At three hours and two minutes long, Avengers: Endgame is the longest Hollywood superhero film to receive a wide theatrical release, and according to directors Joe and Anthony Russo, along with writers Stephen Markus and Christopher McFeely, it was the only way to properly tell the epic story to the eagerly anticipated blockbuster.

For the directors and writing team, the follow-up to Avengers: Infinity War serves as the culmination to the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe and they did not want to shortchange audiences with the sheer amount of characters and the scale of the story.

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"Joe and I like very propulsive storytelling. We like to keep it tight and focused, and to give the audience a thrill ride. But this movie… you know, no one’s been pushing us to cut the film. We usually are; we’re primarily pushing ourselves," Anthony Russo admitted in a print interview with Total Film magazine. "The number of characters, the scope of the story, the fact that it was a conclusion. It’s just that everything lined up [so] that it was going to be a difficult story to tell. Meaning that it would require a lot of screen time to tell it properly."

This echoes previous comments by co-director Joe Russo, claiming that the number of characters and emotional stakes of the story led them to create such a long film. For co-writer Stephen Markus, the film still moves along even with its three-hour runtime.

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"It always felt like this was not a movie that you should cut stuff out of for efficiency,” Markus explained. "I don’t think there’s anybody there who’s like, ‘OK, I’ve got to get out of there in 85 minutes, I want a nice, quick wrap-up.’ You’ve earned a long, satisfying, conclusion to the story you tell. So I don’t think there was anybody who wanted to trade it out for a speedy box-office. Even watching it, it doesn’t feel like a slog.”

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, Avengers: Endgame stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Jon Favreau and Bradley Cooper, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Josh Brolin. The film arrives April 26.

(via Games Radar)