image © Rex Features
We all have our favourite Steven Spielberg moment. Be it ET and Elliott soaring into the sky, the mother ship landing in Close Encounters or Indiana Jones holding on to his hat as a giant boulder rumbles down the path behind him. And while he’s made plenty of them in his career, these days it’s starting to fee like he’s lost that magic touch just a little.
Starting out as a sneaky, urgent celluloid-loving wannabe filmmaker who finagled his way into an office on the Universal lot, Spielberg rapidly matured into a master craftsman, able to weave magic no matter the budget, and bring the sensibilities and enthusiasm gleaned from a childhood of watching and making B-movies to the big screen. As he shifted gears effortlessly from low-fi thrillers such as Duel to the big-budget blockbusters that helped define a generation and make him one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, he displayed a knack for gathering the best people around him to make films that stuck in the collective consciousness.
Even during those early successful times, Spielberg came under heavy criticism for letting his action brain get ahead of storytelling and character. And the fact that he became hugely successful from his work led to a fair amount of resentment. But Spielberg could always be relied upon to bring the goods, despite the odd early misfire such as 1941.
Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull In MSN Video
image © PA Photos
And then something seemed to happen to him. He’d proved he could make both audience-pleasing summer blockbusters and important, beautifully shot epics like Schindler’s List. Yet right around the time that The Lost World: Jurassic Park stumbled on to our screens, it felt like the wind left his sails. Sure, he was firing on all cylinders as a producer, helping to shepherd the likes of Men In Black to the screen, but his personal output – both the thrill ride cinema and the dramatic, weighty material such as Amistad seemed to lack a certain flare. Saving Private Ryan won him Oscars, but while the opening holds up, the rest of the film is muddled and meandering.
He followed that up by diving back into the spectacle of sci-fi with AI and Minority Report, but both felt burdened by him trying to blend the two sides of his movie brain together, which never quite worked. Catch Me If You Can signaled something of a return to the fun he specialised in early on, but while The Terminal wanted to be likeable; it ended up more dull than charming. Finally, Munich’s violent yet thoughtful style never clicked, while War Of The Worlds’ overblown bombast failed to strike a chord with the blockbuster crowd. But now it looks like he’s back – rescuing himself (albeit to mixed reviews so far) by returning to one of his favourites, Indiana Jones. Here’s hoping the fun he had making The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skulls seeps into all his work from now one, and that the likes of Tintin and his long-delayed Lincoln biopic are better for it.
