A Steven Spielberg Poll (1974-1993)

sometimes you would rather see something like that then a lady complaining about having to ride an elephant

it being a comic stock character doesn't mean it's something one wants to watch for ninety minutes! there are lots of stock characters that i think we're all glad have bitten the dust after all. in this case, the stock from which the character is ladled is sexist as well boring. willie is stupid, slow on the uptake even in the most obvious situations, cowardly, unhelpful, and rude, and the film's main interest in her is how to take her down a peg. spielberg doesn't do anything to reinvent or recontextualize or renew this very dicey material and occam's razor (given the racism and general laziness of this film's conception) would suggest he just thinks it's crowd-pleasing entertainment to watch a woman screw things up and be annoying. call me when this kind of worthless role for the leading female character has been abandoned by hollywood and i'll entertain the idea that including one could be some kind of clever throwback to a forgotten archetype. meanwhile though i still don't think any women i know would find this enjoyable. maybe you two dudes are right though.

This is a movie in which everyone, including Indie, gets taken down a peg and made a fool of; everyone's a cartoon.

I don't mind if someone dislikes Willie, nor will I fight it.

pop culture of all eras sure is rigorously vetted these days (except for Fay Wray)

I like Kate Capshaw in TOD (she's pretty funny in the comic scenes and quite good at being seductive once she gets Indy in her sights), I just don't like her more than Karen Allen in ROTLA.

I got no problem with Franklin Pangborn's prissy fags ftr

"Is there anyone I haven't offended?" - Lenny Bruce, who's glad he's dead

vetted? i mean all i was saying was i don't think I'd recommend the film to a friend. out of all the thrills-and-chills adventure movies out there, why pick one with THIS stuff in it? if it doesn't bug you that's fine but i was, as i said, thinking of non-male film buff friends of mine, so you going "hey, *i* find it entertaining, what's the big deal??" isn't really answering to that. obviously i can't speak for their tastes either, just my own barometer of "will i later feel like an asshole with male-privilege blinders for blithely proclaiming this to be a fun popcorn movie that lets you have a good time and forget your cares" ?

You can recommend the film with caveats? That's my job as a reviewer.

I'm just not seeing the big deal in explaining to a friend what you dislike and letting him/her make up his/her mind. Also, if you wouldn't introduce a film patterned after 1930s serials with ethnic and sexual stereotypes to a friend, then don't.

That sentence is garbled: if your friend normally has a problem with such movies, etc.

I'm mostly annoyed that for all that's, well, annoying with her character, Indy inexplicably doesn't rip her heart out later. They never explain that, do they?

I recommend things with caveats all the time! I'd recommend Raiders with caveats, happily. But the more caveats that I have to layer onto a funtimes popcorn movie specifically, the more it's like, maybe I should be recommending a movie that involves less work and fewer "now, you'll want to brace yourself for..." moves. Life is too short; I'd rather recommend things that are fun all the way through, and it's a bummer that Spielberg didn't always pull that off.

Dr. C, watch Sugarland Express! I first watched it as sort of a perfunctory completist gesture but I got converted. I really don't understand why it's so consistently underrated.
― Cork Taint (Old Lunch)

Keep fighting the good fight, OL.

i dig it. less misogynist than drag. #challops

I note that this thread has strongly shifted to arguing between Indiana Jones movies. This seems predictive of the outcome, unless a presently-silent majority rules the final results.

Raiders will be in the top 3. The other two somewhere in the bottom half of the top 10.

my names not gareth its brodie

― brodie, Sunday, January 23, 2011 5:32 PM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Best silly: Raiders.
Best serious: Empire of the Sun.

Voted for Raiders.

Although fuck it, maybe I should have gone with my heart and voted Temple of Doom.

i wouldn't change a thing. somehow even him holding the rocket launcher backwards makes perfect sense in this world. and the end of the film, with the power of God being unleashed and just destroying a canyon filled with Nazis in the most demonic-metal special effects extravaganzas of all time. then there is still the final shot of the guy in that giant room of government secrets.

Raiders is efficient, well-made, unparalleled pulp. the end of TOD is them on a bridge with a bunch of guys falling down to get eaten by crocodiles offscreen. then the guy tries to do the heart thing on Indy, which is the 3rd or 4th time we have seen that trick in action, and it never works in the good guys. then he falls down to again get eaten by crocodiles. i do like the fakeness of the effects, but it is cheaper, far less visually and thematically impressive, then the ending of Raiders. in Raiders we never see the power of the ark until the ending, making it all the more impressive when it happens. it is like the shark in Jaws, used sparingly, the tension building throughout the movie between brief scenes of the main monster or whatever. ofc this is pulp/b-movie making 101.

him riding on the submarine is the maybe the best part, that they never explain that. it effectively turns him into a superhero, which, come on, he always was. this is the kind of folk legend that would be used in a comic strip.

also that wordless scene of the ark burning the whole through the crate in the submarine base is beyond cool. it starts with a shot of some rats and there is this ominous hum and then it pans to show the Imperial Eagle symbol and the ark from within burns it and chars the box black so the Nazi symbol is destroyed. it is a really cool shot of magic happening onscreen when nobody is looking.

The Raiders template is sending up Crap Movies. Which is also what Tarantino's career has been, but Spielberg's pastiches are much better and don't run 3 fucking hours.

is the ending to "Raiders" sort of a nod to DeMille's "The Ten Commandments"? the animation in parts kind of resemble the pillar of cloud and other effects from that classic film.

It's interesting, that sort of is the Raiders template, but that might be more Lucas than Spielberg. I never got the same film historian vibe (pulp or otherwise) from Spielberg that you get from erstwhile peers like, say, Scorsese. Spielberg always seemed more of a savant. Like Coppola, maybe, but less grand Great American Novel ambitious.

xpost Raiders is silly but also has some moments of real drama and portent and menace, not least the intensity of the ending. Doom is just silly, for better or for worse. One can (and we have) made the case that that makes it more faithful to its source inspirations, but ... nah. Still fun, but that's largely linked to Ford, who is perfect in the role.

Adam:

http://www.theraider.net/features/articles/demille.php

Has Spielberg talked much about specific film influences, either directors or movies that made an impact on him?

He has, a fair amount -- not in encyclopedic Scorsese fashion -- but I don't have one source for you.

Assuming Spielberg saw it in its theatrical release when he was about 9, you can imagine how The Ten Commandments would ring all his bells.

I always got the impression he was as or more influenced by pulp fiction: Weird Tales, pulpy sci-fi-fi novels and stuff. But I'll look into film specifics.

That was easy, this one was great and recent:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-films-inspired-steven-spielberg

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/styles/full/public/image/secret-of-the-incas-1954-001-charlton-heston.jpg?itok=y5A4vU5u

get your stinking scales off me, you damn dirty snakes

Q: Why doesn’t Jurassic Park enter into the discussion anybody higher? Is it the fact that it is so overrepresented in nerd culture? Technically speaking, I think it’s one of Spielberg’s best.

I saw it once, and thought all the accomplishments were technical, aside from Goldblum's meta japery.

I like that the people are all pulpy archetypes, but the dinosaurs are realistic and scary. It's a nice contrast.

i will always sit and watch jurassic park if it's on. the first two-thirds is impeccable spielberg craft with SO many small but effective choices, notwithstanding some kinda thin characterization compared to what we get in jaws or close encounters, say. last third still has real genius (the kitchen) but it's carrying you through on momentum and busy-ness. i babbled about this a little starting at this post: jurassic park

up until that rewatch though i probably would have put it right up there with jaws. it's still one hell of an entertaining movie but i see the seams more now.

Jurassic park has nothing on rewatch morbs otm about it

all accomplishments are technical

Re: that BFI list the one thing I unashamedly love about "War Horse" is how he was able to fuse a sentimental John Ford patina over a weird pastiche of Kubrick-goes-to-war.

I won't disagree with anyone who claims that JP is technical exercise and not much else, but I like it for what it is: a beautifully made monster movie. See any of the sequels (yes, even the one Spielberg directed; if not his worst film--which I might argue it is--it is certainly his laziest) for what this film would look like if made without Spielberg's impeccable craftsmanship.

I went to see JP when it came out not knowing anything about it, and it scared the shit out of me.

Jeff Goldblum has that effect on people

Has Spielberg ever made a movie that was not at least technically competent? It's kind of weird, the things that make his movies good or bad seem to be different from the things that make most movies good or bad. His acting and actors are almost always good, his direction is almost always impeccable. Whenever he is let down it is usually by the script.

Both technically and thematically speaking, I think he's fallen into a creative rut in the last decade. Excepting BFG and Tin Tin, which are kiddie-flicks more animated than not, I think he's constricted his palette and moved toward a pokey, less-inspired staging/editing approach than he used during the '70s - '90s. It's probably because he's made so many damn movies. He doesn't strike me as terrifically inventive, which he once did, nor as fun, and I find his choices more frequently eye-rolly. I think a lot of prestige television owes him a debt, and so much of what seems "blah" about his current work is that his style/influence is now ubiquitous. But subject-wise, I'm less sympathetic. Of his output post-2000, he's devoted way too much of his time to making competent, mostly uncontroversial films about and for serious white people. The fun/kineticism of his earlier stuff is mostly missing, and there's a lot of conservative dudes talking in brownish room in its place.

depends what counts as technical competence i guess. i'd say hook blows it but not necessarily in the places you just mentioned. his instincts just fail him as to what's a good story, what's a good emotional arc, what needs to be in the movie and what doesn't, what level of overacting to direct everybody to... it's the one that feels the most like you got some sub-spielberg person to try and do a big hit family movie with prestige actors and a sense of "wonder" and "magic" that turns out to be hollow and mean if you think about it.

One reason I like, for different reasons, his sci-fi resurgence with AI, Minority Report, and War of the Worlds is that a lot of them flashback to his early days of wide eyed wonder, at spectacle, at technology, at just something that warrants the trademark look of his characters, slack-jawed and staring. The irony of many of his more recent works is that they seem very much indebted to backroom 70s paranoia thrillers, like All the President's Men or the Conversation or something like that. When in the 70s of course he was making movies that largely went in the opposite direction.

His filmography is so diverse at this point, it's really hard to pinpoint what makes a Spielberg movie a Spielberg movie, not in the way you can do the same with, say, a Scorsese film.

JP is absolutely one of spielberg's best, what's special about it seems more and more clear when you compare it to the fx blockbusters that followed it (including a couple made by spielberg himself).

yeah JP probably changed blockbusters filmmaking more than anything here except jaws but including raiders. there are soooooo many wannabe-JP movies from that point on and almost nobody has any idea what they're doing.

OK, voting E.T..

Voted Close Encounters