The one movie Steven Spielberg will never be able to beat: “If it happens, it happens”
99% of filmmakers would give anything to enjoy even a fraction of the success Steven Spielberg has experienced throughout his legendary career, but even he’s held his hands up and admitted there are certain cinematic benchmarks that not even a director of his talents will be able to match.
That’s quite the statement, considering it came from somebody who isn’t only the highest-grossing director in history, but the only one to have helmed a $10 billion filmography, not to mention Spielberg’s status as the only person to direct the top-grossing release of all time on three separate occasions with Jaws, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park.
There’s also the small matter of his three Academy Award wins from 23 nominations to go along with three Baftas, nine Golden Globes, a dozen Primetime Emmys, and a Tony, never mind a filmography that boasts Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the first four Indiana Jones movies, The Color Purple, Saving Private Ryan, War of the Worlds, and the West Side Story remake to name just a small few.
Spielberg has accomplished more than most, but that doesn’t mean he’s entirely happy with his lot. Obviously, he has every right to be happier than most, looking at the staggering array of achievements that have defined his legacy since he first exploded onto the scene as Hollywood’s newest wunderkind in the mid-1970s, but one of his peers will always remain just out of reach.
Four of the defining members of the ‘New Hollywood’ movement ended up branching out in completely different directions; Spielberg and close friend George Lucas set about shattering box office benchmarks and pushing the technological boundaries of the medium, whereas Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola focused on crafting meticulous masterpieces that comfortably rank among the finest films ever made.
Spielberg blazed the trail that the likes of James Cameron and Christopher Nolan followed by deftly weaving between crowd-pleasing blockbusters and awards-baiting prestige pictures, but by his own admission, he’ll never be able to better the timeless classic he unequivocally called the best movie ever made by a director who’s still living.
“I’ve never made a movie anywhere near as good as The Godfather,” he copped to The New York Times. “And I don’t have the ambition to, either. If it happens, it happens.” While it’s strange to hear somebody of Spielberg’s standing claim there’s a finite limit on their ambitions, based on all the evidence to the contrary that’s been stacking up for half a century, he can be forgiven for making such a bold admission of pre-emptive defeat.
After all, since the advent of the moving image, how many people have made a movie as good as The Godfather? Relative to the number of features released, a very small percentage. Spielberg doesn’t think he’s one of them, but he’s still firmly in the overwhelming majority.
