Almost as if to compensate for keeping fans waiting so long, the fifth Indiana Jones movie is going to give them more bang for their buck. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has revealed that the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will be the longest film in the iconic action-adventure franchise. At the ongoing Star Wars Celebration event in London, she told Collider’s Editor-in-Chief Steve Weintraub that Indiana Jones 5 will be around 2 hours and 22 minutes long.
Kennedy admitted that the growing adoration for “long-form storytelling” in the streaming space might have contributed to this creative decision. She did, however, note that not all movies need to be super-long, and that it all usually comes down to whether the story actually deserves a more relaxed pace and those extra minutes. As it turns out, Indiana Jones apparently does. And let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want an extra chase sequence or two? Or 20 full minutes of Phoebe Waller-Bridge looking directly into our souls?
Kennedy acknowledged the notable increase in super-sized movies in recent years — The Batman and the recent John Wick: Chapter 4 are two major examples — and joked that she barely got any work done because she was so busy trying to watch them all. But she said that as long as the movies warrant the added meat, it’s all good.
She tipped her hat to the epic films of Stanley Kubrick and David Lean, and said that under no circumstances should a movie “feel” long. In her own words:
“It’s around two hours and 22-23 minutes. I will say that the early movies were shorter. They were under two hours and 15 minutes. And we talked about that quite a bit… But as you know, with runtime, it’s all about how you feel, right? So, if you’re sitting in a movie, and it feels long… The reason this is interesting is because long-form storytelling is something that we like in the streaming space. So, I think it might be that it’s some kind of carry over from that. But God knows, this year there were so many three hour-plus movies that I felt I wasn’t getting any work done, trying to see them!”
How Does Indiana Jones 5's Runtime Compare to the Other Films in the Series?
If director James Mangold sticks to the current cut, it would mean that Indiana Jones 5 is significantly longer than any previous film in the franchise. The first four films, all directed by the great Steven Spielberg, ran between an hour and 55 minutes and two hours and eight minutes. Raiders of the Lost Ark remains the shortest installment at 115 minutes, while the third film — Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade — was the longest of the first four, coming it at 128 minutes long. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom came in at 118 minutes long, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was 122 minutes long.
Starring the Harrison Ford as the iconic adventurer and Waller-Bridge as his goddaughter, Indiana Jones 5 also features Mads Mikkelsen, Tobey Jones, Antonio Banderas and Boyd Holbrook. A new trailer for the movie was unveiled at Star Wars Celebration yesterday. Look for more from our exclusive interview with Kathleen Kennedy soon.