Indiana Jones: How long is too long?

No, when I say 'how long is too long?' I'm not talking about the 2 week layoff we've had from your regular diet of exclusive news piffle from the world of noisy movies, we're talking about the next instalment in Dr.Jones' adventures.

Slashfilm has today reported the final running time for the forthcoming Indy movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It reportedly clocks in at a bladder-bursting two hours and twenty minutes.

Movies have been getting longer and longer for years now. What started as a trend among art-house directors for testing the endurance of their audience has infected the world of normal peoples' films too. S James Snyder, writing for the New York Sun last year, quoted Chad Hartigan as saying that the tendency of studios to rapidly green-light sequels for successful films has precipitated a trend for longer sequels of lower quality.

"Increasingly, if something's successful, sequels are being green-lit and rushed into production as quickly as possible, If the opening weekend numbers are huge, they want to rush the sequel, and that leaves almost no time for editing oneself or for filtering through everyone's ideas. In the end, it means everything is getting put out there. What they're not asking though is: ‘Okay, it's longer, but is it better?'"

Ultimately, of course, the issue is not how long the movie is so much as whether it's any good. Early reports are not promising, but here at Blockbuster Buzz we think that, until you're given a good reason not to, it's always best to side with the guy holding the whip.