A Steven Spielberg Poll (1974-1993)

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

Me: 1) The Sugarland Express, 2) Jaws, 3) Close Encounters, 4) E.T.

Prediction: 1) E.T., 2) Raiders, 3) Close Encounters, 4) Jaws or Jurassic Park.

Without having seen them all, my vague sense is that the Spielbergs are very much of their eras, with the '70s expressive of an unconventional individual, the long '80s of someone serving a conventional audience in personal fashion, the '90s of someone seeking to nudge it marginally in a positive direction, and much of what followed more explicitly political/philosophical while remaining in a fairly conventional mode. I like the '70s films best, especially Jaws and its more transitional follow-up, but that may also have something to do with the fact that I regard Wyoming as the most spectacular thing he's put in a movie.

I'd say his '70s are the same as Altman's and Scorsese's: they've got more energy and ideas than they know what to do with. Not everything worked--Altman really misfired sometimes--but they regularly amazed.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Well, at least Jaws didn’t win.

I was waiting for this result like

https://i.imgur.com/hUrf67F.gif

Yay on Close Encounters doing so well :)

wow at ET so low! that was my pick in the end. i didn't have a super strong relationship with it as a kid, probably only saw it once, but it's really spoken to me as an adult. absolutely wrecked me and my stepmom, watching it a few days after my father passed away. i remember hugging her, both of us crying, and just saying "he goes home. he goes home." maybe of all his films it has the most to say, in a small story of a child and his friend, about the big and fundamental things - life, death, loss, watching someone you love go, and carrying on with the things they left you still in your heart. it's able to get there because all the everydayness works, because the movie magic of things like the bicycle flight have us totally wide-eyed and accepting in our hearts that elliott and e.t.'s connection is important. "this means something," one might say.

speaking of which, close encounters gets really, well, close. what ultimately proves to be the throwawayness of melinda dillon's character is a real achilles's heel tho imo. there are also a few sequences that drag on a little long. but this one, too, moved and affected me in recent times. raiders and jaws are fantastic entertainments, probably pinnacles of the medium in certain ways, but i'm more interested in and compelled by the things e.t. and close encounters have their minds on.

ilx went mindless

I would've gone:

E.T.
Temple of Doom
Jaws
Empire of the Sun
Raiders of the Lost Ark

Except for something like this thread, I doubt I've thought of Raiders of the Lost Ark once the past 35 years. I remember the snakes and the big rock.

Nice to see three other Sugarland votes, though.

ilx went mindless

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, March 15, 2018 10:56 PM (yesterday) Bookmark

wait weren't you stanning for Temple of Doom over Raiders?