Indiana Jones 5 Is The Longest Movie In The Entire Series
At 2 hours and 22 minutes, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will be the longest film in the franchise.
While most of the things we learned from the Star Wars Celebration event focused on Star Wars, including the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey, there were also important updates about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. This movie puts Harrison Ford back in the saddle for what will presumably be his last outing as Indiana Jones. However, we hope that the saddle is comfy: Collider reports that the movie will clock in at 2 hours and 22 minutes, making it the longest Indiana Jones film in the history of the franchise.
This Indiana Jones info comes courtesy of Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, and she was blunt about one of the contributing factors to the length of this upcoming film. Basically, in the age of streaming, audiences have grown to enjoy what Kennedy calls “long-form storytelling,” which is why we binge through new seasons of our favorite shows in the space of a weekend. Hollywood has begun adapting to this model by making longer films that can compete with streaming shows, but Kennedy insists that this isn’t the sole reason Indy’s latest outing is so long.
She maintains that the decision to create longer movies mostly comes down to whether they have enough story to merit the added runtime. As an example, she brought up The Batman, the Matt Reeves reboot that clocked in at 2 hours 56 minutes. The film was only that long because the director had a complex story to tell, and Kennedy believes the same is the case for Indiana Jones 5.
More relevantly, she also brought up the outsized length of John Wick 4, a sequel that clocks in at 2 hours 49 minutes. That movie, like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, is a late-franchise sequel about an actor who isn’t getting any younger (keep in mind the first John Wick came out nearly nine years ago). That movie’s success suggests that audiences enjoyed having more of a relaxed pace in certain scenes to focus more on our protagonist, and Kennedy seems to think the same thing will happen when Indiana Jones finally returns to the silver screen.
If you’re still nervous about the next Indiana Jones movie being a boring slog (kind of like that last one), Kennedy clarified that she knows that the actual runtime isn’t as important as whether a movie “feels” long or not, and we certainly agree. For example, The Batman and John Wick 4 are examples of longer movies that keep things moving and never feel like they are dragging. Meanwhile, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was just a little bit longer than two hours, but so many scenes felt like they were never going to end.
At this point, we remain cautiously optimistic about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. It seems like Kathleen Kennedy and Disney learned from the mistakes they made before, and we’re looking forward to the dynamic that Phoebe Waller-Bridge brings to the franchise. And honestly, as long as Indy doesn’t hide out in any fridges to survive a nuclear blast, it will be an improvement over Crystal Skull.
