While I hesitate including "Godfather" in the discussion, you have a valid point.

Even with a lot of the Marvel movies, critics will regularly write that they're overlong.

I think a lot of it is that many of these critics have an inherent disrespect toward the superhero genre, so in their minds they don't understand why something like that should even be 2 hours long.

To them, they can't suspend their disbelief for material like this.

They think they're above the material.

Almost every superhero movie in recent memory has gotten accused of being overlong if you read the reviews.

While I think The Batman could have been trimmed, I do feel like the "overlong" criticism is coming mainly from a place of negative bias against the material.

Not every critic is coming at it from that angle, of course. But I think a lot of them are.