There are few movie directors who have achieved as much as Steven Spielberg in terms of influencing audiences, other film-makers, and creative talent in multiple industries. Spielberg’s friend and partner George Lucas not only revived and evolved cinematic space opera, he kickstarted a revolution in film-making technology. Industrial Light & Magic showed the world that special effects could achieve so much more than had been imagined.
Steven Spielberg’s impact on movie-making was at least as significant as Lucasfilms’ innovations. But Steven Spielberg’s special gift, in my opinion, is in story-telling. Not only does he tell interesting, compelling stories, he inspires other people to go out and do the same. And some of his movies have stirred up passion, community action, and historic social transitions.
The cultural influence of Steven Spielberg’s science fiction and fantasy movies deserves mention. He showed the world through some of the following movies that CGI was ready for major blockbuster budgets. Who didn’t say (or think) “wow” the first time they saw a brachiosaur on the big screen in Jurassic Park? Michael Crichton may have written the novel and the screenplay, but Spielberg made the movie and he believed in CGI enough to rely on it.
Another seminal project was Lucas’ and Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, which re-energized the sleepy archaeology adventure story, a sub-genre some people call relic hunting entertainment. The relic hunting genre of movies and TV is popular among people who watch free streaming TV apps, and for good reason. These are fun stories. It’s hard to screw up the concept, but Spielberg and Lucas perfected H. Rider Haggard’s formula.
Where science fiction film entertainment remains weak is in making science entertaining. It’s easier to do that with a documentary, where you have a Michio Kaku or Morgan Freeman narrating the show. When it comes to telling a story, especially a fictional one, movie-makers still skimp on the science. Spielberg’s science fiction movies are among those that push the genre a little closer to being scientific, but he and the industry are not there yet.
Real science tends to be boring when it’s fictionalized. It works better when presented as real science. To keep audiences engaged in stories, movies must bend a few rules of science. Hence, E.T. can make Elliot’s bicycle fly through the night sky without any plausible scientific explanation for how that is possible.
Even so, there are some eerie foreshadowings in science fiction. Star Trek introduced many cool gadgets in the 1960s that people thought would be impossible to achieve in a few generations. And yet today we use hand-held satellite communications devices (smart phones), hospitals rely on monitoring devices that were deliberately modeled on Star Trek concepts, and every holiday your family may enjoy live-stream video calls on big TVs and computer monitors – just like in Star Trek.
Spielberg’s science fiction and fantasy movies have foreshadowed a few real things, too. People have wondered how all these relic hunting shows and movies can fit on the same planet. Over the last 25 years, thanks to analysis of satellite images, archaeologists have catalogued thousands of unexplored ruins and potential ruins across the globe. We’ve even found a “lost continent” underneath New Zealand. And E.T.’s amazing ability to phone home with just a few children’s toys might be explainable by quantum mechanics. We’re already developing communications systems that rely on quantum entanglement for faster-than-light communications.
So, Spielberg makes fun movies. He bends the rules when it comes to science fiction just like everyone else. But his movies are not as far off base as they might have seemed when first released. Is that because the scientific extrapolation was that good, that his teams made lucky guesses, or that real life imitated art?
It’s probably a little of each.
Here are my picks for Steven Spielberg’s 10 best science fiction and fantasy movies. You don’t have to agree with my choices, but I hope you enjoy browsing the list.
=> Note: These are movies Steven Spielberg directed. So Back to the Future isn’t in the list, but not because it’s not a great movie.
1 – The Lost World: Jurassic Park
When I first heard Steven Spielberg was making a “Lost World” movie, I thought he was re-making the other Lost World movie (which has been re-made a few times). It was a clever re-use of a popular title and completely appropriate.
Michael Crichton’s original title for the book was The Lost World but it has been reissued with less confusing titles. Universal Studios reportedly felt that using the book’s title would confuse people, so they insisted on expanding the name. Naturally when the movie went into production media stories began referring to it as “The Lost World” anyway.
I did not enjoy this movie as much as the first for several reasons, but I still liked it. It seems – when comparing fan ratings of the 2 movies on various sites – that many people agreed with my sentiments.
It’s a good movie. I’ve watched it several times. And I think Jeff Goldbloom did an outstanding job as Ian Malcolm. But I was hoping they’d get the band back together. Fans of the T-Rex from the original movie were not disappointed by this story. In fact, all the dinosaurs were cool.
2 – A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Haley Joel Osment was an old hand at acting by the time he starred in this movie. He wasn’t discovered by either M. Night Shyamalan (in The Sixth Sense) or by Steven Spielberg. But both directors gave him big box office opportunities that helped cement his career. Unlike many child stars, Osment continues to act. He has appeared in movies, TV shows, and video games.
As a long-time computer programmer, I’m not a fan of artificial intelligence movies. I did not watch this one so I won’t review it. But it deserves to be in this list because people loved it and it was nominated for and won many awards.
3 – Ready Player One
Did I say I’m not a fan of artificial intelligence movies? Well, that’s awkward.
I love this movie. I know many fans who read the book (I did not) were disappointed in how much stuff was excluded or changed. You know, that happens with film adaptations of novels. I wanted to see Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. That didn’t happen but it’s still my favorite among Peter Jackson’s film adaptations.
I didn’t really know what to expect with Ready Player One when I first heard about it, but since it was about virtual or augmented reality (kind of both), I thought it would be worth seeing. Wow! What a movie.
Not only is there a lot of cool action in it, but it tells a real story. There’s the usual moralizing against evil corporations and pop social trends that don’t anticipate consequences – but the story is also told very well.
And then how can you not love all the inside references to Spielberg’s movies?
4 – Minority Report
This is an ansible / mcguffin movie. An ansible is a fictional piece of technology that provides faster-than-light communication. I include visions from the future in that category. A mcguffin is some fictional thing or event that is necessary to advance the plot of a story.
This movie is – in my opinion – better than the original book that inspired it. I don’t feel Philip K. Dick handled the paradoxes well enough. The movie kind of side-steps them.
This is a Tom Cruise movie so there is plenty of action. But it’s a Spielberg movie so you have to expect some of the details to be cleverly implied.
And, oh, by the way – there is A.I. technology in this movie too. But I liked the movie anyway.
The premise of the story is simple: police technology has advanced to the point where – through the use of mutants – the PreCrime bureau can arrest people before they commit murder. They are frozen in cryo-stasis to prevent them from killing people. It’s considered a humane sentence.
Both the novel and the movie question whether any criminal justice system can be made perfect. Obviously not, but the movie poignantly asks how the police can do their jobs while being held accountable for their behavior.
5 – Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Fans may be inclined to say of this movie, “Well, at least it’s not The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull.” Personally, I’ve enjoyed all the Indiana Jones movies. Wasn’t that big a fan of the TV series, but that doesn’t enter into this list.
This movie is a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark. I’ve never understood the reasoning for the need to make a prequel – especially as Harrison Ford was growing older. But it’s a fun movie movie nonetheless.
Whereas Indy took us to Tibet, Egypt, and an island in the Mediterranean Sea in the first movie, in this one he takes us to China and then India. Kate Capshaw, who plays Indy’s love interest in this film, married Steven Spielberg in real life.
Instead of taking on Nazis, Indiana Jones runs into a revival of India’s old Thuggee brotherhood. They were defeated and exterminated during the British occupation of the 1800s. The Thuggees were more like a criminal society than a religious cult. The original Thuggees did worship Kali but many converted to Islam. The movie didn’t invite the cult-like culture – Thuggees simply became an archetype for evil villains in India, and their connections to Kali worship made it easy to portray them as evil fanatics.
One reviewer described this film as an advertisement for a theme park ride, but even though a theme park ride based on the underground chase did follow the movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a fun, enjoyable movie. It deserves better than to be insulted by bored film critics.
6 – Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Not my favorite Steven Spielberg movie by any means. By the time I finally saw it everyone else was already over it. That said, Richard Dreyfuss did an amazing job in this movie. It’s hard to think of a Richard Dreyfuss movie where he doesn’t do an amazing job. Okay, I can’t.
Steven Spielberg deserves kudos for taking a sensationalistic topic (UFOs are secretly monitoring mankind and abducting people) and turning it into a thoughtful “what if” presentation. The movie asks one question over and over again: if incontrovertible proof of aliens visiting Earth does come to light, how will we react?
To drive the story forward, Spielberg’s aliens influence (randomly chosen?) people around the world to seek them out. That compulsion mirrors society’s endless fascination with UFO sightings and abduction stories. This movie is more hard-core in the science fiction elements than the other movies on this list, because science says that not only can intelligent species exist elsewhere in the universe, they should be out there. We’re just not sure (as a species) that we’ve found real evidence of their existence.
We know (now) that other intelligent species have evolved on Earth, including apes (chimpanzees use tools), social insects, cetaceans (whales and dolphins), and more. In fact, the animal world is filled with examples of creatures supposedly less intelligent than us who solve complex problems, care for their own kind, engage in territorial disputes, and more.
So the idea that intelligent beings could exist elsewhere in the universe is not only plausible, it’s supported by a lot of indirect evidence. That is, we know that self-aware intelligence exists in many species on Earth. This knowledge was not confirmed when Spielberg made this movie, so it was much more speculative for its time than it would be today.
What may be best about the film is that it drew inspiration from many mysterious disappearances (some of which have since been solved) that fed public speculation about UFOs and alien visitations. Spielberg wove real mysteries into the story line.
7 – E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
This was a cute movie when it came out. It’s still a cute movie. But it was a much better film in its day than now, mostly because movie studies have inundated cinema with alien visitations of all kinds.
When E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial was released, most movie audiences were less jaded to the novelty of a first contact experience. Now we’ve had multiple movies and TV shows that have explored first contact endlessly. It’s usually just a footnote in modern cinematic experiences.
With E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Spielberg takes the time to ask a lot of questions for the audience. How would an average family deal with a space alien on first encounter? How do you reconcile your biases and pre-existing beliefs with a substantial shattering of your reality?
Perhaps this movie works because the main stars are children. Children are still learning to interpret reality for themselves. They’re absorbing knowledge and integrating it into their small (but growing) pools of experience much faster than fully mature adults do.
Spielberg was right to use a child’s point of view to advance the story because the audience needs to learn about the consequences of interaction with alien species in the time allotted for the movie. If he had told the story from an adult’s perspective, there would have been endless committee hearings, court cases, police shootings, and more. And all that stuff had been done before.
The bottom line here is that E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is one of the most intellectual and thought-provoking first contact movies ever made. It gave everyone time to think, what would I do in this situation? and left the distractions of government agents and police chases until the end.
8 – Jurassic Park
Who doesn’t love dinosaurs?
Well, we love them when they’re not trying to eat us. As silly as the premise of this movie is (some billionaire is stupid enough to invest his fortune in bringing dinosaurs back as theme park exhibits), it does present the audience with real scientific questions.
What are the consequences of reviving long-dead species?
Animal conservationists are working hard to save thousands of species across the planet. The Earth’s ecosystem depends on every species that inhabits it. Adding or removing a species changes the ecosystem, and it could take millions of years for a system to return to something like an ecological equilibrium after a mass extinction event.
On the other hand, species die out all the time. Nature finds a way to keep things moving forward. So should we bring back long-dead species that, as Ian Malcolm says, “have been selected for extinction?”
The dinosaurs also serve as useful metaphors for the thousands of animals living in cages across the world. Humankind doesn’t need to cage “wild” animals, and it’s not morally justifiable to do this for entertainment or profit. We’re enslaving creatures that are intelligent and empathetic. Jurassic Park questions the moral legitimacy of animal encagement for profit. It also raises alarms about ecological change.
9 – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
This was definitely a better movie than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. There are 2 reasons why I liked this movie so much.
First, it brought the band back together: Marcus Brody (played by Denholm Elliott) and Sallah (played by John Rhys-Davies) returned. Audiences loved these characters in the first movie, and now they were given larger roles.
Second, Sean Connery played Indiana’s father. Connery was a great actor and he took on many different roles. He was great in just about everything I saw him in, from James Bond to The Presidio to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Heck, you’d probably even love to see him sing in Darby O’Gill and the Little People.
Honorable mention goes to River Phoenix for playing the younger Henry Jones, Jr. He mirrored Harrison Ford’s portrayal of the older Indiana so well you’d think they really were the same actor at different ages.
The story is interesting but not as compelling as the search for the Ark of the Covenant. I think the real difference is that the chalice they seek in this movie is a symbol of personal redemption, whereas the ark is a symbol of the overwhelming power of God. The chalice represents a power that could save the world, and the ark represents a power that could destroy it.
There is a little more excitement and imminence in stories about potential world-destroying weapons.
10 – Raiders of the Lost Ark
Although the relic hunting genre dates back to H. Rider Haggard’s Allan Quarterman novels from the 1800s, Raiders of the Lost Ark turned the whole business upside down. Earlier movies about archaeologists and artifacts inevitably dwelt on vampires or character-based dramas.
Spielberg and Lucas brought together the best elements of science fiction and fantasy to create Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s got a retro feel because it’s supposedly set right before World War II. Hence, Indy takes on Nazis, flies around the world in 1940s aircraft, and wears cool 1940s clothes.
But the science is part of the story because Indy utilizes his skills as an archaeologist to move the plot forward. Real-life archaeologists often point to this movie as their inspirations for moving into that career. Sure, the movie gets some of the details wrong (and The Last Crusade even pokes fun at some of the criticisms directed at Indiana’s style of archaeology), but the point is that he is a scientist at heart who wants to do the right thing.
He believes in discovery and protecting mankind’s heritage against misuse and abuse. He’s also open-minded enough to accept that angels are real, that God is real, without sacrificing his belief in science. That’s a point you never see anyone make about this movie. And yet, surveys across the years have found that about 50% of scientists do believe in God or a higher power. There is no real conflict between science and faith – just between people who don’t fully accept what it means to “keep an open mind.”
Raiders of the Lost Ark also introduced innovations in film-making and special effects. Some of the graphics look “off” by modern film-making standards, but at the time this movie was made they were impressive. The stunt-work is exceptional, too. And this movie won a TON of awards, including 4 Oscars for Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Effects, Visual Effects. It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Music, Original Score.
Raiders of the Lost Ark set the new pace for science fiction and fantasy movies of all stripes, not just the relic hunting sub-genre. It proved once and for all that science fiction and fantasy movies could and should be made with big budgets, the best directors and crews, and top-notch stories. SF & F fans were finally vindicated in believing that Hollywood could do better, because with this movie it did.
Conclusion
Spielberg’s career is too long, too rich, and too full of achievements to properly chronicle in a single blog post. Even his science fiction and fantasy movies make it hard to write a short tribute or summary.
Although Spielberg is not without his controversies, he’ll go down in history as one of the most ground-breaking and influential directors in American film. And the fact that many of his science fiction and fantasy movies make strong contributions to that legacy is way cool.
Here are a few pages where you can learn more about Steven Spielberg’s career.
Steven Spielberg Rotten Tomatoes page
Steven Spielberg page on Amblin Partners site
Steven Spielberg does not have a personal Website or social media account. All the sites and accounts I found in his name appeared to be fake. The only official site connected with his film career is the Amblin Partners site. He has at least one semi-official mention on an academic Website, where he is credited with founding the Insititute for History and Visual Education in 1994.