For the first time in a decade, Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg is delivering a summer blockbuster with the upcoming Disclosure Day. Will this return to the world of extraterrestrials break one of our greatest living director’s 20-year losing streak?
Spielberg’s high-water mark is 1993’s incredible two-fer of Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park. Then 47-years-old, Spielberg directed that year’s biggest blockbuster and that year’s Best Picture winner. He also won his first Best Director Oscar. Even for the man behind Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T., this was an incredible accomplishment that had never been done before and has not happened since.
From there, Spielberg continued to deliver with The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), the masterpiece A.I. (2001), Minority Report (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and War of the Worlds (2005). Granted, Munich (2005) is superbly crafted, but having recently rewatched it, I find its theme morally illiterate. When Eric Bana’s protagonist goes full surrender-Jew at the end, regrets killing Islamic terrorists, and whines, “Every man we’ve killed has been replaced by worse,” I literally broke out laughing at dumbass Spielberg wanting us to believe those replacements were not a threat to Israel before; that they were in community college or something.
Anyway, the 20 years that followed resulted in ten movies, and only two of them are pretty good: Lincoln (2012) and Bridge of Spies (2015).
The rest range from forgettable to outright bad: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), The Adventures of Tintin (2011), War Horse (2011), The BFG (2016), The Post (2017), Ready Player One (2018), West Side Story (2021), and The Fabelmans (2022). Those last two were outright box office catastrophes.
The last 20 years have been quite a step down from a filmmaker whose name once stood for the best the movies had to offer. No one’s questioning Spielberg’s technical skills. Ready Player One and West Side Story both prove Spielberg still knows where to place his camera, compose a shot, and edit a sequence. The problem has been his choice of material and the execution of that material story-wise.
So now he’s returned to two areas that have worked out well for him in the past: aliens and superstar screenwriter David Koepp, who wrote Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, Lost World (which is underrated), and War of the Worlds. Granted, Koepp also wrote the dreadful Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but I blame George Lucas for that debacle.
I must say, though, the Disclosure Day trailer doesn’t do much for me:
Then there’s Spielberg’s current PR pitch in which he runs around on all The Shows saying he believes there is life on other planets. It reeks of the desperation of a guy who’s sweaty to make headlines for his $120 million movie.
To those of a certain age, Spielberg means the world to us. So many memories… We sat next to our parents, terrified by Jaws and awed by Close Encounters. We used our new driver’s license to pack the car with buddies who still talk about being blown away by Raiders. We saw E.T. with a cute girl and Jurassic Park with our young family. We took our Dads to see Saving Private Ryan, and we’ll never forget the first time we met Steven Spielberg, which was long before anyone knew he would become Steven Spielberg — as little kids enthralled by Duel (1971) on our boxy 19-inch TV.
Sure would be nice to have that guy back.