So recently just put a piece on the site where Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige stated that the runtime of Avengers: Endgame was one of the least interesting things about the movie. So, naturally, I immediately decided to write a piece that discussed that very aspect. I mean, at the end of the day, when a film from a usually-concise studio heads into the three-hour range, it’s worth discussing. More specifically, it’s worth discussing how it came about and how much ended up getting left on the cutting room floor.

“We cut very little,” co-director Anthony Russo said to io9. “Since these movies are so complex, we want to get it right in the script. We want the script to be exactly what we’re going to shoot. And we do spend a lot of time with [Markus and McFeely] kicking the tires on the script and beating it up. Of course, there’s always the discovery process, but at the end of the day I think our director’s cut of Endgame was within two minutes of what the current cut is.”

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Okay, so this makes a lot of sense. When you’re dealing with a movie with as many narrative strands, and you have screenwriters who are so well-practiced at keeping things pared down so that every scene contributes to the story, I can see why it makes it very difficult to cut. It sounds like, if anything, the cuts could have come from moments, rather than full scenes — so don’t expect Batman v Superman levels of WTFery in terms of confusing scene transitions.

“It is, very satisfyingly, everything the movie needs,” co-screenwriter Christopher Markus said. “Like there’s nothing [where] I go, ‘Boy there’s a logic jump there.’”

“Or, ‘If we’d kept that one scene it would have solved everything,’” added the other screenwriter Stephen McFeely. “There’s nothing like that.”

“It’s a tight three hours,” finished Markus. “Weirdly.”

So, those of you still trying to figure out how best to plan your bathroom breaks…it sounds like there won’t be much opportunity for you. Sorry.

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SOURCE: io9