Ranking Steven Spielberg, Part 5: The '10s and '20s

Maybe after Steven Spielberg's last film of the '00s (an Indiana Jones sequel that felt like a retirement season from a legendary basketball career), he felt he had nothing to prove. His 2010s start off strong enough, but quickly emerge as his least cohesive decade as a filmmaker, complete with a heartbreakingly bad movie that at the time had me (gasp!) reconsidering my cinematic idol. Hollywood was changing immensely even then, and certainly did after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic: the films most guaranteed to find an audience in the cinema are redolent and derivative of Steven's early works—much more sizzle than steak, as they might say. These trends negatively colored the release and reception of his first two films of the 2020s, a flashy but very tactile remake of a beloved musical and a bold attempt to paint a picture of the people and events that made him the filmmaker and person he is today. Their commercial failures are deeply ironic, as they handily re-establish (or at the very least revive) the ongoing discussion of Spielberg as the pre-eminent, American cinematic wunderkind with a gift for spectacle that looks so effortless that it's easy to ignore what complexity whirs beneath the surface.

Spielberg's next film reportedly starts shooting in a few months—a sci-fi-tinged "new original event film" possibly titled The Dish, conceived by the director and written by Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds scribe David Koepp and starring Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor (and maybe Colman Domingo and Wyatt Russell). It will be released in the early summer of 2026, the year Spielberg turns 80. Even then, he will no doubt continue to surprise and delight us.

Non-ranked prelude: Spielberg (2017) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

After rewatching the remaining chronology of Steven’s career up to The BFG, I rewatched the lengthy, engaging documentary that chronicled the same period, which I had the pleasure of seeing upon release at the New York Film Festival. Steven is in pure 2010s cozy mode here, sitting for interviews in blazers, cardigans and scarves and telling shopworn revelations about his life and career. At the time, the basic revelation of why the Spielbergs divorced (expertly dramatized a few years later in The Fabelmans) was largely cleared up here; on this viewing, the realization that I was watching home movies of that camping trip made me sit upright. 

Family testimony (from all of Steven’s sisters and parents—mother Leah died shortly before the doc aired) is among the best parts of this film, as is brief but tantalizing home movie footage from an older Spielberg, both in the '70s (where he pals around with the likes of George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Brian DePalma, all of whom sit for interviews) and briefly in the '90s, when he’s a contented husband and father to seven. The unconverted may cry “hagiography,” and they might have a point, but a cadre of critics (Maslin, Edelstein, Hoberman) do offer sporadic, nuanced commentary on the common criticisms of Steven’s work, and seeing them tease these notions out (particularly as they apply to his still-underrated '00s films) is a thoughtful treat.

It might be a sermon for the converted, but if you merely like Spielberg’s filmography, you may end up loving Spielberg by the end.

9. Ready Player One (2018) - ⭐️⭐️

In 2018, Marvel was at peak hegemony, Hollywood was convinced it could subsist solely on increasingly stale reminders of the golden age of blockbusters, and Steven Spielberg had not made a rousing, high-concept crowd-pleaser in about a decade. (He’d tried, and some were better than others—but the whimsy of a fourth Indiana Jones film and two CGI-reliant kid’s romps in Tintin and The BFG weren’t exactly batting at E.T. stats. Lincoln was a critical and commercial success, but there were many more helpings of vegetables to come in the ensuing years.)

Enter Ready Player One, Ernest Cline’s reference-packed adventure novel that fooled untold scores of critics and fans into thinking it was good. Like similarly overrated nostalgia capsules (looking at you, Stranger Things), the book owed a lot to Spielberg’s fantasy worlds, so his participation as director of a film adaptation was at least interesting…until he made the game time decision to largely avoid any references to his own filmography. (An early race sequence featuring the DeLorean from Back to the Future, which he produced, and the Jurassic Park T-rex are key exceptions.) 

The result is shockingly mercenary: devoid of Spielberg’s curiosity in futuristic worlds, the ways they decay, and the coping mechanisms people invent—let alone any grander hypotheses as to what his stunning run of 20th century success unintentionally begat at the hands of executive dimwits. The virtual OASIS is largely as colorless as most MCU battlegrounds (save the dazzling extended homage to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining), the pans across overloaded frames give no opportunity to luxuriate in the sub-Space Jam 2 crowding of recognizable IP, and the human performances fall shockingly flat (from Ben Mendelsohn’s undercooked villain to a baffling Mark Rylance—in his third Spielberg film—as a dime store Steve Jobs). 

It feels like the toy maker got bored halfway through and hardly bothered to put anything back in the box. If Steven didn’t get off the mat in a big way in the early 2020s, this would’ve been an even bitterer pill to swallow.

8. The BFG (2016) - ⭐️⭐️ 1/2

Either Spielberg’s worst passable movie or his best failure, this sporadically whimsical, occasionally pretty, often baffling adaptation of a Roald Dahl story was marketed as a spiritual follow-up to E.T. (by virtue of that film’s writer, the late, underrated Melissa Mathison, offering her final script here). But of course it’s not: a merely passable young lead and a cadre of motion-capture characters (most notably another idiosyncratic Mark Rylance role and a semi-memorable Jemaine Clement as the antagonist) would never have as much panache. And that’s before you get to the barely comprehensible second half, which feels, more so than the rest of the movie, both overlong and rushed at the same time. (Editor's note: this was the last new-to-me Spielberg film, until he makes another.)

7. Bridge of Spies (2015) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️

For some reason, the simply executed successes of Lincoln preceded the most unusual lull in Spielberg’s career. He immediately went back to the well of Principled Men in Period Pieces, executed with less charisma; while Tom Hanks is well-suited and Mark Rylance (the second to net an acting Oscar for one of Steven’s films) is idiosyncratically entertaining, it’s all quite flat: no detectable variations in the truth and values this great director is known to center. A few rising stars appear, chiefly Billy Magnussen and the already-TV tested Jesse Plemons, but this often feels like Steven’s most anonymous picture.

6. War Horse (2011) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️

At once Spielberg at his most powerful (brilliant use of nonhuman life triumphing over man-made ideas and mechanics; gorgeous audiovisual expansion of semi-arcane novel/play source material; whip-smart cast foresights, not only a juuuust post-Thor Tom Hiddleston and a juuuuust pre-Star Trek Benedict Cumberbatch but a pre-Koba and Kong Tony Kebbell as a Geordie solder) and also a level of goopy schmaltz unseen from him in nearly two decades. That might not work for some filmgoers regardless, but it definitely works less when you know he’s capable of subverting it easily and yet does not.

5. The Post (2017) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️

With not many more Spielberg movies to rewatch, I found myself surprised to elevate this a bit in the rankings. Yes, another historical Profiles in American Courage movie (Steven’s third of the decade)—but a crackerjack cast beyond the Big Performances of Streep and Hanks (a Mr. Show reunion! Jesse Plemons and Zach Woods as anal lawyers! Fun moments for Michael Stuhlbarg, Matthew Rhys, Michael Cyril Creighton and other terrific That Guys!) and more Spielbergian panache than I remembered. (The moving close-ups, sure, but the dizzying handheld work through houses and offices!) Sure, there’s more than a few hamfisted moments—a Vietnam montage with an anachronistic CCR needledrop, Meryl leaving the Supreme Court and wading into a sea of girlboss admirers, the punctuative ending with all the subtlety of a Marvel post-credits stinger—but I was largely riveted, more so than Bridge of Spies.

4. The Adventures of Tintin (2011) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

Steven kicked off another decade of filmmaking with a fun, whimsical adventure based on the famed (if probably a bit impenetrable to 21st century audiences) comic adventurer by Hergé. Working with producer Peter Jackson and his Weta team of effects artists, Steven opts for a fully digitally animated film that honors the original artistic style well enough, crafting a sort of Raiders for kids with two terrific late-period action sequences in tow. 

Though it’s one of the only times he’s coasted under the two hour mark, the film suffers from a deeply rushed final act, working toward a sequel that obviously never came. Still, this and even the Indiana Jones film that came before it prove you’d be wrong to count him out as a ringleader of popcorn thrills, even nearly two decades removed from Jurassic Park.

3. Lincoln (2012) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

An impressive move by Steven and his go-to technical team to avoid parlor tricks, in favor of a relatively straight but no less captivating and specific biographical slice of political maneuvers that modern times have rendered as wildly fantastical as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Maybe Spielberg’s most recent reminder of his seemingly underrated ability to cast blinding talent. Daniel Day Lewis, of course—the first to ever win an Oscar for a Spielberg performance—but a locked-in Tommy Lee Jones, too, and an intense Sally Field. And below the top line, men who will spend the next decade becoming absolutely essential performers blooming in larger roles: Adam Driver, Jeremy Strong, Colman Domingo, David Oyewolo, Walton Goggins and Lee Pace all make stunning turns. An underrated, restrained score from John Williams sweetens the deal only further.

2. West Side Story (2021) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

It’s wild, in retrospect, to consider the idea that Steven was risking a lot by finally checking that musical box on his directorial resume. (The mushy void of Ready Player One really did a number on at least my perception of his current work.) But even so: to tackle one of America’s greatest musicals takes some huge brass. The solution? Cast like your life depends on it (and find three emerging stars in the process—the brilliant Rachel Zegler, the charming Mike Faist and the enrapturing Ariana DeBose, who netted an Oscar for her work), have Janusz Kaminski take rocket fuel before every camera set-up (y'all know that shot, right?), and put your faith in a team of experts (Justin Peck’s bold footwork, production designer Adam Stockhausen and costumer Paul Tazewell’s color wheel fantasia, the mad gods David Newman and Gustavo Dudamel bringing Lenny back to life and honoring Sondheim in his last months) who will never let the audience forget the power of sound and vision. Steven’s seat at the table of American masters was long reserved, but to prove his vitality so deep into his career is miraculous.

1. The Fabelmans (2022) - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

And so, I end my Spielberg rewatch where it began, seeing Spielberg's autobiographically-inspired The Fabelmans for the first time since it was in theaters. And I like it even better than I did then. It's got immensely rewarding subtext for Spielberg believers within captivating drama and staging—a master filmmaker making the hardest assignment of his career (an exacting, honest self-assessment, unadorned of the sensations that characterized his earliest works). And, marvelously—as is the Spielberg way—he does it in a way that makes you feel deeply about the world and where you may fit in it. You don't need to adore his work to receive something from this one, although if you've made it this far, you probably understand what makes him so beloved in the first place.