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Wisconsin-based fan watches Captain Marvel a record-breaking 116 times
Dr. Steve Ruppel, a Wisconsin chiropractor, has broken a Guinness World Record after watching Captain Marvel 116 times since it opened in early March. Once ruled official, this will make him the record holder for "most cinema productions attended -- same film."
This is actually Ruppel's fifth broken world record, including one where he ran a half-marathon wearing 60 T-shirts over each other.
"I thought it was the most insane thing ever, I thought it was impossible," Ruppel told WSAW (a local CBS affiliate) about sitting through 14,268 minutes of the same superhero movie again and again. "I wasn't even sure why it was even a record, but I thought after a while, 'I should probably do that.' The amount of time that it takes, I've had to take time off work, I would take long lunch breaks to accommodate watching an entire movie in that particular time frame. And then just time on the weekends where I'm not doing other things."
While he only had to see it 104 times in order to break the record, Ruppel was determined to go above and beyond, mainly so that other individuals would be deterred from trying to snag the title from him in the future. According to the Guinness website, the previous record holder was Anthony Mitchell, who watched Avengers: Infinity War 103 times after its theatrical debut last spring.
In order for his feat to be official, Ruppel needed to take photos of himself in front of the poster at a movie theater as well obtain written statements from two living witnesses that he was indeed there. His consecutive best is seven screenings in one day; to avoid boredom, Ruppel tried to pick out little stuff in the background of scenes.
"So there's one particular scene in the movie where in the background there's a calendar. And it says June of 1995. And then later on in that particular day, there's a full moon. So at the end, I just Googled when there was a full moon in June of 1995. And it came out to be Tuesday, June 13th of 1995," he added.
The first-female led movie in the MCU, Captain Marvel surpassed $400 million at the North American box office this weekend, having already soared past $1 billion internationally a few weeks ago. Brie Larson's Carol Danvers will help the Avengers defeat Josh Brolin's Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, which opens in theaters this coming Thursday night/Friday.
Upon the original story's reporting, Ruppel was thinking about attending a few more screenings to bump up his 116 figure before submitting his materials to Guinness. As such, Mitchell is still the official record holder until deemed otherwise.
"I love superhero movies, and so this was a pretty good fit," he said. "I knew it was going to be around for a while, and I thought it would probably be a good choice for this particular record. Looking back on it now, I might almost consider a Disney movie, because they're usually shorter and probably around for a while, but that singing would drive me crazy. It really would."
