What’s happened to Spielberg?

“Grandpa”

It's not like Hitchcock or Cukor were churning out their best work in their later years.

Bridge of Spies was fantastic but that's the last time I was interested in one of his movies. I think if you've made Jaws, Indiana Jones, ET, and Jurassic Park you don't really have much to prove.

Spent up all his creative juices.

Ridley Scott and Brian De Palma have also blown their creative loads.

Is this a joke? Since Schindler’s List—

Saving Private Ryan

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Munich

Lincoln

Bridge of Spies

The Fablemans

And that’s leaving out a few, like Amistad, War Horse or West Side Story, that are still a lot better than “middling.”

AI is the only non-franchise Spielberg movie I’ve really disliked.

R6, out of that group, only Saving Private Ryan measures up

Also—

Minority Report

Catch Me If You Can

The Adventures of Tintin

The Post

Again—is OP joking?

[quote][R6], out of that group, only Saving Private Ryan measures up

Not to Saving Ryan's Privates.

R9, um, those crappy movies just help make the point

[Quote] The Adventures of Tintin

Seriously?

He’s grown tired of us. He’s slumped.

I don’t think I want to go to the movies with any of you.

Yes, R12, I thought it was a return to the form of Raiders of the Lost Ark and just as much fun.

Steven’s yet to do something that really clicks with the public.

[Quote] Yes, [R12], I thought it was a return to the form of Raiders of the Lost Ark and just as much fun.

The strange mix of animation and human in Tintin was just too weird. It reminds me of the CATS movie

The four “dark” films Spielberg directed at the start of the millennium - AI: Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, War of the Worlds, and Munich - are among the most interesting of his career. If you failed to recognize this, OP, you can go back to the “And Just Like That” thread.

Even I recognize that And Just Like That… sucks as much as those “dark” films

Why did Steven Spielberg's career go down the shitter?

Minority Report is his best post-2000 film made, so far. It's visually stunning and a great mix of sci-fi and neo-noir.

It should be re-released in 4K UHD (physical format).

R16 It didn’t bother me, but at least you gave an understandable reason instead of simply “crappy,” “sucks,” “blown his load.”

Is showbiz one of the few industries where no one ever retires?

Spielberg directed And Just Like That? Wow, talk about slumming.

Isn’t he pretty old now?

Directors often stay on too long. Hitchcock, Wilder and Capra all should have quit at their peak. Plus the following in the link.

Op you stupid ass, stankin ass lying bitch. There isn’t a grease fire hot enough.

Steven, baby, Give us a call. We want you for the new Batman origin film for the rebooted (again) DCU:

Bruce Wayne AKA The Bat Identifying Person*

*working title only. Feel free to fuck around with it.

Yeah but Hitchcock and Cukor actually made great films. Not middle brow time fillers. Like George Lukas.

I think that “Tintin” should have tried to emulate Herge’s original drawing style rather than going for the look it did.

“1941” anyone??

I think “JAWS” and “Close Encounters” are among his two best achievements… which is depressing as they were his second and third cinematic films. But they have that great 70s New Hollywood feel while being total crowd pleasers.

I also like a lot of his more serious works such as “The Color Purple” and “Munich”.

I know it is now politically incorrect to say it but Spielberg isn't fit to shine Woody Allen's shoes.

War of the worlds has some incredible sequences but it tries to be a pg-13 come and see, which is impossible. And the ending is terribly abrupt as if he just gave up.

He is a good director but a lot of his stuff is “what you see is what you get”. No subversion. No multiple layers of meaning. No auteur flourishes or trademark shots or winks at the audience.

It all ends up being quite flat.

Munich is my favorite of his 21st century movies, but the last shot with the WTC in the background exemplifies his tendency to underline his points and not trust his audience.

R33 wow

You didn’t get the ending of WOTW?

The movie basically ends in the bucket. At 3:20 there is a zoom in closeup of Dakota Fanning’s face and the music changes. She’s gone catatonic.

Everything after that point is in her head. It’s an homage to the infamous ending of “Brazil.”

The final scene, in Boston, in the heavenly light, shows the improbable reunion of Cruise and his son, who had almost certainly died earlier.

He did.

This is the afterlife.

EVERYONE DIED. Spielberg knew that the humans would never be able to defeat the aliens, so he did a Brazil ending.

The Brazil ending

Look at his head

It’s in a bucket, like the ones under the tripod

OP is stuck in the 1990s and is anxious about the upcoming Y2K.

Hmmm I’m trying to find support for your Brazil ending, and I’m not finding it.

Yeah r38, I can find no review, analysis or speculation anywhere online that supports this take on the ending. I do see articles saying Spielberg himself hated the ending.

It’s an interesting theory but not one thats obvious to anyone in the world except you, apparently.

Dear, dear simple minded r41

Did you expect Steven Spielberg to explain the film to you?

You know the ending of Minority Report is also a dream, right?

Vertigo?

It was all a dream!

R42 as far as I can tell you are literally the only person on all of the internet who thinks that the ending of war of the worlds is a dream. Same with vertigo.

Schindler’s List was 32 years ago. Whatever "happened" happened a very long time ago.

For me, Schindler's List and Empire of the Sun were his only good films. He's important for making a lot of films that enormous numbers of people have seen (and even enjoyed), I just don't think he's at all a remarkable filmmaker.

He's now "returning to form" and trying to capture that big audience again.

Google AI:

[quote] Steven Spielberg is directing a new, untitled science fiction film starring Josh O'Connor and Emily Blunt, with a release date set for June 12, 2026. The film, produced by Amblin Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures, is described as a return to Spielberg's iconic sci-fi style, with elements reminiscent of films like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial". The screenplay is written by David Koepp, based on a story by Spielberg.

R46, Coleman Domingo is also in it and he’s quoted as saying he”bawled like a baby” when he read the script. He said it contains a “hopeful message.” Maybe one of the extraterrestrials roughs up Mango Mussolini? One can only hope.

I'm not a big fan of any of his movies. If I had to choose one I guess I'd go with E.T. but that's more because it's an '80s time capsule more than anything.

The masses loved his movies because he knew how to please them... all of his films are very formulaic and lack originality. He certainly is no Fellini and has not the brilliance of a Scorsese or a Kubrick. Most of his films have not aged very well. I've always hated how he relies on catchy music to push his point of view.

His earlier movies had a whimsical quality to them that made them endearing. One critic described him as a celluloid magician. I'd say that stopped with Always, which was the last of his early period work. (Hook wasn't very good).

Schindler's List represented a real shift. A great movie, but it finally solidified him as a serious director in the eyes of the establishment, so he started to make more serious pictures. When he tried to back with lighthearted stuff like War of the Worlds, it just didn't have the quality of his earlier work. The Indiana Jones with Shia Lebeouf just didn't have the excitement that the others had. Like Lucas, they both seemed more interested in playing with CGI than in making a good story.

Anybody could have directed The Post, or that tepid, visually unimpressive remake of West Side Story. I wouldn't say he's lost his touch so much as he lost his uniqueness.

[quote]The masses loved his movies because he knew how to please them... all of his films are very formulaic and lack originality. He certainly is no Fellini and has not the brilliance of a Scorsese or a Kubrick.

That's more or less as I see his work. He's more a Walt Disney, churning out immensely popular and profitable fare that pleases the masses but films that no one with a critical eye for films will long remember. It's a huge market and no doubt a huge talent to have dominated and steered it in so many ways for so long. It's just not very artful or thought provoking, at all.

I watch Jaws every summer and I'm still not sick of it.

Duel and his vignette with Joan Crawford on Night Gallery were like a revelation to me in my youth. And his JAWS was better than the book!

#26 = Shlomo Lipschitz, Boca Raton, FL

Remember Crispin Glover’s whole diatribe on Spielberg?

Spielberg can't work forever. Everyone needs to retire sometime and he gave us many brilliant movies, I feel he deserves to take it easy.

He's made a few brilliant films and many good ones. People will still be watching his work years from now.

His next film is going to be a UFO film. Interesting that he is going back to that. Close Encounters was a true masterpiece of cinema and ET was a crowd pleaser. People will no doubt compare this new one to those.

[quote] Spielberg can't work forever. Everyone needs to retire...

According to Deadline.com, Spielberg told a crowd in June, "I will never retire."

Also see Harrison Ford in a recent interview: "I will never retire."

Also see Ridley Scott: " Ridley Scott has no plans to retire and intends to continue directing films, according to The Hollywood Reporter, despite being 86 years old. He stated that he plans to direct until he dies."

Telling the audience that he didn’t add subtitles to West Side Story because that would be offensive and people should make a point to learn Spanish was really a dumb move. He’s also responsible, along with John Landis, for the beheading of two children and Vic Morrow; both of them tried to shut the families up. Fuck him.

Spielberg is associated with more bombs thanks hits now. People forget how many films he produces.

I got tired of Jaws before that giant animatronic shark straight out of the RKO backlot started attempting to open and close its mouth. So scary I was laughing. I wish it had been real and rid the world forever of Richard Dreyfuss. Though it would have spit him out.

R6 R9 No love for Ready Player One?

There's a Tintin show from the early 90s that uses the same style of animation as the books, r29. In my opinion, that style works better on the page than on the screen.

I like the 2011 Tintin movie. It's full of whimsy and adventure. The facial animation is a little creepy and lifeless but everything else works well.