Critical Analysis: Steven Spielberg • Page 2

I've seen 13 of his films, though I am missing many of the obvious ones. I still have yet to see Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan or any Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones beyond their first entries. I'm in what I think is a minority opinion where I think his best works have come from the last 15 years, those being Minority Report, A.I. and Bridge of Spies. I think Bridge of Spies is especially going down as overlooked. In my eyes, he is the best person to capture the spirit of those Cold War espionage dramas since they were popular back in the day. I'm really curious to see what happens with Robopocalypse, because I clearly think most of his best work is done in sci-fi, especially the recent stuff. The BFG should memorable too, Spielberg doing Dahl will at least be interesting, and he typically does a good job of balancing the maturity when he does films targeted at a younger audience.

 

I still think Minority Report is one of the best movies of the last 15 years.

 

why

 

Spielberg is legendary. Jurassic Park was the first film that made me question how movies are made. To make a film that captures such a large demographic is truly a gift.

 

Jurassic Park has shaped my entire life and that's weird to type but from the moment I saw that water in the cup shake I audibly said "WOW" at the commercial and it's just something that is shared and enjoyed from multiple groups of friends that I have.

Hook is classic and makes you feel so many things, especially what it means to grow up and what you leave behind.

Shindler's List was something I never wanted to see, but we watched in class and I was just blown away. Probably one of the best of all time.

Recently saw Bridge of Spies just for awards season, not knowing much about it and I remember thinking, "This is either Disney or Spielberg" and I really enjoyed it.

And you can't leave out The Color Purple, Indiana Jones, Saving Private Ryan---everyone said what needs to be said.

He's also Produced/Executive Produced so many animated films/shows:

An American Tail
Balto
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
The Land Before Time
Casper
Freakazoid
Pinky and the Brain
Animaniacs

 

No other director can hop genres and tones like Spielberg. Who else can go from Jurassic Park to Schindler's List or from Saving Private Ryan to A.I. and still nail it out of the park? That's what I admire most about him.

War Horse is underrated btw.

 

I had no idea he had a hand in these. I guess his influence on my life started much earlier than I realized.

 

The color palettes in this film are incredible.

 

Spielberg is one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. He helped create, for better or worse, the summer blockbuster. And his films pushed special effects further forward than anyone except maybe Cameron. Spielberg gets a lot of flak from film snobs I feel like, which is undeserved. War Horse was a great movie that I feel like I'm constantly defending

I am hugely biased as Raiders of the Lost Ark is my all time favorite movie, but I don't know that there is a better filmmaker at making you feel something. Whether it's excitement, joy, sadness or nostalgia, he (with the help of John Williams) pulls the emotions out of you.

Bridge of Spies was unreal for me, simply for the fact that at this stage of his career he can do something that tight and precise.

Top 5 Spielberg movies for me are :
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark
2. E.T
3. Saving Private Ryan
4. Jurassic Park
5. Empire of The Sun
6. Catch Me If You Can
7. Munich
8. Schindlers List
9. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Ok so I picked more than 5.... He is just that influential for me. Raiders made me want to become a filmmaker when I get as a kid, and that's something I'm currently working towards today.

 

I feel like Jurassic Park was to me what ET was to many, though that might not be that weird, giving World's success (ugh). Running through this just reminds me how preposterous his filmography is. I haven't seen half of his work, yet he's still one of the biggest shapers of my life with movies. That's probably stating the obvious, but it's still stunning to think about.

All that nonsense aside, I'll always rank Jurassic Park and Catch a few spots higher than I maybe should.

 

Spielberg's accomplishments are well known. To go through the list is to be endlessly repetitive, as he is a filmmaker responsible for setting financial records and then breaking his own records. Usually, popularity and quality are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but Spielberg found a way to make films that had things for the kids and the adults who think like kids while also probing deeper issues for those who have more experience with art cinema.

However, he will always be associated with the destruction of New Hollywood and the rise of the blockbuster, along with George Lucas. Because of the success of Jaws and Star Wars, along with the problems with Cimino's Heaven's Gate and Coppola's One From the Heart, the blockbuster took over and bold and adventurous cinema was cast out of the mainstream. While Jaws is still a great film, the formula showed studios how you could make money off of ancillary products to maximize profitability. You couldn't make a Taxi Driver sequel or an Apocalypse Now lunch box, but if you kept making films like Jaws and Star Wars you could make the amount of money that would rival the GDP of small nations.

When people analyze the career of a filmmaker, they tend to look at the totality of their work and a sort of average score is made. This is why Coppola is often down a peg or two where he should be; his towering Seventies work is hampered by everything else. However, it is important to take note of the things they create by way of influence. Would it be better to never have a Steven Spielberg film career if it meant that forty years later there would be no Batman versus Spiderman? The answer might be yes.

 

Most of the critiques lobbed at him are variations of "His movies are sentimental and he panders to the audience". Whenever I see his movies though I just see characters and stories portrayed with a lot of heart. I guess that's sentimental, but not in a bad way because it rings true. As far as pop filmmakers go he's the best and I feel like you just get more out of his films than any other director (James Cameron being a close second). He's like the Stephen King of movies, and I mean that in the best way possible. Maybe I'm not critical enough, I grew up watching his movies from the time I was first able to comprehend movies and they usually happened to be my favorites so I could be biased.

 

I would answer this with an absolute "No". Raiders of the Lost Ark, Et, Empire of the Sun, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurrassic Park, Shindlers List, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, Band of Brothers, Munich, Lincoln and War Horse, plus all the Amblin films he helped make are worth the majority of the crap blockbusters we get now.

 

The bad blockbusters are more than bad films. They consume screens and budgets. How many exciting and visionary films were not made because the studio preferred to make Jaws 3 or Star Wars 18? How many films were unable to reach a wider audience because a local movie theater was showing the newest Transformers on four screens on the same day? It is hard to determine, and the blockbuster was inevitable after the end of the draft and the Vietnam War, but Spielberg is unique among the great filmmakers that his influence has been mostly negative. Martin Scorsese and Terrence Malick have influenced other filmmakers to reach new heights, but Spielberg showed the way to make billions of dollars. That was never his intention, and his films were always on a different level, but the result is the same.

 

Blockbusters also help studios fund smaller films that they wouldn't take a chance on otherwise. If superhero movie x makes over half a billion dollars, the studios then have more freedom to take chances, not to mention whatever a-list actor played superhero x now has clout to make more interesting pictures. That's not the way it happens every time, but it is a factor. There is something to be said for blockbusters being emptier and less interesting than the pre-Spielberg era, truly subversive or interesting mainstream summer blockbusters feel few and far between. But... the landscape of film is big. I think it can have room for those movies. The issue is smaller markets. I'm lucky to have lived in Chicago and Los Angeles, where I can see whatever movie I want. But if one is surrounded by theaters showing the same four or five mainstream films, two of them superhero movies, one a mainstream comedy sequel, and then maybe an animated kids movie, having to wait months for the new Malick or Kaufman if they get them at all is unfortunate, and that does happen. On the other hand, in the age of the internet it's easier than ever to get your hands on more interesting fare through Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, wherever. Even if the balance isn't ideal right now, I have a hard time faulting Spielberg for being brilliant and making incredible movies, despite the negative effects and poor mimics he's inspired.

 

Theres indirect fault to throw at him for sure. and hes played right into it in his later career. I'll directly fault Spielberg for Indiana Jones 6, Lost World, and War of the Worlds. And writing or funding whatever other turds he has like Aliens vs Cowboys

 

Plus let's not get in the habit of degrading films because they're popular. This kind of eilitism is really off putting and has made the entertainment forum very unfun and a place people didn't want to post before because they felt talked down to and made to feel like bad people because they like "blockbusters." I'd like to avoid that here, these conversations, the way they are worded, always feel like such an attack and it's not the kind of thing I think serves the community well.

 

But they are not taking as many chances as studios did a few decades ago. The middle-budget film has mostly dried up, and independent cinema has more and more depended on outside financing. Directors as legendary as Spike Lee and Frederick Wiseman have had to turn to Kickstarter, while others have depended on the patron sensibility of Megan Ellison.

 

This is a good point to bring up. Elitism is never productive and fosters bitterness and negativity. It's hard to discuss somethings critically without it seem like it's condescending. Like I already felt like I was talked down to on this thread a bit, till I thought about it and decided that wasn't the intent of the poster. Either way some people may look down on blockbusters, but they have their place. Not every movie needs or had to be a life changing world altering experience, some movies exist for pure escapism and entertainment, and people that enjoy those shouldn't have to feel stupid about it at all. I happen to just love movies in general, art house, indie and blockbuster alike.

 

I haven't read everything on the page so I apologize if I'm out of line but can we just not let an unpersonal line of discussion or argument personally offend us?

I see a critical discussion about the current landscape of hollywood

 

Exactly. I heard that a lot from people and I think it's important that we point that out early. I think @Henry's goal is to foster fun conversations and not ones that end with people feeling bad because they like popular films.

 

To many it is personal. They like fun movies and even though they like popular movies, or music, they feel like they can't participate in this forum because of how they have felt talked down to by the elitism.

And a discussion about landscape of Hollywood can be had (maybe not best in this specific thread) without the talk being "bad blockbusters" and "bad films."

 

Though he is relevant to it, the conversation did veer away from Spielberg onto something less focused on the filmmaking itself, which was the most interesting aspect of the thread to me. The current blockbuster landscape, however you feel about it, is part of his legacy but from there the conversation becomes less about him and more about something else, something that might not be tied to the overall goals of the thread and what people are interested in discussing or reading. Especially if the conversation narrows to be between a small group of people who might be dismissing or insulting films, which would be the last thing I would like for a thread about film discussion.

So I'm sorry for furthering that, I'll take a backseat on that discussion. I hope to see further talk of the films themselves and what they mean and how they connect or don't with people. I enjoy that kind of stuff.

 

I don't think it's your fault at all, and I think it's an interesting conversation, my personal feeling is that it's either not really the right place in this thread or at the very least there's a way to have that conversation that doesn't feel so dismissive of those that like blockbusters by labeling them as "bad" — I think that's the kinda thing that leads to the conversation we had in an earlier thread (I think "last movie you watched") where some people were talking about how they felt completely unable to participate in any conversations in the entertainment threads because they felt stupid and wrong for the movies they liked because of how they were so harshly dismissed as bad and ruining film, etc. etc. I think that conversation can take place, but I think it's probably better in its own thread or something I hope it can be done some way where we can get away from this overarching feeling of unwelcomeness in regard to cinema.

 

Catch me if you can is movie gold. I feel like that movie alone spawned a style of clever con-man/heist plots. One of my favorites for Leo, a solid movie in his early career, and one that set him into his streak of arthouse hits.

and who else loved