Will Indy overstay his welcome?
5 comments April 16th, 2008
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is set to debut at the upcoming Cannes film festival, and the reported length of the movie is a whopping 2 hours and 20 minutes. Now I’m a big believer in Roger Ebert’s axiom that “no good movie is too long, and no bad movie is too short,” but even so, this seems a tad on the lengthy side. Let’s compare to the other three Indy films:
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: 1 hour, 55 minutes
INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM: 1 hour, 58 minutes
INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE: 2 hours, 7 minutes.
Sure, there’s not much difference between CRUSADE’s running time and CRYSTAL SKULL’s, but these movies should be as tightly-paced as possible, and CRUSADE definitely had its slow spots. RAIDERS, on the other hand, remains one of the most perfectly paced action films ever made, jumping from thrill to thrill with barely a moment to breathe — and yet, somehow avoiding the exhaustion and overkill of many modern action movies.
What do you think? Is CRYSTAL SKULL going to suffer from the same sort of bloat that the recent STAR WARS movies succumbed to?
I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
