I watched Jaws the other night for the first time in many years and I was all like "wow this is brilliant" and it lead me to watch the making of Jaws on youtube. Which lead me to watch the making of Close Encounters.
He got lucky with Jaws because the shark didn't work. So he had to adapt. Which I give him credit for, he did adapt brilliantly. But if things had gone according to his vision, we would've had a very different movie and probably a far less effective movie. And his career probably would've been far less impressive, since the massive success of Jaws is what launched him.
Then Close Encounters. You would not believe the crap he wanted to do with the aliens in that movie. I mean absolutely ridiculous things. This man, this personification of film director, actually shot a take of a monkey wearing shiny silver spandex clothes wearing an alien mask, on roller skaters, roller skating down the ramp of the ufo. He wanted a monkey because he didn't want the aliens to move like humans, and he put it on roller skates because he wanted the appearance of it hovering down from the ufo ramp. So according to him, the first thing the monkey does is rip off it's mask, reach for it's handler, and roller skates backwards down the ufo ramp. I mean wtf Spielberg? Also...poor monkey
He also tried some stuff with a bunch of kids dressed as aliens sped up in the film, and hired mimes to slow down their motion and act like humans in slow motion, so the aliens would move super fast compared to the humans. THIS guy is synonymous with brilliant film directors?!
It made me realize that luck, combined with the fortuitous decision to partner with John Williams, is what really made Spielberg. Spielberg hasn't gotten worse as he's gotten older. He's just had things go his way more often, and things going his way means that we get sub par films. Even Shia Labeouf has commented on how working with Spielberg was not at all what he had envisioned.
I say all this so that all of you can realize the truth. Spielberg is a lucky hack. You want real directorial talent? Go watch a James Cameron flick. Or better yet, go watch the making of Aliens, for example. Where Cameron had to work in England with a hostile crew that didn't respect him and didn't know who he was, had not seen Terminator, didn't care to see Terminator, didn't listen to Cameron, a few high up folks had to be fired, and the man STILL ended up surpassing Ridley Scott's classic original Alien and making one of the best action films of all time.
Cameron's > Spielberg
