Steven Spielberg once picked his three biggest movie failures
No matter how many contemporary filmmakers try to snatch his crown, there’s no doubt that Steven Spielberg has been one of the most important directors in the development of modern cinema and remains one of its most potent voices. With such 20th-century classics as Jaws, Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg has changed how movies are consumed by audiences and how filmmakers approach big-budget filmmaking.
With his wistful storytelling that finely toes the line of melodrama, Spielberg has encouraged a whole new generation of filmmakers to join the industry, from the indie ingenuity of Greta Gerwig to the grand innovation of Christopher Nolan. Yet, even Spielberg, who is responsible for some of cinema’s greatest feats, is also capable of making critical and commercial failures, admitting that three of his movies simply don’t cut the mustard.
Spielberg reveals all this in the documentary Spielberg, directed by Susan Lacy, a film featuring interviews with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Tom Hanks and George Lucas, including over 30 hours of interviews.
His 1987 film Empire of the Sun was one of the first to be mentioned by the filmmaker, with Spielberg exclaiming, “I’ve earned the right to fail commercially,” after having released the movie following the releases of 1982’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984. Though critically acclaimed, the film made just $66.7million at the box office from a budget of $25m, making it one of the filmmaker’s most disliked works.
Elsewhere, Spielberg didn’t think much of the movie he did directly before taking on Empire of the Sun, 1985’s The Colour Purple. Despite earning 11 Oscar nominations and close to $100m at the box office, Spielberg believed the film’s content, following a black woman living in the American South during the 1930s, was outside of his comfort zone. “I was timid. I was just a little embarrassed,” the director conceded, believing that he had never done the story justice.
Finally, the third movie Spielberg considers one of his biggest failures is 1941, the war comedy from 1979 that is often called one of his worst films. “It was like I had committed a war crime,” says of the reception to his film that starred the likes of John Belushi, Lorraine Gary and Nancy Allen.
Later, Spielberg added regarding the film, “It was a big demolition derby. I have to tell you, when I made 1941, I felt like I was made of Teflon. I felt that anything I put on film was going to succeed; that every laugh I set up would receive not only a laugh but huge applause; that everybody was going to win an Academy Award”.
Steven Spielberg’s three biggest failures:
- 1941 (Steven Spielberg, 1979)
- The Colour Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985)
- Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg, 1987)
