Losing ground: Has Spielberg lost his touch?

Box office failure of ‘The BFG’ proves it’s superheroes who sell tickets, not those behind the mask

In 1975, Steven Spielberg ushered in the modern blockbuster era when Jaws terrified audiences and smashed box office records.

While American directors were offering up smaller, more intimate looks at crime, politics and society, such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Dog Day Afternoon, Spielberg went in the opposite direction. He was a maximalist. His work promised spectacle, of the kind that needed to be enjoyed on the big screen.

Over the ensuing decades, no director has maintained a firmer grasp of popular tastes. Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park were popcorn movie totems for a generation of film lovers and Spielberg became synonymous with summer blockbuster season. “If you ask anyone across the country or around the world to name a director, he’s at the top of the list,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at comScore. “The Spielberg brand is that strong.”



But tastes shift and the failure of The BFG hints that Spielberg may be a different kind of film-maker, one who’s no longer attuned to the zeitgeist, reported Variety. The $140 million children’s fantasy echoes E.T. in its construction — there’s a lonely child, a visitor from another world and an underlying current of gentle uplift. It’s easy to see why Walden Media and Disney would think they had a hit on their hands. Not only were they getting Spielberg returning to the family film genre, but The BFG was based on a beloved children’s book by Roald Dahl and boasted a script by E.T.’s Melissa Mathison.



Without a major star, however, it would fall to Spielberg to sell tickets. Unfortunately for the studios and backers now staring at a write down, he is not the draw he once was. The BFG, which opened to an anemic $19.6 million, is shaping up to be one of the biggest flops of Spielberg’s career, rivaling 1941, his bloated World War II comedy.

Some of the failure of The BFG has to do with Spielberg’s evolving artistic sensibility. Through the early aughts, his name above the title announced a film as an event, while his imprimatur helped lift the likes of Minority Report and War of the Worlds above the summer movie fray.

Yet Spielberg seemed to turn away from these types of films over the last decade, offering up a steady diet of historical dramas such as War Horse, Lincoln and Bridge of Spies. As he aged, so did his audience. These cinematic civics lessons were primarily geared at adults — many of the same people who grew up watching Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His only real forays into overtly commercial terrain were Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a financially successful, but much loathed sequel, and The Adventures of Tintin, a motion-capture oddity that failed to fully ignite at the box office.

All the while, the ground was shifting beneath Spielberg’s feet. Comic-book movies are the rage now, not science-fiction spectacles or B-movie throwbacks of the kind that made his name. And when it comes to children’s movies, Pixar is the new gold standard — the company’s Finding Dory overshadowed The BFG this weekend, racking up $41.9 million in its third week of release. The box office is dominated by fewer, bigger movies, leaving little left over for the rest. In the past, Spielberg hedged against his own appeal, partnering with stars such as Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks, but in modern Hollywood, those actors’ appeal is wobbly. It’s superheroes who sell tickets, not the men and women behind the mask.

Even the era of the big director has faded. With the possible exceptions of Christopher Nolan or James Cameron, there are very few film-makers whose presence behind the camera is enough to send fans flocking. From John Ford to Billy Wilder to Alfred Hitchcock, at some point every great film-maker finds themselves at odds with the times.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 5^th, 2016.

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