The 10 worst Steven Spielberg movies

Widely recognized as the greatest filmmaker of all time, American director Steven Spielberg is known for a number of iconic 20th-century classics, from the 1982 cosmic coming-of-age film ET the Extra-Terrestrial to the thrilling animatronic marvel Jurassic Park in 1993 .That said, his 21st-century movies have never quite lived up to the filmmaker’s potential, with his recent flick The Fabelmans being his best in decades.

Spielberg, who took to the industry during the 1970s, was responsible for the rise of the Hollywood blockbuster after his 1975 effort Jaws saw huge queues to catch the $9 million shark thriller. Earning $476.5 million at the box office, the film became an instant sensation, and Spielberg became a household name, but despite being the founder of the modern blockbuster, his recent big-budget films could not fail to earn critical acclaim.

Without the storytelling and visual spectacle of his earlier films, Spielberg’s latest fell as flat as the most generic contemporary films. The director’s latest movies tend to lack genuine innovation, while he devotes an odd amount of his time to remakes and sequels, making five since the start of the new millennium, from 2005’s War of the Worlds to 2021’s West Side Story.

His very worst movies consist mainly of such sequels and remakes, with a few dull adaptations thrown in as well.

The 10 Worst Steven Spielberg Movies: 10. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

The original 1993 Jurassic Park, based on the novel by Michael Crichton, is a cinematic science fiction classic that takes the industry to new heights of visual grandeur. Its sequel, 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, is very different, with a lackluster script by David Koepp and a cast that includes Julianne Moore, Jeff Goldblum and Vince Vaughn who don’t seem to want to be there at all .

It was all downhill from here for the Jurassic Park franchise, with the third installment being a critical flop even if it had its fans, while the Jurassic World trilogy looked like a high pile of diplodocus manure.

9. War Horse (2011)

Based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo, 2011’s War Horse was created by Spielberg in light of the successful stage play by Nick Stafford released shortly before. War Horse is not a bad film, but it is an extremely dull film, telling the story of a young man and his horse who are both drawn into the front line conflict of the First World War. Written by Love Actually director Richard Curtis, Spielberg’s romantic war story is as limp as a metre-long hot dog.

Sappy and overly sentimental, War Horse is nobody’s favorite Spielberg movie and, furthermore, the least accurate representation of the horrors of the First World War.

8. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Quentin Tarantino may be a surprising fan of the latest in Steven Spielberg’s adventure series, but he’s in the sizable minority of those praising the confused cinematic mess. Explicitly referencing the existence of aliens, despite the series dancing around its fantastical elements in the past, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull jumped the shark and took the series to silly new heights, where the titular character was reduced to a wise-cracking quipper and not much more.

Harrison Ford needs a sparkling ensemble cast to help him through the film, and unfortunately for him, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen and Ray Winstone are just not up to the task.

7. Amistad (1997)

Often forgotten from Steven Spielberg’s filmography, and for good reason, Amistad is undoubtedly one of the director’s worst movies. The film tells the story of Mende prisoners who revolted aboard a Spanish-owned ship in 1839, and turns into a political drama where US courts must decide whether the Mende are slaves or legally free. The story is a good one, but David Franzoni’s screenplay is not up to the task.

Although it features a number of standout performances from Morgan Freeman, Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey and Anthony Hopkins, Amistad is a completely forgettable watch that doesn’t do justice to its incredible true story.

6. Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

There’s a reason you’ve never heard of the movie version of the classic sci-fi series Twilight Zone, with the quirky film adaptation helmed not only by Spielberg, but also by Joe Dante, John Landis and George Miller. Spielberg, who plays the segment Kick the Can, starring Scatman Crothers, Bill Quinn and Selma Diamond, couldn’t muster enough to elevate this limp anthology movie.

For classic Twilight Zone, return to the 1960s series and leave this uninspiring flick to cinematic obscurity, gathering dust in the corner of Spielberg’s filmography.

5. The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

Hergé created cartoon dynamite with the release of the first Tintin strip on January 10, 1929, but 82 years later, Spielberg failed to recreate the same creativity and joy with The Adventures of Tintin. Created with a strange mix of animation and live-action filmmaking, Tintin would have served better as a straight-up long-form cartoon, where the vibrant creativity and color of the original stories could be properly expressed.

Yet Spielberg’s film was instead an ugly animation that already dated a decade after its release. The 2011 film was a huge misfire because of the choice to combine several Tintin stories rather than stick to the great storytelling of just one book.

4. Always (1989)

A precursor to the director’s 21st-century penchant for remakes, Always is based on the classic 1943 romantic film A Guy Named Joe, directed by Victor Fleming and written by Dalton Trumbo. Always tells the same story as the original film, following the spirit of a recently deceased pilot who mentors a young man who takes his place, but changes the wartime setting to a commentary on the environment.

Always is a supernatural love story that exhibits the worst of Spielberg’s soggy sentimentality that perfectly fits the cliche rulebook, refusing to deviate from convention.

3. The BFG (2016)

It’s curious why Steven Spielberg even agreed to remake The BFG for Disney when the company was busy updating almost every classic movie they had. The original 1989 movie was an impressive adaptation of the relatively thin Roald Dahl novel, and Spielberg’s adaptation added nothing to the conversation, merely adding a large number of bells, whistles and pointless visual noise.

The film had a decent cast that included Mark Rylance, Bill Hader, Rebecca Hall and Ruby Barnhill, but the story was simply a dull rehash of the original.

2. Ready Player One (2018)

Thrilling in the joys of contemporary pop culture, Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One is a fun read for any youngster, but any studio should have realized that the bombastic story was unadaptable. Spielberg gives it a good crack, but it’s hard to make sense of a story that’s only written in the first place to drop as many classic movies, TV shows, comics, and iconic characters as possible.

Little works here, with cast members Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke and Ben Mendelsohn working with a staggeringly thin script and Spielberg firmly rooted in speed control with little interest in making anything remotely innovative.

1. 1941 (1979)

Steven Spielberg has managed to master the action movie, war epic and coming-of-age story, but one genre he has never been able to tackle is comedy. This became abundantly clear in 1979 with the release of the screwball comedy 1941, starring John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Ned Beatty, a story of a group of Californians preparing for a Japanese invasion in the days after Pearl Harbor.

After success with Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg thought he could do no wrong in films, but 1941 is almost unwatchable as it is a largely unfunny and incredibly uncomfortable film that does not stand the test of time. not. What’s worse, the comedy is two hours long, which far overstays its welcome.