Does Spider-Man: No Way Home really need to be 2 hours and 40 minutes? There's probably lot of fat that could easily be trimmed out. I mean such a premise is no Infinity War or Endgame.
Honestly that's my problem with blockbuster movies today. There's this need to make movies very long when 90 minutes alone is more then enough to fill everything in going at a moderate pace thus avoiding pacing issues and unneeded things added to films. I miss when movies back then were just around that long. A beginning, middle and end that isn't too slow but isn't too fast either. A moderate pace as all movies should be.
This isn't a new trend. The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, which came out in 1966, was a few minutes shy of three hours long, while 1959's Ben Hur was a little over three and a half hours long.
Admittedly, these are probably the exception rather than the rule, but long movies aren't a new concept that started with Titanic or Lord of the Rings or what have you.
Plus, this seems like it's meant to pay tribute to Spider-Man's entire cinematic history. (or at least his live action movies, not counting stuff like the theatrical spin-off to the Japanese Spider-Man TV show where he gets a giant robot. ...
unless...)
It may not be the culmination of a full decade of movies like Infinity War or Endgame were, but it's still going to be a big deal for a lot of people. (plus, it seems like we're getting a live-action Sinister Six, which just seems nuts - it would be like getting a live action adaptation of Batman: Arkham Asylum, where they manage to fit about half a dozen of Batman's rogues gallery in one movie and still make it work well)
Mind you, I'm a little concerned that they might be trying to cram too much into this (the fallout from Far From Home, Dr. Strange, at least five villains from previous Spider-Man movies,
multiple Spider-Men, Daredevil, possibly Tom Hardy's Venom...), but I had the same worries about Thor Ragnarok and that turned out all right. (plus, I figure that Dr. Strange and
Daredevil are only going to have small roles or not a lot of screen-time, like Dr. Strange in Thor Ragnarok)