Ranking Steven Spielberg, Part 4: The '00s

This is now the fourth decade Steven Spielberg's unique cinematic visions are a matter of concern; well established as mogul, hitmaker and serious storyteller, the 2000s finds him ducking and weaving through those gates with serious flair. I sometimes think this is the most underrated era of his work, vaguely lost in the shuffle of the blockbuster era and the pivot to more mature subject matter. His ability to balance art, commerce and messages in the '00s led to at least one of my personal top five films in his oeuvre, and one that increasingly feels like it may be a hidden masterpiece of his. And there's also...another Indiana Jones film.

7. Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5

Watching the most divisive Indiana Jones film weeks before a belated fifth film that already has two strikes against it (more Nazis, no Spielberg) is very interesting. It’s worth remembering that a) critics didn’t universally trash this upon release, b) it was probably the last Steven Spielberg film to make Steven Spielberg money, and c) holy hell, this came out the same year the Marvel Cinematic Universe became a concept.

On this rewatch, I remain vindicated in my belief that the first 20 minutes hold up as well as any of these films, even with the refrigerator (which is no less implausible than anything in the series) and especially the brilliant visual of Indiana Jones in “Doom Town”: an archetype out of time, amidst a prefab vision of America that has no space for him. Whatever was delivered to Disney+ was, to my eyes, a marked improvement over what I remember: Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography did not offend (it only ever did here), and the visual effects looked better than any Avengers movie (and more appreciably on some kind of set than a Star Wars prequel). The action blocking is still killer, only faltering a few times with Shia LaBeouf’s late-film set pieces (which are conceptually fine, even the vines).

In three weeks we’re going to have a final act of this series that already had two worthwhile final acts. All I can hope for as a fan is that the new one is at least as entertaining as this one. [Mmmm...sort of. -MD]

6. Munich (2005) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

After a protracted period of putting his Shroud of Maturity over blockbuster territory he helped colonize (A.I., Minority Report, War of the Worlds), Steven’s next trick was to take two of his sternest subjects—the Jewish identity and wartime horror experienced in Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan—and put them on hard mode with a fact-inspired story of Mossad retribution against Palestinians believed to be connected to the murders of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

A subject this sore was met with swift controversy, most interestingly from Zionist groups unsettled by a take that did not exactly paint the Israeli agents as heroes. (Indeed, the lack of precision in the film’s depiction of violent acts, as opposed to rifle-waving dumbass action, is one of the film’s strongest suits.)

Spielberg, who no doubt let down a much more vocal left with a statement last year on the October 7 attacks that did not state much about the IDF countermeasures that have killed so many Gazans that the International Court of Justice is cautioning Israel against tipping over into genocide territory, mostly pulls off a thankless moral balancing act, depicting a cycle of violence in ugly detail (including, perhaps, his single most discomforting act of onscreen gore) without disintegrating into digestible platitudes. (Credit cowriter Tony Kushner, in his first of four collaborations with the director, for putting in that work on a script level.)

Where Munich stumbles, ultimately, is on dumb mistakes of form; chiefly, a ponderous running time and an inability (if not outright failure) to break through the narrative form of such a complex morality play. His unwillingness to offer light in the darkness on such a thorny subject may be indicative of maturity—but it’s a little dispiriting to see him not try too hard when you know he’d be at least interesting about it.

5. The Terminal (2004) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

In some ways, The Terminal is one of the oddest films in Steven Spielberg’s filmography—certainly in the latter half of his career. After the zingy caper of Catch Me If You Can, the director sought to make “another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world“; he tried to do so in one of the bleakest settings in the world at that time, a post-9/11 airport.

Rather than commenting on TSA or taking your shoes off, the tale follows an Eastern European Everyman (Tom Hanks in a corny accent and satisfied physique) stuck at JFK because his homeland was turned upside down by a coup. For the better part of a year, he bumbles around the airport wooing a maladjusted flight attendant (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and staying one step ahead of the airport boss (a snappy Stanley Tucci) while patiently waiting his turn to get into America for an admittedly sweet reason.

If anyone but Spielberg tried their hand at this, it would be an unmitigated disaster. But thanks to some dazzling work by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski in a stunning, constructed replica of a working terminal; the charms of a supporting cast that included some on-the-way-up players (Diego Luna! Zoe Saldana!); and some subtler or more effective commentary on post-9/11 America than admittedly War of the Worlds did…by God, it sort of works.

And there would really never be a Spielberg film like this again: a little Something to Say as most of his post-Schindler movies attempted, but told through a fascinating (if uneven) mix of lower-than-usual stakes and different kinds of technical thrills not driven by Industrial Light & Magic. Movies like this couldn’t even make it into a theater anymore, and their sets wouldn’t be built like this, if at all.

4. War of the Worlds (2005) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

By far Spielberg’s best pure popcorn film of the ‘00s, weaving H.G. Wells’ novel and the charms of the Close Encounters/E.T. aesthetic through the JAWS/Jurassic Park meat grinder. Harnessing the harrowing, can’t look away visions of Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan into blow-‘em-up blockbuster territory is a daring trick, as is Tom Cruise’s surprising nuance as a flawed Everyman just barely holding it together for his semi-estranged kids. (War of the Worlds was released the same summer Cruise went berserk, challenging the media on Scientology and jumping on Oprah’s couch about how much he loved Katie Holmes. I distinctly remembering grimacing at how the offscreen antics obscured such a good performance.) Due credit to John Williams as well, who provides almost exactly the reverse of a score you’d expect for the feature.

But War of the Worlds is not a perfect movie. Beyond the still-perplexing and sudden ending, there’s the matter of some heavy-handed 9/11 reminder imagery that is trying to say on purpose things that Minority Report said better by pure chance. (The audience I first saw this with processed Cruise’s horror at being covered in human dust with laughter, which added a layer of personal discomfort.) And some of the images and metaphors that are part of the package (Cruise’s teenage son feeling an intergalactic xenophobic rage at the galactic attackers, the upsetting mob sequence around the family’s makeshift van) don’t land as clearly as I know Steven is capable of. He’s no stranger to conjoining those twin flames of Spectacle and Something to Say, so watching him drop the latter torch so hard while perfectly blazing the former is kind of a surprise, if not an entirely detrimental one.

3. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

And now, for the Spielberg film I was perhaps most wrong about. The original behind-the-scenes A.I. conversation—Steven’s bold attempt to pick up a torch of Stanley Kubrick’s—was not lost on me as a 13-year-old film nerd. Seeing it in theaters with my family(!), I remember finding it overlong and not as moving as his more traditional popcorn films.

More than two decades later, this was the rewatch I dreaded most. A film that foregrounds anxiety over the future (from A.I. itself to a collapsing environment) and the pain of seeking love from family did not feel like something I wanted to revisit at this juncture. For the first hour, I could not ease up as Steven (working from his own script for only the second time ever) put me through funhouse mirror versions of suburban techno-wizardry that remains an early career staple.

As the film opened up to welcome more Spielbergian visual wonder and a terrific supporting performance by Jude Law, I felt easier and more appreciative of Steven not only going for some Kubrick shit but even his own version of Blade Runner. While I felt the third-act reintroduction of the human element and Professor Hobby’s conclusions to be a significant stumbling block (causing me to curse the very real, very prevalent idea of embracing such technology before understanding its reaching implications), the finale’s gorgeous visuals and score reeled me back in, one of Steven’s most deeply felt endings.

Leave it to him to use the wonders of the artificial to provoke serious conversations about where and how we can find the value in what is real. His optimism in the face of such uncertainty, painfully depicted on screen, is truly one of his gifts—and to paraphrase another classic android yarn, maybe a machine understanding the value of life can help us to do the same.

2. Catch Me If You Can (2002) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

Maybe the truest anomaly, or at the very least, the other Spielberg film without a clear analogue or "twin" in his filmography. Has many of Steven’s hallmarks—light Americana, a stunning return of the sort of father-son dynamics that had been absent since Hook (or maybe Jurassic Park), great performances by soon-to-be-stars, Tom Hanks doing Tom Hanks shit—but proceeds with a fascinatingly light touch, even with the presence of major actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Christopher Walken, who deserved the Oscar nomination. Ding it for the needlessly piled-on endings or the fact that the "true" story behind it is likely horseshit, but this is Steven through and through, steady, confident and entertaining in a way he wouldn’t be for quite some time.

1. Minority Report (2002) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The nagging thought in your head—just like a vision from one of the precogs—might have been that it was impossible. Steven Spielberg’s shift to an auteur with Something to Say as tangible as his gifts for spectacle might have rendered a multi-quadrant Hollywood thrill ride like JAWS, Raiders of The Lost Ark or Jurassic Park nigh impossible to come from his craft again. But by God, you don’t count this man out.

Based on a Philip K. Dick short story, Steven winds the tension as tight as the reel on the Orca and set pieces as eye-popping (at least literally in one case) as Dr. Jones’ rolling boulder. Alongside stellar performances by Tom Cruise (one of his best), Colin Farrell, Max Von Sydow and a haunting turn from Samantha Morton, your ass never leaves the edge of the seat.

Then, when the dust settles and you come up for air when the credits roll, you realize ol’ Steve’s done it again. He’s woven, completely by accident, one of the best post-9/11 reactions in Hollywood, where America stops threats at any cost—even before they actually begin—with little regard for the other ills gripping the home front: unfettered designer capitalism, horrifying surveillance technology, and urban squalor so pervasive that it causes the landscape to literally bleach.

Heading into his fourth decade as a filmmaker, Steven Spielberg defied the odds and makes a blockbuster with the style and substance that personified the best of his first three decades. Do you think it was premeditated?