MCU recently confirmed that Avengers: Doomsday will run two hours and forty-five minutes. This makes it one of the longest MCU movies, second only to Endgame‘s three-hour benediction. It is worth remembering, in the face of that math, that runtime is not necessarily a measure of quality. Some of MCU’s leanest films are so often its most confident. Some are origin stories, largely unburdened by the weight of universe-tending, content to introduce a hero and dispatch a threat by the CGI-heavy denouement.
On that note, here are the shortest movies in the MCU. The order is from the longest to the briefest cut the house of Marvel Studios has ever authorized.
10. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
A still from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) | Credits: Marvel Studios
Guardians of the Galaxy was James Gunn‘s introduction of five new characters, an unfamiliar cosmic geography, and a tonal register wholly alien to the earthbound Avengers pictures in 2 hours 1 minute is less a runtime than a magic trick. This movie and its follow-ups’ success is the reason Gunn is running DC Studios (as co-CEO).
The film has no fat to trim because Gunn never let it grow any, understanding instinctively that a jukebox needle-drop does in four seconds what a lesser film’s exposition dump does in four minutes. What’s remarkable in retrospect is how little the film feels rushed despite its economy. Specifically, the second half of the film manages to pack a full team-formed-in-crisis arc (five strangers becoming a family under fire) into roughly thirty minutes. It works because Gunn never treats speed as a substitute for feeling.
9. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Credits: Marvel Studios
Credits: Marvel Studios
Credits: Marvel Studios
Thor: Love and Thunder is the only Phase Four entry to slip under the two-hour mark. 1 hour 59 minutes, to be precise. As both an excuse and a sin, Taika Waititi’s follow-up to Thor: Ragnarok uses its shorter length to its advantage and disadvantage alike. Those who found its tonal whiplash exhausting have pointed to the runtime as evidence of a film racing past Thor’s grief rather than sitting with it. The true pathos found in the Gorr subplot is overwhelmed by a pace better fit for a trailer than a eulogy.
Christian Bale‘s performance as Gorr the God Butcher (one of those great MCU villains that died too soon), in particular, suggests a movie that exists somewhere in the edit bay that this one isn’t. It just seems so out of place in the best way. A truly dark origin story appears to reveal itself and yet is constantly snatched away, as though the film knew exactly where it wanted to go but didn’t want to commit to the necessary runtime.
8. Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
Sam Wilson iteration of Captain America in Captain America: Brave New World (2025) | Credits: Marvel Studios
Anthony Mackie‘s Sam Wilson inherits the Captain America shield in Captain America: Brave New World, which runs for 1 hour 58 minutes. It seemed to be a film that was put together from disparate pieces rather than made. Its tautness seems that of a wound closing rather than a story earning its exit. There are signs of committee work in the plot. Many subplots that have immense promise go nowhere. The film never quite settles into whatever version of itself was originally intended. And the runtime ends up feeling like the movie was searching for its own shape.
7. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
A still from Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) | Credits: Marvel Studios
Peyton Reed‘s sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp, also runs for 1 hour 58 minutes, and works as a bridge between the despair of Infinity War and the reckoning of Endgame, an exhale made into a film that never gets much longer than its predecessor even as its cast list swells from its already considerable size. It’s in this lack of excess that the entirety of the film’s thesis lies: in the MCU, scale doesn’t have to mean time.
Reed embraces the heist comedy tone set up in the previous film without ever letting himself be tempted by the spectacle he doesn’t need; the stakes here are more personal (the loss of a mother in the quantum world, unresolved familial business). And the film’s runtime reflects a rare instance of Marvel matching its scope to its ambitions instead of inflating one to match the other.
6. Ant-Man (2015)
Scott Lang races across a toy train set in Ant-Man | Credits: Marvel Studios
Ant-Man runs for 1 hour 57 minutes. Even without Edgar Wright‘s (who was originally hired to direct this movie) participation beyond having crafted a heist-movie framework before leaving behind the body for others to piece back together, Ant-Man stands as a testament to the fact that a plan lifted from its creator and done justice to by those who picked up where he left off still outdoes most original ideas.
Scott Lang’s entire journey from being a criminal to being an Avenger can fit comfortably into two hours precisely because the concept itself is not that of the Marvel universe. What remains of Wright’s initial vision can be seen in how the scenes within the movie play out, especially those involving the miniaturized action sequences.
5. Doctor Strange (2016)
A still from Doctor Strange (2016) | Credits: Marvel Studios
Scott Derrickson‘s arrogant-man-humbled narrative, Doctor Strange, unfolds for 1 hour 55 minutes through the training scenes of Stephen Strange at a pace that is quick and indifferent, like a movie that understands that mysticism quickly becomes tedious when it starts getting room to breathe. Efficiency in this case is something rare for the genre but merciful for audiences. Derrickson, who is best known for his horror movies, shows genuine formal invention when dealing with the character’s initial confusion in the astral projection and dimension manipulation sequences.
4. Thor (2011)
Chris Hemsworth made his MCU debut in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor (2011) | Credits: Marvel Studios
The origin story for Chris Hemsworth‘s God of Thunder in Kenneth Branagh‘s Thor runs for 1 hour 54 minutes. This movie receives a lot of flak. But it really is quite good. Branagh, with his experience on stages where a soliloquy needs to earn its time on screen, is able to apply that discipline to a movie that needs to function as four movies: alien society, Shakespearean family breakdown, comedy of errors, Avengers setup. The fact that it does so within two hours is impressive enough.
The Asgard scenes in particular pack more world-building through composition and staging than most big-budget films have achieved in an extra thirty minutes of dialogue. The Earth comedy, on the other hand, is lean to the point of being miserly, but never outstays its welcome.
3. Thor: The Dark World (2013)
A still from Thor: The Dark World (2013) | Credits: Marvel Studios
Thor: The Dark World runs for 1 hour 52 minutes. It wears its conciseness like a discharged patient wears his date of discharge — not as an accomplishment, but as a relief. It is considered to be one of the worst films made within the MCU. The character of Malekith, played by an otherwise brilliant Christopher Eccleston, is one of the least developed villains in this universe, an unprompted force of nature that does not deserve any attention and explanation from the movie.
The movie was directed by Alan Taylor, otherwise known for HBO’s The Sopranos, one of the greatest TV shows of all time. So, it was not a lack of on-screen or off-screen talent that sunk the movie. It just feels like a movie that did not have any particular reason to exist. It did not add anything particularly interesting to Thor’s mythos.
2. The Incredible Hulk (2008)
A still from The Incredible Hulk (2008) | Credits: Universal Pictures
Louis Leterrier‘s Edward Norton vehicle The Incredible Hulk also has a runtime of 1 hour 52 minutes. It remains the MCU’s most disowned artifact, a film Marvel has spent a decade and a half stepping around. This was made before Marvel came under Disney’s ambit, prior to anyone at Marvel Studios knowing the demands of the shared universe; the film has a tense energy and a chase-heavy structure that subsequent Hulk appearances abandoned completely for laughs.
The Hulk in this movie really does seem savage (pardon the pun), and looks and behaves like an uncontrollable monster even more than Mark Ruffalo‘s rendition. But the movie has that first-draft quality. It is more focused on the nuts and bolts of the chase than the mind of the man whose body he is no longer able to control. This, perhaps, is the reason why the film still exists on the fringes of MCU canon. It’s frustrating that the tangled rights situation around the Hulk character means a solo Hulk movie isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.
1. The Marvels (2023)
A still from The Marvels (2023), the shortest film in the MCU | Credits: Marvel Studios
Nia DaCosta‘s The Marvels boasts the shortest running time ever for an MCU film, at 1 hour 45 minutes. It is also one of the worst MCU movies. Taken on its own terms, The Marvels is evidence that the house still remembers how to leave the stage early. The best moment in the movie, where the leads switch bodies through a fight using their own superpowers, is the one in which the movie delivers one of the visually inventive sequences in the MCU.
This suggests a version of the film that trusted its own high-concept premise more than the finished cut ultimately does. Whether the ruthless editing hurt it or some studio mandate hurt it remains unknown. What’s clear is that the film’s box office collapse became the story told about it. DaCosta herself can do much better than this. She, after all, delivered 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple this year, one of 2026’s best horror movies.
Here are all the movies, summarized:
RankTitleRuntimeIMDb Score (as of July 15, 2026)Rotten Tomatoes Score (as of July 15, 2026)10Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)2h 1m (121 min)8.0/1091% | 92%9Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)1h 59m (119 min)6.1/1064% | 76%8Captain America: Brave New World (2025)1h 58m (118 min)5.6/1046% | 75%7Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)1h 58m (118 min)7.0/1087% | 78% 6Ant-Man (2015)1h 57m (117 min)7.2/1083% | 85%5Doctor Strange (2016)1h 55m (115 min)7.5/1089% | 86%4Thor (2011)1h 54m (114 min)7.0/1077% | 76%3Thor: The Dark World (2013)1h 52m (112 min)6.7/1067% | 74%2The Incredible Hulk (2008)1h 52m (112 min)6.6/1068% | 69%1The Marvels (2023)1h 45m (105 min)5.4/1063% | 79%
Which of these lean cuts do you think earned its brevity, and which one just felt like it ran out of time? Let us know in the comments.
You can watch all these MCU movies on Disney+.
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