost to a bad sound mix. That’s just good filmmaking.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 rockets into theaters on May 5.
