I was flipping through channels the other night and stumbled on Schindler's List. It was the scene where Schindler and Stern are actually typing the list. I sat there and watched it for a good few minutest before flipping again--only because I have it on DVD and I'm one of those weird people who'd really rather watch a movie from the beginning. At any rate, the topic of today's blog was decided in those five minutes.
As mentioned before, Spielberg is one of my two favorite directors. He has, in fact, directed my two favorite movies of all time, and directed quite a few others that would make it into my top 50. He is also the guy whose movies ultimately made me want to make movies.
Now, I know a lot of guys say that and certainly a lot of guys want to be Spielberg. I won't cop to that, per say. In my case, Spielberg's making of Raiders of the Lost Ark and talking about how it was inspired by old time movie serials led to eventually watching old time movie serials which led me to making movie serials. But yes, there's a lot of guys who simply want to be Steven Spielberg. His movies have inspired as many imitators as Hitchcock's.
Let's take Raiders as an example. To this day, movies are imitating the adventures of Indiana Jones. Anyone seen The Mummy movies with Brendan Fraser? How about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow? I was really interested in seeing that one when it was out a few years ago. The director, Kerry Conan, even said he was putting chapter breaks in the film and that it was pure, old fashioned serial adventure. Never mind the fact that the actors did the whole thing in front of green screens and the entire world was CGI. But I wanted to see it and gave it a shot. When it was done, I turned to my buddy and said, "it was okay, but it didn't have the wow factor of Raiders."
Come to it, there's only been one imitator of Raiders that ever really worked--Romancing The Stone. And that one is less an imitator and more of a romantic comedy adventure film than any of the others. Well, okay...the first Mummy movie worked to a decent extent, too. Never bothered with the sequels, though I may.
Jaws has been imitated to death as well. Again, even as late as this decade, there's shark attack movies. Most of them are done for TV now since people stopped being suckered into going to the movies for them. But they all make the same fatal mistakes: show the (fake looking) shark to death and just have a high body count. Spielberg's movie did neither which is why it remains a masterpiece.
But like I said earlier, Hitchock is still imitated and he's been dead for nearly 30 years. Disturbia is nothing more than a reworking of Rear Window. And while it was decent enough, Shia LaBeouf is no Jimmy Stewart. This, of course, proves what the average movie buff has known for years: Hollywood is totally out of ideas. But I digress. Back to Spielberg.
There are, of course, two sides to the Spielberg coin: Spielberg the spinner of fantasy and Spielberg the guy who likes to win Academy Awards. The earlier is the type of Spielberg I prefer. It's not that the latter doesn't make good movies--you'd be hard pressed to argue that Munich isn't a good movie--it's that the earlier has a style of movie that is infinitely rewatchable. Of his more serious works, the only one I really care to rewatch is Schindler's List, and that mostly because of the wonderful interaction between Liam Neeson and Ben Kingsley. Saving Private Ryan was extremely well done (and depressing), but I'm not exactly jumping up and down to put it in the DVD player. Ditto Munich.
The problem seems to be that older Spielberg has seem to forgotten that, as Rod Serling once pointed out, you can make as potent a point in fantasy as you can in serious drama and make it in a more entertaining manner. E.T. is perhaps the perfect example. E.T. is practically the template for later Spielberg films. It's also as powerful and well done as those later films, it's just that it's the story of a boy and his alien instead of some "realistic" drama. In fact, it's probably as powerful as film as Private Ryan--I defy anyone to not cry when E.T. dies (I still do and I've seen the film multiple times). But it works better than the later films because it creates a genuine sense of magic and wonder. It's unfortunate he felt the need to monkey with the film in 2002. The removal of the guns does nothing for the story. Thankfully the first version of the DVD had both versions on it.
1993 was a major turning point in the films of Steven Spielberg. That was the year he gave us both Jurassic Park and Schindler's List. JP is perhaps the last really big Spielberg thrill ride. It is on a par with Raiders and Jaws. Next to the 1933 King Kong, it is the best dinosaur movie ever. Like Jaws, it has an excellent cast and makes a point--the debate over cloning and evolution--amidst all it's suspense. And every frame of the movie works. The special effects are amazing. It really looks like the cast is right there with real dinosaurs. It does everything that Spielberg's best does and it does it better than even most of them. I ended up seeing JP in the theaters four times. Only a couple of 3-D movies share that.
Of course, after Schindler, Spielberg announced an intention to stick with more serious fare for the rest of his carreer. Thankfully, he has slowly started to go back to what made him great in the first place in the past couple of years. War of the Worlds proved he still had it even if it wasn't as thrilling as his earlier work. And while Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wasn't as good as the original trilogy, it didn't completely disappoint me either. But I'd still like to see one more Jurassic Park type thrill ride out of him. I have no doubt that he can still do it.
One thing worth mentioning is that Hitch made essentially the same type of movie for nearly 50 years. And he never really complained about it and--except for a couple of late carreer missteps--never really lost his touch, either. Spielberg for a time was our generation's Hitchcock, a master of suspense and wonder. It would be nice to see him completely go back to being that again.
No comments:
Post a Comment