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DC Studios is in the process of building an entirely new shared universe from the ground up under the leadership of James Gunn and Peter Safran. The second feature film of the new slate, Supergirl, adapts the acclaimed comic book miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, starring Milly Alcock as Superman’s (David Corenswet) cousin Kara Zor-El. Unlike the Man of Steel, this version of Kara spent her formative years watching everyone around her die on a fragment of the destroyed Krypton, which makes her more jaded than her ever-hopeful cousin. The movie tells Kara’s origin story while also following her on a galactic road trip as she bands together with a young orphaned alien to track down a vicious criminal.
While a lot is going on in Supergirl, the movie is surprisingly short for superhero expectations. As the official release approaches, theater chains start to update their screening information, putting the movie at around 1 hour and 50 minutes. Now, official data from the Irish Film Classification Office, the organization responsible for classifying the movie in Ireland, revealed that Supergirl has exactly 107′ 55″, which means it’s a few seconds short of 1 hour and 48 minutes. The last time a DC movie ran under two hours was 2020’s Birds of Prey, which clocked in at 1 hour and 49 minutes. Going further back, only a handful of DC theatrical films have ever run shorter, including the 1984 Supergirl at 1 hour and 45 minutes, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace at 1 hour and 30 minutes, and Catwoman at 1 hour and 44 minutes. Not the best company, to be fair.
Is a Shorter Runtime Good or Bad for Superhero Movies?
A lean runtime is not a sign for alarm. For instance, the original Deadpool clocked in at just 1 hour and 48 minutes and remains a fan-favorite juggernaut, while X-Men achieved critical and commercial success at 1 hour and 44 minutes. Conversely, numerous lengthy blockbusters have faced harsh criticism for feeling sluggish or bloated. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice endured a significant critical backlash in part due to its exhausting 2-hour and 31-minute runtime, with reviews lamenting that it was too long and felt badly paced. However, a short runtime is also no safeguard against poor pacing if the story isn’t fit to that. The theatrical cut of Justice League serves as a cautionary example. Mandated by Warner Bros. executives to be under two hours, Justice League was aggressively edited, resulting in a rushed story devoid of the original creative vision.
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Ultimately, a film’s worth is determined not by the number on the stopwatch, but by whether it gets to tell its story exactly as its creators intended. For Supergirl, all signs point to this runtime being an organic product of that creative process. Screenwriter Ana Nogueira was brought in early to craft a script based on Tom King’s acclaimed comic, and her draft was met with immediate praise from DC Studios co-head Gunn, who called it “above and beyond anything I hoped it would be”. With everything built from a focused story vision, the succinct runtime appears to be a sign of a confident creative team telling exactly the story they want to tell, without unnecessary bloat.
Supergirl opens in theaters and IMAX on June 26th.
Does a shorter runtime make you more or less confident in Supergirl? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the Forum!
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