Steven Spielberg is a genre unto himself. It’s to the point it’s easy to forget he’s one of the great masters of science fiction on film, having redefined the genre multiple times over his half-century long career as a director. It’s as though his movies are so distinctly him, whether that be the operatic crescendo at the end of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the childlike awe of “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” or the post-9/11 horror of “War of the Worlds,” that we think of them as Spielberg movies first and sci-fi second; I can’t recall a time I’ve ever heard someone say he’s a great director of science fiction in the way they might James Cameron or Alex Garland, whose work is more outwardly conceptual and heightened.
But think of it: “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” spawned the craze of Amblinesque features and tv shows, all trying (and usually failing) to recapture the magic of a bike flying over the moon, and “Jurassic Park” relaunched Hollywood B-movie creature features (many involving dinos or sharks). Interestingly, it’s his darker edged, more probing movies like “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” “Minority Report” and “War of the Worlds” that reshaped modern sci-fi for years, with an irradiated visual palette and sickly skin tones that became in vogue for ages. His sci-fi is one that varies from the sweetly sentimental to the apocalyptic and horrifying, a range he’s not always given his flowers for showcasing.
With his latest, the sci-fi whistleblower thriller “Disclosure Day,” releasing in theaters this week, it’s an excellent opportunity to revisit that side of Spielberg’s career, which has taken up nearly a third of his filmography.
10. “Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull” (2008)
We already know what about it doesn’t work: Harrison Ford’s flat line reading of “part time,” the Spirit Halloween fake snake as Indy sinks in quicksand, the abundance of distractingly digital trees in what should be a sweaty, turgid jungle. There are the aliens, and the way George Lucas half-bamboozled Spielberg into making the movie by convincing him they were “interdimensional beings.” Lucas wanted the fourth “Indiana Jones” to be to the 50s what the older films were to the 30s by embracing the genres of the era. That meant cold war paranoia, psychic experiments, nuclear bomb testing, Russians as the bad guys, invaders from outer space, and double (triple?) agents. It’s a lot, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that Ford and Spielberg’s hearts weren’t in it. The thing is, Lucas was right! Cate Blanchett as a semi-telepathic Russian agent is delightful, but that push-and-pull of creative jeopardy between Lucas and Spielberg resulted in a strange, sloppy movie with some high peaks. The opening act –– clearly the section Spielberg is most excited by –– is terrific, and haters be damned, Indy navigating a Potemkin village amidst a nuclear bomb test is a startling reflection of that period’sideological undercurrent.
9. “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” (1997)
It says a lot about Spielberg that when he was asked to make sequels to two of the biggest box office hits, he made the meanest movies of his career. “The Lost World” is the closest Spielberg has come to making a pure horror movie since “Jaws,” opening with a (now frequently shared online) match cut of a young girl screaming at hungry dinosaurs the instant before we cut to Ian Malcom yawning. It’s revealed later that she lived, but don’t let that fool you. If “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” hadn’t created a need for the “R” rating, “The Lost World” might have done just that. It’s a hard, nearly metal B-movie, complete with waterfalls of blood and hunters chasing a T-Rex as “big game”. There’s some silliness along the way, and the central story dynamics never go anywhere, searching to find a new place to take the “family” theme of the original. But the darker mood, strong visuals, and crackerjack set-pieces always make it a fun rewatch.
8. “Ready Player One” (2018)
Spielberg’s 2018 adaptation of Ernest Cline’s novel is still widely seen as the cursed embodiment of our current IP wasteland, one that patronizingly panders to a fan culture with diminishing returns. Yet beneath the endless references to 80s pop culture (which range from “Superman” to “Akira”), “Ready Player One” is a deeply sad film about a pensive creator who has become a ghost in his own machine, regretfully contemplating the world he created. Clearly an analog for Spielberg himself, reflecting what his legacy might be. Just look at the critical changes from novel to feature film: rather than winning each “Easter Egg” challenge through esoteric trivia, success hinges on treating Halliday, creator of the VR-heaven “The Oasis,” as an actual human being and his creation as art. Still far from his best, “Ready Player One” is a rich text, and few things are more quintessentially sci-fi than a creator growing restless and scared of his creation.
7. “Disclosure Day” (2026)
After fifty years of using science fiction to allegorize his histories, traumas and dreams, Spielberg’s thrilling new UFO actioner is just as personal and exposing as “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” With the rare original story from Spielberg himself, we follow a whistleblower (Josh O’Connor) and newscaster (Emily Blunt) on the run who …well I won’t spoil it, but like “Minority Report” it’s a surprisingly heady ride, with the chase movie set-pieces frequently pausing for debates on god, religion and moral obligation. It has just as much in common with his autobiographical “The Fabelmans” as it does “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” resulting in a film that can jerkily teeter-tauter between its different modes; one moment a car crashes through a living room wall, in another we listen to a tense dialectic on belief, only to transition to a kind of cinetherapy as the leads confront past pains, another example of proxies for Spielberg himself. What unites them all is Spielberg’s use of “Disclosure Day” as a surprisingly moving study of empathy and truth as a binding force, with his faultless craft as searching and wondrous as ever.
6. “War Of The Worlds” (2005)
Not even becoming one of Spielberg’s highest-grossing movies in the 2000s could save this sci-fi redux from being seen as a disappointment. Softly rejected for its confusingly dark tone, annoying kids (like Dakota Fanning’s incessant, ear-drum-popping screams), and Tom Cruise’s least likable protagonist of his career, it left audiences frustrated. The pivot into a psychological thriller in the last half, with an anti-climax ending, was just the nail in the coffin. “War of the Worlds” has been warmly reappraised since, embraced for exactly what was so alienating in 2005: a disturbing 9/11 allegory in which each hero is consumed by fear and helplessness. The set-pieces are thrilling (the opening tripod attack and ferry sequence are especially riveting, and he does the “Children of Men” car oner years before), but what gives it its lasting bite is the look at a society on the brink, unable to process the traumas of our present.
5. “Jurassic Park” (1993)
The first time I became aware of Steven Spielberg was when a friend begged his parents to throw on the VHS of something called “Jurassic Park.” He wanted to show me how “gnarly” this movie was, but his folks said no; he had watched it the week before and had nightmares. Later, we snuck upstairs, and he showed me only the opening scene, well enough to petrify me at six years old. We usually think of “Jurassic Park” in terms of its Spielbergian awe: the faces of wonder, John Williams’ resplendent score, the visual effects, the massive dinosaurs. It’s also the Spielberg that best encapsulates the divide in his filmmaking sensibilities, as a guy with the mind for horror but the heart of a sentimentalist. There’s the (literally) nightmare inducing T-Rex attack, the raptors in the kitchen, and the classic “clever girl.” But it’s the collision of innocence and terror that makes “Jurassic Park” work, along with the warning from Ian Malcomb that represents the core of all cautionary science fiction: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
4. “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” (1977)
An opera of image and sound, Spielberg used the success of “Jaws” to reimagine his amateur feature “Firelight” into a spectacle unlike anything seen before. Blending the paranoia thrillers of the 1970s with a marrow-deep desire to do something “important,” Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is a father and husband in a failing marriage, who –– as the title suggests –– has a close encounter, and can’t stop needing to chase the mysterious lights on the horizon. It’s not a reach to see Roy as a proxy for the young Steven, with a protagonist fleeing a fraught household after feeling a lightning bolt of inspiration. Years before “The Fabelmans” had everyone rethink the themes behind movies like “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade,” James Lipton immortalized “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” as Spielberg’s mom and dad: to communicate with aliens, they must speak with music and computers. With lights parading through the sky like a musical number powered by John Williams’s symphonic notes, Spielberg revealed the power of his cinema to elevate and nourish, expanding our minds in the process.
3. “Minority Report” (2002)
Spielberg’s most acclaimed blockbuster of the 21st century, “Minority Report,” ranks as one of the most exhilarating and cerebral he’s ever made. A cyberpunk noir that throws us right into the sci-fi action with the most experimental opening of any Spielberg movie, “Minority Report” finally united the biggest director in the world with the world’s greatest movie star, with Tom Cruise playing a cop who stops crimes before they happen. They direct their combined star power into an unlikely place, a head-scrambling dive into metaphysics, causality, and free will, concepts actualized into set-pieces that turn seminar theory into ripping chase sequences. Set in a carefully designed future Washington D.C. (the touch gestures famously prophesied our present; the reliance on physical storage not so much), “Minority Report” is a play on the “wrong man” noir trope, with Spielberg and his regular collaborators clearly having a blast, like John Williams channeling Bernard Hermann for his score. It’s one of Spielberg’s finest, foreshadowing the truth-shifting, image-dominated surveillance state of our present.
2. “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982)
Every bit as musical and mythic as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” but told from the point of view of Spielberg’s inner child, “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” is the movie that made thousands, maybe millions, of children feel a little less alone. Initially conceived as a semi-autobiographical bit of first-contact mythmaking, with Spielberg reimagining his childhood traumas with the help of an emotion support alien to guide him, it became the sensation of the 80s. Back when movies kept playing until they simply stopped making money, people saw “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” for birthday parties, family outings, special events, and a random night out. Watching the movie now, that response is extraordinary. “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” is primarily an intimate family drama set against a distinctly Spielbergian kind of American surrealism, distilling the 80s down to its most iconic elements before those bikes take flight.
1. “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (2001)
No film in Spielberg’s career has undergone such a radical reevaluation as “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” an impossible movie now embraced by many as a masterpiece. What began as a Stanley Kubrick project was then written and directed by Spielberg after Kubrick’s death. At release, it was harshly criticized as a well-intentioned misstep, a bizarre fusion of two cinematic styles that could not be more different. But as different as Spielberg and Kubrick’s sensibilities could be, “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” allowed their voices to find a beautiful middle; Spielberg has never been as sentimental as his worst detractors accuse, just as Kubrick’s never been as cold, leading to a film as deeply emotional as it is ruthless. This story, about a robot boy desperate to become “real,” then abandoned by his new mom and on a quest for answers, fits uncannily at home in Spielberg’s stories of familial entropy. Profound and haunting, A.I. has some of the master’s most upsetting set-pieces, and just like the structures awash on the rising shores, its legacy will continue to stand the test of time.
What do you think of our list? What’s your favorite sci-fi film directed by Steven Spielberg? Have you seen “Disclosure Day” yet? If so, what did you think? Please let us know in the comments section below or on Next Best Picture’s X account.
