Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

i. dis. agree. there, that wasn't so hard. in this context, i don't care about great directors. i care about entertaining films. hawks' films are *quite* entertaining. but they don't stand out particularly from hollywood films of the 'classic' (c. 1930 - c. 1960) period.

he has a slightly nasty, right-libertarian view of society based on the rugged-individualist/masculinist ideal (women have to be men). it's this glib view of 'how to deal' that i mean by 'audience-minded'. he's all about winners.

expressive editing (blah phrase, but whatevs) is not film school bullshit. following the aesthetic choices of 1950s cahiers du cinema is film school bullshit!!

point is the kind of stuff spielberg does, like the beach scene, was beyond the dreams of any classic hollywood director. they'd have fucking killed to have done it. maybe sam fuller with spielberg's crew would be the best thing.

# Indiana Jones 4 (2006) (announced)
# Untitled Steven Spielberg/Abraham Lincoln Project (2007) (pre-production)
# Untitled 1972 Munich Olympics Project (2005) (filming)
# War of the Worlds (2005)
# The Terminal (2004)
# Catch Me If You Can (2002)
# Minority Report (2002)
# Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)

This list, of films I have seen, arranged more or less in descending order of quality (last = best) is the reason why I'm not interested in any of the films above:

# Saving Private Ryan (1998)
# The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
# Schindler's List (1993)
# Jurassic Park (1993)
# Hook (1991)
# Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
# Empire of the Sun (1987)
# The Color Purple (1985)
# Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
# E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
# Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
# Jaws (1975)
# Duel (1971)

In conclusion, Thank You Mr. Spielberg for bringing some really fantastic adventures to the big screen, and showing us some highly exciting moments, No Thank You Mr. Spielberg for saddling nearly all of them with increasingly awful casting as time marches on and for trying to choke us to death with your faith in the human spirit or whatever you want to call that unbelievably smug annoying self-congratulatory horseshit.

xpost,
more complexity and disturbingly adult themes
So do the fucking Matrix movies. OMG HE DIES TO SAVE EVERYBODY

this is kinda otm -- it's there in the movies -- but the horseshit bits are outnumbered by the highly exciting moments. or, they're *both* there. same way fall-flat bits of unfunniness and misanthropy coexist with real chills in hitchcock.

otoh, is 'saving private ryan' really that smug? it has those terrible bookends, and the matt damon bits are really annoying, but i've seen far less convinving movies about war.

The first time I saw Duel I knew it was supposed to be "atypical" Spielberg but I still spent probably half the movie waiting for some insipid deus ex machina to rob me of all my actual emotions and replace them with spoonfed lotus blooms. This is what he's done to his legacy.

Looking at that list above I realize I've disliked a LOT of his movies, without even really realizing they were Spielberg flix. I mean the only movies that I like in that list are Raiders, Last Crusade, Duel, Catch Me If You Can (and that's not even an active like because I forgot I saw it until recently) and...uh...well, I don't actually like Jurassic Park at ALL but Jeff Goldblum dresses fantastically in it so I'll give it a little bit of a pass (THAT FINAL SHOT OF THE T-REX AND THE RAPTORS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST SHOT IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF CINEMATOGRAPHY AND DIRECTION AND THAT IS A STONE COLD FACT PEOPLE). I'd like Saving Private Ryan better if the bookends were deleted and it was about a half hour shorter.

Dr. Morbius, how about you discuss the "disturbing adult themes" in, say, Catch Me If You Can?

jaws fucking rules ally. jpark3's pretty great, the best of the bunch no doubt. poltergeist was pretty great. band of brothers was incredible. into the west was rousing fun.

Jaws does NOT fucking rule!

UNIFIED WORKS suck anyway

ie his refusal to end his recent movies unyuckily is the price he is prepared to pay for the chance to shoot [x] idea

i don't buy this really, but i wd admire SS lots if i discovered this is where he's secretly at

oh, begone intentionality! i think most movies are compendia of bits with lots of redundancies put in to keep front office happy. it's always been like that(?). spielberg is a total enigma as a man -- i have read a biography of him and know NOTHING about him.

but cutting through or ignoring the 'greatest generation' blah i've been impressed by the action scenes in the saving private ryan/band of brothers projects.

as with albums, ignore the rubbish bits.

My hyperbole is totally correct, watch JP again and wait for it...that final shot of the freaking T-Rex. Claymation dinosaur, why you ruin shot all the time? I would've liked Jurassic Park better if there was no dinosaurs, but instead Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider.

Anyway I am still interested in finding out how Spielberg classics like Catch Me If You Can or The Terminal or The Lost World explore more disturbing, dark, and adult themes than Bamboozled and are more complex than The Big Lebowski! I'll give Morbius Soderberg.

XPOST ARGH STOP IT WITH THOSE MORPHED ANIMALS

Does this make him classic, or just Darryl Zanuck reborn?

I stick with my B+ assessement. He has good chops, and a consistent record. I like him OK, but nothing he makes excites me much.

aimless -- steve is hurt, but he will try to improve his record for next semester.

what's your point here exactly? that people in film school like him because he's successful? wtf does that have to do with anything

>how about you discuss the "disturbing adult themes" in, say, Catch Me If You Can?<

No, not a classic. Quite a decent Missing/Inadequate Dad Complex meditation (major Spielberg motif), tho, with both Leo and Walken putting in unusually deep performances before returning to check-cashing roles.

The Terminal: America as Last Best Melting Pot AND Dubya's Fortress ("America is closed").

JP2 was the last of his I skipped.

I think Walken's performance in Catch Me If You Can is completely immemorable, as immemorable as he gets, at least. Also, I'm not sure how I understand in what way Savion Glover's character in Bamboozled is any more of a "2-D sketch" than Leonardo DiCaprio's character here (note: this does not imply that DiCaprio's character IS a "2-D sketch"). And yes, the 25th Hour beats the crap out of both of these movies, and anything Spielberg's done in, oh, 10 or 15 years. I was keeping off the sucka punches on the "Spielberg more provocative than Lee" comment but if you wanna kick yourself in a metaphorical discussion-genitals go ahead!

Not quite. Film schoolies love him because he is the archetypal film school product. Speilberg sat through all the same classes, learned all the same rigamarole as them and then he went out and became the Nu Robot Overlord of films. It sprinkles fairy dust (read: imagined money & power) over the whole film school experience.

Kate otm x 1000

excellent post

I mean, saying he is not cynical because the government *shouldn't* be trusted is ... I mean, that's cynical! Fair, but cynical. I'm not saying that Spielberg is *exclusively* cynical, per se, but that there is an element of post-Vietnam etc. cynicism at odds or in conflict with his optimism/humanism, because he does straddle that generational gap. His sentimentality and optimism hearkens back to an idealized America of his youth (even if that America was an illusion). The movies he was watching as a kid, when the giant ants or aliens are attacking, you called in the army! But in many of his movies, the military or government is a an equal menace, or at least meddler. With some exceptions, of course, but aside from Saving Private Ryan, really, often when you want to get something done in his movies, whether in Jaws or Munich or even Raiders, you go rogue. Though obviously that is also a really common story trope to generate conflict.

who can live in this nation and not be subject to bouts of cynicism?

His sentimentality and optimism hearkens back to an idealized America of his youth (even if that America was an illusion). The movies he was watching as a kid, when the giant ants or aliens are attacking, you called in the army! But in many of his movies, the military or government is a an equal menace, or at least meddler. With some exceptions, of course, but aside from Saving Private Ryan, really, often when you want to get something done in his movies, whether in Jaws or Munich or even Raiders, you go rogue. Though obviously that is also a really common story trope to generate conflict.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, June 19, 2026 11:38 AM (nine minutes ago)

ok, i'll give, yeah, it is cynical! he does have a cynical streak! the ending of "raiders", for instance. it's a really funny movie, because indy is, like, serving colonialism, his whole "it belongs in a museum" thing. and of course what happens to the ark of the covenant, this enormously powerful magical artifact, is that we see it wind up in a warehouse. i don't think that's spielberg critiquing colonialism or anything, i think that's just him being wry.

the really funny thing, to me, was listening to this podcast where he's talking about having saved all his stuff and that he's donated it all _to_ a museum, a nonprofit museum. it's funny because i have to assume he still has the prop, the ark of the covenant from that film, and unless it's being displayed somewhere it maybe _is_ boxed up in some warehouse somewhere. very "life imitates art". you know, here's the ark of the covenant next to the holy grail and the alien mothership...

yeah i do i guess... because he's so much less cynical than me it's easy for me to say "well he's not cynical" and Munich, for instance, that's a cynical fucking movie. it's not like he's not cynical (rightly so) of "going rogue". that's actually... it's not spielberg but i consistently hear people saying that the casino planet is one of people's least favorite parts of the last jedi. and i think the sequence itself, the way it's made, it doesn't work in the context of the movie. i think there's that argument to be made. when i hear people saying, though, is "why do they even go there", because the point is that there is no point. it's part of poe's character arc, "going rogue" and not listening to your superior officer because she doesn't _explain herself adequately_ to you is really fucking stupid.

he does have a cynical streak, but at the same time he's not... he's not some sort of _anarchist_ lol. when spielberg's characters "go rogue" there's usually some reason, whether it's explicitly stated in the film or not. within the context of raiders, um, he goes rogue to fight nazis. him and captain america, the thing they have most in common, in my head, is all the time they're like "fuck you, i'm gonna punch nazis". i mean i don't disagree that steven spielberg is liberal but a lot of the time he's liberal in the wokest possible way.

i guess if there is a dialectic, if there is, tv tropes calls it the "sliding scale of idealism vs. cynicism", that nearly always winds up resolving on the idealism side. i guess if there wasn't any cynicism, his movies wouldn't be very dramatic. the government agents come for ET and it's all a big misunderstanding, they just want to help him get home, that's the version of ET that fucking flops. there were so many imitations of ET and they were all fucking awful. star wars has been copied to death, a lot of times very well, but you try to copy ET and you wind up with, like, Mac and Me, or Pod People. just.... ET has inspired some of the most baffling, disturbing art. i fucking love it. the terrible ET video games (there are multiple, and they're ALL AWFUL), the terrible ET board game, fucking... have your ever heard Afrosound's "El Regreso de E.T."? Cooky Puss. ET inspired fucking Cooky Puss. My mom sewed me an ET costume for Halloween when I was in the first grade and God I wish I had those pictures. It was amazing. Legitimately amazing.

That's what I mean by finding the human inside the alien. Anybody else tries to do it, it comes out creepy and weird, but Spielberg, the fucking thing is adorable.

A little minor thing. There are so many minor little grace notes in this film. It's what TV Tropes calls "Fridge Brilliance". I read a review that calls out the fox as being extremely unconvincing. Which I noticed, and I ignored, until I read that review and went "Wait a minute, that makes sense. That's not actually a fox."

I ignored the fact that it didn't look like a real fox, when I saw it, because I was bawling my eyes out. I was bawling my eyes out because my favorite movie when I was four was "The Fox and the Hound", so yeah, the fox showed up and I felt like I was being sucker-punched right in the feels. God I hate that, feeling like I've been sucker-punched. But the thing is, I understood this at the time, it felt like a sucker-punch but he didn't actually sucker-punch me. Nah, he hit me in the feels fair and square. Did it so well that I didn't even mind that the fox was some pretty fakey CGI. And then, on top of that, realized two days later that there was a PERFECTLY GOOD IN-UNIVERSE REASON for the fox to be fake-looking CGI.

That's just the kind of thing Spielberg can _do_. With movies. He couldn't do that if he was a cynic.

Heh, I was thinking of "fridge logic" during/after this as well. During, it was like "wait a minute..." but then I was caught up in whatever the action led to next.

ftr "cynicism" and "sentimentality," as I've noted several times, are synonyms. Cynicism is curdled sentimentality, the reaction to the world not working out the way we expected.

Eh, cynicism and sentimentalism may be loosely related, especially as you frame it, but I would hardly call them synonyms. The Carlin quote about failed idealism seems more accurate to me, but I'm not sure I would consider Spielberg an idealist, either, failed or otherwise.

Anyway, I can totally see Spielberg as anarchist, lol. This is after all the guy who in his spare time not just protected but amplified Joe Dante's Looney Tunes voice. It's a latent trait that runs through a lot of his movies, right up to the new one, where O'Connor's goal is to release the footage and ... see what happens; the shark hunters, Indy, the literal or metaphorically "lawless" worlds of "Saving Private Ryan" or "War of the Worlds," what I termed characters "going rogue" could almost as easily had been "embraced anarchy." Malcolm might study chaos theory, but gleefully comports himself kinda like an anarchist (at least until he's in the food chain). Even Lincoln finds a way to work around the system, and he *is* the system!

Spielberg is not an anarchist. He honors his cinematic fathers too highly.

its the straightlaced rule-follower's suppressed urge to fuck around and find out, the release of being an outlaw and blowing it all up, someone who admires anarchists but knows himself well enough to know that's not actually who he is

Ha! Well, for sure he would never go full Gremlins 2. He's definitely no cinematic anarchist. Not sure he is entirely a formalist, either, for all he adheres to his predecessors. He's more of a hybrid ... I dunno, postmodern formalist? Is that a thing, lol?

Actually Brody (hah) said 1941 was his favorite Spielberg film because it's where he gave free rein to his anarchic inner child:

In “1941,” he lets his manic, movie-loving inner child loose and avows far more about his love of movies—and its connection to his fundamental worldview—than was prudent. It’s the film in which he lets himself go, in which he displays his cinematic id, and it’s perhaps the only one in which he suggests that he has an id at all. Yet the part of Spielberg that was unleashed proved unpopular. Critics panned “1941,” and, though it was neither a blockbuster nor a financial flop, it was a big disappointment after the smash hits of “Jaws” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Spielberg, chastened, never cut loose again.

Eh, cynicism and sentimentalism may be loosely related, especially as you frame it, but I would hardly call them synonyms. The Carlin quote about failed idealism seems more accurate to me, but I'm not sure I would consider Spielberg an idealist, either, failed or otherwise.

― Josh in Chicago

the man was born in 1946. i'm not sure that it was ever in the cards for him.

and no, absolutely, i wouldn't consider spielberg an idealist as a filmmaker. he's a _visionary_, but one of the things that defines him as filmmaker is his ability to _compromise_, to _adapt_. the stories about "jaws" are the most famous ones, but all through his career. it's... i don't really get brody's take, the idea that he never "cut loose" again. god, the sheer childlike glee with which he talks about _2001: a space odyssey_ on that podcast... he's not _unfettered_ id, sure. he's also very conspiciously _not_ unfettered ego. he's got vision, he's got drive - he talks about it in that podcast, being driven - and he's also just _very very able to adapt_ in ways that hardly any other "visionary" filmmaker is. it's a skill he had to develop early on, and he just... he never stopped developing it. he's talking in that podcast about working with actors and saying "you know, look, just because i say i like the cut doesn't mean we can't do another take, if you feel you have something more to give". ummm yeah when you got a reputation as the Greatest Living Director people are gonna tend to want to do things your way lol. and i also, like, i do get where spielberg is coming from with that, because he it seems like just, like, always, always collaborates, _listens_ to other people to hear where they're coming from.

idk, i was just...

you are goddamn right i ship these two btw

― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, June 19, 2026 9:41 AM (nine hours ago)

this is a shitpost, to be clear. i'm shitposting. i strongly support slash, i stan fujoshi, and that's not what's in the movie, this idea of a hugo/noah relationship is fan wish fulfillment. no of course hugo and noah weren't ever in a sexual or romantic relationship. what i actually see in that scene between hugo and noah, the extraordinary thing, is how spielberg responds to what colman domingo brings to the performance, to the character. there is a _great_ deal of depth in the relationship between hugo and noah. there's this stuff that is just strongly implicit in domingo's performance particularly.

there's a certain anxiety straight men have, when it comes to their friendships with other men. "no homo". they're often afraid that loving another man might be construed as queer love, might _be_ queer love. the openness, the vulnerability, with which hugo addresses noah... it's _not_ queer love. the way i see the film, i very much get the impression that hugo (the character) is confident that his love for noah isn't queer, because hugo (the character) is _gay_, because he knows what it's like to be homosexually or homoromantically attracted to someone, and _that's not the way he loves noah_. and he does still love noah, even though he feels hurt, betrayed, by "losing" noah. he doesn't mean that in a sexual or romantic sense, because that's not the world spielberg's movies are set in. sure, ok, you could postulate, oh, maybe scanlon is bi and poly and he's involved with both his wife and with hugo but no, c'mon, that's not something that happens in a spielberg film. that's just not what's going on there. hugo wouldn't be able, i don't think, to love noah like he does if hugo _wasn't_ a gay man, but hugo's actual love for noah isn't gay love.

and all of that is there _because_, i think, _because_ of domingo. the film doesn't say anywhere that hugo is gay. hugo is played by a gay actor, and of course domingo _could_ play a straight character just fine. i'm _pretty sure_ he knows how to act straight. that's not what i see in his performance. i see him performing a character whose homosexuality is invisible to most people, someone who's had for most of his life learn to make his queerness invisible, but which nevertheless strongly motivates him, is something that's deep at the core of his being. i can't really say if hugo's queerness is invisible to noah. my gut says that it's not, that noah knows, because that's how much hugo trusts noah, but that's a supposition on my part. i can't see that in the film itself.

knowing what i do about the way spielberg directs, about the way he goes out of his way to listen to and respond to his actors... _he_ couldn't make hugo a queer character. he has limitations. domingo _can_ make hugo's character gay, without any overt indication at all of the character's queerness. not just because domingo is gay, but because he's a good fucking actor, and because spielberg, as a director, knows when to let domingo play the scene in a way that works for him as an actor. i'm not sure it's something domingo would even have to explicitly _discuss_ with spielberg. that's the level of trust spielberg has in his actors.

the movie works just fine, just fine as a movie without there being any consideration of the question of "is hugo gay". it's not something one needs to consider to enjoy the film, it's not at all central to the film. i think to me, as a queer person, it's important, that i think it is... i think i can with some degree of confidence say that the character of hugo is gay without it being some kind of crass "dumbledore is gay" thing. that it can be something that's invisible but _real_, something that, i believe, is _actually present_ and not just artificially imposed on the character like some kind of fantasy hugo/noah slash pairing. and i think the ability to do this is something that spielberg has consciously worked at, developed, over the length of his career. it's not something he could have done 30 years ago. it's not something that comes naturally to him.

Ha, a friend remarked that Hugo and Daniel's relationship only makes sense if you regard them as ex-lovers.

Ha, a friend remarked that Hugo and Daniel's relationship only makes sense if you regard them as ex-lovers.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

daniel! interesting. i kinda see hugo as being something of a parental figure to daniel, he cares about daniel but it's exhausting dealing with his cishet white guy bullshit (the way daniel reacts to jane telling him she's an ex-novitiate is _peak_ cishet white guy and very funny). in my headcanon daniel doesn't even know hugo's gay. like i feel like if hugo mentioned it to daniel he'd probably be like he was to jane when she said she told him she's an ex-novitiate.

none of this is a knock on daniel or anything, he's a good guy, he's just kind of a doof sometimes

idk i've been reading... i didn't realize that ET and Poltergeist originally came from the same story! that's really interesting and it kinda puts some stuff in perspective. like why spielberg was so involved on the set of poltergeist. it's really starting to click with me how _personal_ the ufo thing is for him, how personal it's always been for him as far back as _firelight_. i don't think ufos are his "religion" in the way it typically gets talked about. it's more that his values, which, from the way he expresses them, i think are great values, his ethos, really finds its fullest expression in his beliefs about ufos.

which i think is really cool! i don't believe in ufos, both in the sense that they don't signify anything to me values-wise and that all of that ufo stuff, i don't think there's persuasive evidence for any of that. i do sometimes feel like an alien, being different, queer, which is probably why hugo's implicit queerness is so important to me. like in terms of what drives his character, yeah in part hugo breaks from noah cuz of how noah changes after his wife dies, and also i feel like hugo being able to do what he does stems a lot from the experiences he has, the way he almost certainly gets "othered" within wardex while also having this mostly invisible difference from the people around him. i mean wardex wouldn't do the things they did if they were an empathy-forward organization lol.

one of the things i like about spielberg a lot is the way he gives viewers a sense of character through these kind of small, ordinary interactions. margaret realizing her boyfriend is going to break up with her, for instance, isn't something that comes out of the blue... i just listen to that conversation they have early in the movie and yeah i don't get the sense the two of them have a future together. it's really effective because, i mean, most people aren't going to look at a bird and suddenly be able to speak fluent korean and casually de-escalate international crises, but looking into the eyes of someone you love and realizing the two of you don't have a future together? yeah i get the impression a _lot_ of people have had that experience. i certainly have. it's that thing of finding the human within the alien, making what margaret experiences understandable and relatable to a wide audience.

I honestly love this discussion of the movie beneath (or between?) the movie. There's an imo unexplored richness to the characters that underscores the failure of the film or script. Maybe if it didn't waste so much time with the silly alien stuff the characters might have has a better opportunity to reveal themselves, lol. Anyway, just further emphasizes Spielberg's gifts. Like Hitchcock (again), there is just so much of *him* in his movies, overtly or no, and his presence is often the best thing about his films, successes, disappointments and everything in between. Like, so many directors have identifiable go-to moves - camera shots, song cues, whatever. Spielberg's most obvious go-to is I suppose the slow close up of a face staring in awe, but I'd also say it's those sorts of aforementioned personal character beats that sometimes get overlooked in favor of the spectacle.

An observation made on the oral history I posted, in the context of "Sugarland Express."

There’s a kind of basic reality to the lives of Steven’s characters: There’s depth, there’s wit, there’s ease.

The trailer before this one was for the JJ Abrams-produced The End of Oak Street, which contained nothing but Spielberg go-to moves.

Someone was making fun of that one yesterday, so I googled it, and it's the guy that wrote and directed "It Follows." So, while I am not optimistic, I am I suppose more intrigued than if it were, say, strictly JJ Abrams (who already made his nothing but Spielberg go-tos movie).

Yeah, I liked Super 8 and have completely forgotten it, and I'd take a chance on this one.

Maybe if it didn't waste so much time with the silly alien stuff the characters might have has a better opportunity to reveal themselves, lol. Anyway, just further emphasizes Spielberg's gifts. Like Hitchcock (again), there is just so much of *him* in his movies, overtly or no, and his presence is often the best thing about his films, successes, disappointments and everything in between.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, June 21, 2026 6:21 AM (three hours ago)

that's the thing, he's made plenty of movies _without_ the silly alien stuff, and they tend to be great movies, and i'd argue that's _not_ as much of *him* in them, because the "silly alien stuff" is absolutely integral to who he is as a person. he truly, genuinely believes in aliens. i don't believe aliens are real, any more than i believe a man can fly, and i _do_ believe in what spielberg is _saying_ in this film. i believe that this film has meaning and purpose and vision that wouldn't be _there_ if it weren't for the silly alien stuff. it kind of, to me, emphasizes the spielberg's humanity. it's something that makes him distinct, not like everybody else, and my instinct is to look at someone who believes aliens are real and see that as a cognitive limitation. well, everything has two sides, though, and he takes this belief which, really, _isn't_ scientific, _isn't_ empirically rooted, as much as spielberg might want to believe it's fact, and turns it into a strength. the sense of wonder in his movies is to some extent his own. he genuinely believes that aliens are real, and immediately extends that to "i wonder what they're like? i wonder what they have to say to us?"

the characters reveal themselves in small ways, in small moments, through the actors as much as through the script and cinematography, which is _very_ interesting to me. i do think that hugo, as a character, has the depth that he does because of domingo. daniel, on the other hand... i don't know, maybe there is depth of character to him, but a lot of his motivations are fridge logic to me. i'm sorry, what? this man spent 22 months or whatever in _federal prison_? i do not see that in josh o'connor's performance. maybe it's there and i'm just not seeing it, idk, maybe it was a Club Fed or whatever. o'connor just imbues daniel with this _guilelessness_ that doesn't really fit with daniel's actions throughout the film. i see him playing daniel as sort of the standard action hero doofus. maybe it'll come across different on rewatch!

Hanks: The scene in Jaws when they’re comparing scars and their broken hearts, and it’s those great actors, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw. That kind of camaraderie — I don’t know that Steven’s had that with other men outside of the director community. He gets together with Francis and Marty and Guillermo del Toro and all those guys, and he’s in the warm embrace of like-minded male companionship. I think he yearns to have that. Look at the relationship between Dreyfuss and François Truffaut in Close Encounters. There’s even a great scene in Jaws when Scheider is just sitting with his son and his son starts doing imitations of him at the dinner table.

ok it's this bit from the oral history, this, i think, articulates where spielberg is coming from on hugo's character. and i'm not sure that's exactly the same place domingo is coming from! that's ... i love that the film has room in it for both of those takes. like spielberg is clearly present in most of the films he makes, but he's not the _only_ presence. i'd have to see 1941 to see what happened there... reading the oral history makes it sound like he kinda got overwhelmed by all the other presences in there.

Ha, I didn't mean that aliens were innately silly, just silly in (or at least the least interesting aspect of) this movie. It's funny, for as much as he has returned to the very personal alien well, never has he addressed the questions you raised: I wonder what they are like? I wonder what they have to say to us?

From a quick skim read I'm going against the grain in this thread in thinking that this was pretty awful, sorry.

To give at least some reasoning - my main problem was the writing. The plot was riddled with clichés and egregious holes, but not in a way that felt deliberate or knowing at all. I felt it was meant to be a serious film, but I was on the verge of laughing at much of its more excessive hokum.