Over the course of 50 years, Steven Spielberg has directed 33 movies, including the 2021 remake West Side Story — but how do his films rank from worst to best? Steven Spielberg has become a cultural icon over the course of his career, with his films inspiring the next generation of filmmakers for decades. He’s showing no signs of slowing down or coasting either since his 2021’s musical remake West Side Story has garnered some of the best reviews of his historic career.
Steven Spielberg is one of the few directors who can shift effortlessly between crowd-pleasing blockbusters, and prestigious award baiting fares. Furthermore, he often manages to combine these two facets of Hollywood filmmaking, which is an even rarer feat. This ability to cater to both critics and general audiences comes down to his natural gifts as a storyteller; Spielberg imbues his movies with heart, which makes many of them enduring classics.
Spielberg has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director seven times, winning twice. His movies have amassed an incredible $10.5 billion worldwide, easily making him the highest-grossing director of all time. Seven of his movies have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi movies have revolutionized the industry, while his historical dramas are some of the best of the last half-century. Of course, as with any filmmaker, Steven Spielberg isn’t infallible, but even his misfires are not wholly devoid of merit.
Here are all 33 of Steven Spielberg’s movies ranked from worst to best. The ranking is limited to feature films he directed, and does not include his early TV movies/short films, his extensive work as a producer/executive producer, or the anthology film Twilight Zone: The Movie (in which he only directed one of four segments).
Released in the same year as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Always can certainly be classed as “lesser Spielberg,” and is one of his most easily forgotten movies. It’s the director at his most cloying, a criticism levelled frequently at Spielberg, but never more apt than here. Spielberg and Always lead actor Richard Dreyfuss shared a mutual love for the 1943 war drama A Guy Named Joe, the story of the spirit of a pilot who mentors a friend from beyond the grave, which inspired Always. To its credit, Always has Audrey Hepburn in her final film role and features some impressive aerial stunts. However, it’s a slow movie that dramatically doesn’t offer anything that A Guy Named Joe didn’t do better decades earlier.
While the premise of man without a nation stuck inside an airport for years is certainly an interesting hook, The Terminal’s slow pace languishes the concept. It doesn’t help that the movie’s lead Tom Hanks, a reliable and always lovable on-screen presence, is just too starry a choice for such a quiet role. It’s a gentle movie about a precarious time in history (post 9/11) that nobody knew how to deal with, but Spielberg’s ambitious intent doesn’t carry through the aims of The Terminal. Perhaps the most impressive thing about The Terminal is that the titular building was built from scratch inside a hanger when Steven Spielberg couldn’t find an airport that would let him film for the length of time he needed. It’s a pity though that the film itself seems so inconsequential, despite its best intentions.
Despite a cult following, Steven Spielberg doesn’t like Hook, and indeed it’s a movie at war with itself. The pre-Neverland sequences are dramatically confident, with Spielberg reveling in setting up the idea of “what if Peter Pan grew up?” Once Peter Pan lands in Neverland though the tone instantly changes to pantomime, and the film fails to adequately deliver on its earlier promise. While Spielberg’s sequel to the classic story Peter Pan has its nostalgic fans, Hook is not a film that holds up when one removes the rose-tinted glasses of childhood glee. The 142-minute running time would test the patience of any kid or adult, especially thanks to its unruly pacing and disappointing lack of magic. Still, the practical sets and production design are a visual treat in the current age of digital sets, Dustin Hoffman is having a ball as pirate leader Captain Hook, and John Williams delivers perhaps his most underappreciated score. Despite all this though, Spielberg himself remains one of Hook’s loudest detractors, lamenting the quality of the script and that he didn’t give Robin Williams more freedom in the role.
The faults of Ready Player One lie less with Spielberg himself than the source material, Ernest Cline’s novel of the same name. It’s an overwhelming cavalcade of pop culture references and ’80s kid nostalgia, seemingly designed solely for internet gossip. It’s fun at first, and Spielberg certainly brings the spectacle to the digital world of The Oasis, but it doesn’t take long before Ready Player One’s cameos and Easter eggs aren’t enough. Spielberg tries hard to imbue a sense of danger, but that’s difficult to sustain when the movie feels like watching someone else play a video game. That sense of emotional detachment is Ready Player One’s biggest weakness. Still, Mark Rylance playing a Willie Wonka-style Silicon Valley guru is a welcome addition.
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Spielberg is a man of many talents, but screwball comedy is not one of them. Riding high on his back-to-back success with Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg threw everything he had at 1941, but his hubris got the better of him. 1941 is sporadically funny and features some of the best comedians of the day, including movie stars Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and Ned Beatty. Spielberg’s set-pieces remain impressive to this day, with the dance hall fight being a highlight. However, these virtues are not enough to justify its bloated runtime and scattershot approach, with the film collapsing under the weight of its ideas, most of which fall flat. According to Jack Nicholson, director Stanley Kubrick allegedly told Spielberg that 1941 was “great, but not funny.” That sums it up pretty well.
The sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a definite step down from its masterful predecessor. The effects are still stunning and the cast is peppered with stand-out talent, but it’s tough to escape the feeling that the entire enterprise is just a retread of the original movie. Even Spielberg himself admitted he became disaffected while making The Lost World because he was so sure the film would be a slam dunk since the first one was. While meme-worthy Jeff Goldblum is always watchable, the change in his portrayal of Ian Malcolm from the previous movie is jarring, to say the least. The fourth act climax in San Diego also feels tacked on and doesn’t deliver on its intent to homage King Kong. Moreover, there’s little thematic weight to this film and several main characters, like Vince Vaughn’s Nick Van Owen, simply disappear in the third act. It’s still superior to Jurassic Park’s other sequels, and the darker tone is an interesting change of pace from the original movie. However, it comes at the expense of the awe and wonder that Jurassic Park had in spades.
Spielberg’s attempt to make an Indiana Jones sequel that lived up to its predecessors went wrong with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Harrison Ford still has that magic touch as Indy, even as an older and crankier version of the daring archaeologist, but the film doesn’t have the same energy as the first three installments. The original movies thrive on their 1930s-style pulp pastiche energy, and that’s sorely lacking with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. While practical stunts that the series prides itself on are present and correct, they are encumbered and diluted by a glut of unnecessary CGI, hampering the adventure. Indy’s lack of connection to the MacGuffin is also a weakness. It’s not a total disaster, and there are some great moments (like Crystal Skull‘s time travel) that proudly stand up with the original trilogy in terms of sheer thrills. But when those three movies set the bar so high, even a pretty solid movie cannot help but fall seriously short by comparison.
Translating Michael Morpurgo’s simple children’s book about a family’s horse who is taken to the frontline with British troops during the First World War works so well as a children’s novel and play because it shows the horrors of war through a childlike prism. Translating that into a straight-faced war drama inevitably strips the story of some of its appeal and charm. The horse blends into the background while an array of celebrated character actors pop up for random scenes and trite dialogue. Spielberg’s direction of action though is unparalleled, and War Horse showcases some of the most spectacular, beautiful, and brutal footage he’s ever captured. Composer John Williams is channeling Vaughan Williams with his lavish score, and there is a yesteryear quality to the filmmaking. War Horse is arguably the film in Steven Spielberg’s catalog that feels most like it could have been made in the 1940s — for better or worse.
Technically his theatrical directorial debut, The Sugarland Express was a curious place for Spielberg to get his start. The story follows a husband and wife trying to outrun the law so that they can regain control over their son who now lives with foster parents. The rougher edges are to be expected for such an early Spielberg movie, but he still displays a striking command of action scenes, which are on display here with some top-notch car chases. There’s a fascinating nihilistic edge to this story too, with the film considered as something of an anomaly among Spielberg’s other films (as well as Goldie Hawn’s). Spielberg’s typically earnest approach to the material is largely absent here, reflective of the disenchantment inherent in Hollywood movies of the era.
Spielberg’s The BFG is a sweet albeit slight film, ably led by Mark Rylance’s charming performance as The Big Friendly Giant. Spielberg and his screenwriter, the late Melissa Mathison capture the cheeky sentimentality of Roald Dahl’s work, but some kids may be put off by its more languid pacing. Notwithstanding this, it deserves recognition for giving the world one of the great farting scenes in modern cinema. Despite its charm, The BFG failed at the box office, being one of the few real financial disasters in Spielberg’s canon.
In terms of Spielberg’s more prestigious side, Amistad shows those predilections at their most uninteresting. While Amistad has its moments with a grumpy Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams and Djimon Hounsou delivering a searing portrayal of a slave, Cinque, as a whole, the film feels like a rehash of better movies. It falls foul of the white savior narrative, and its historical inaccuracies can be a put-off to viewers unable to accept the notion of artistic license.
Much has been written about the glaring issues with the second Indiana Jones movie. Kate Capshaw is given little to do beyond scream and complain, the addition of an adorable kid sidekick continues to be divisive among fans, and the racist depiction of India and the Hindu faith is still a topic of contention for good reason. Given how seemingly effortless Raiders of the Lost Ark was in its weaving of folklore, history, and pulp-style adventure, it cannot help but feel disappointing that Temple of Doom resorts to such racially loaded clichés. What the movie does have in spades though is a sense of non-stop adventure. It’s a cinematic rollercoaster ride in the best possible way, with some of the most wonderfully ludicrous set pieces in Indiana Jones’ history. The wonderful musical opening number hints at Spielberg’s desire to make a musical, and the film’s horror elements are so shocking that they helped to usher in the age of the PG-13 rating. Still, given how timeless so many of Spielberg’s best movies feel, Temple of Doom’s notably dated nature makes it stand out for all the wrong reasons.
Alice Walker’s beloved novel The Color Purple is a deftly layered exploration of trauma and Black womanhood, so it’s no surprise that Spielberg was deemed something of an ill fit for the big-screen adaptation. This was Spielberg’s first real attempt at a more serious and adult film, and much criticism was leveled at his deviations and dilutions from the source material. However, The Color Purple‘s story succeeds when it gives its excellent cast room to breathe, most notably Whoopi Goldberg, who is so moving and self-assured in the lead role that it’s a shock to discover this was her cinematic debut. The novel manages the swing between agony and ecstasy far more skillfully than the film, and the subtleties of those themes are softened into more traditional melodrama in a way that does no favors to Walker’s work. The Color Purple famously received ten Oscar nominations and won zero awards.
Steven Spielberg’s long-time friend and colleague Robert Zemeckis pioneered motion-capture movies with the likes of Beowulf and The Polar Express, with mixed results at best. While Spielberg also fell for the motion capture’s allure, he avoided the pitfalls of Zemeckis’ efforts by committing to the simple cartoonish aesthetic of the original comics. Made in collaboration with Peter Jackson, Tintin just never stops. It’s thrill after thrill with some chase scenes that truly boggle the imagination, all piled on top of one another. For some viewers, this approach may prove too tiresome, but in many ways, The Adventures of Tintin has the same flavor and fun as Spielberg’s Indiana Jones films.
Spielberg’s The Post is a crisp drama about the Washington Post’s efforts to publish the Pentagon Papers in the face of potential censorship and outright war with Richard Nixon’s White House. Spielberg’s direction captures the immediacy of the behind-the-scenes newsroom action as they weigh out the pros and cons of making what would become a historic decision. While the script is often on-the-nose at times, the theme of the importance of journalism in the age of fake news is just as important (if not more so) today than it was in the ’70s. Spielberg decided to direct it as soon as he finished reading the first draft of the screenplay, feeling such an important story couldn’t wait.
For some people, A.I. Artificial Intelligence is just too saccharine, a failed attempt to reimagine Pinocchio with a futuristic slant. One wonders if those critics would have been kinder had the movie been made by Stanley Kubrick as was originally intended. However, while Spielberg is frequently accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material, the sentimentality in A.I., especially in the final act, was exactly what Kubrick wanted. Spielberg simply brought it faithfully to the screen. In addition to this, it was Spielberg who added the darker elements of the story such as the Flesh Fair. While the mixture of two very different creative voices in Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick never quite gels, as a pure experiment of two auteurs trying to find their common ground. A.I. is an ambitious feat worthy of a second look.
Steven Spielberg takes H.G. Wells’s sci-fi classic War of the Worlds and reimagines it as a post-9/11 tale of human paranoia and nihilism in the face of unknown outsider threats. For a film that was sold as yet another Spielberg summer blockbuster, with Tom Cruise in the lead, War of the Worlds is relentlessly bleak. It’s a daring approach, to depict humanity as selfish cowards and borderline animals in the face of danger and one that pays off. It’s unfortunate that Spielberg doesn’t fully commit to the more negative tones at the end by giving in to his trademark sentimentality in the closing moments. Notwithstanding this, War of the Worlds puts audiences on the ground, following a single family in their attempt to survive, which is a nice change of pace from war rooms and military scenes that normally accompany alien invasion movies.
Released in 2005, the same year as War of the Worlds, Spielberg once again proved his range with the sharply made and deeply difficult historical drama Munich. Based on the true story of the Israeli secret agents who retaliated against the Palestine Liberation Organization after the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics, this is a film loaded with guilt and a strain of futility that feels so decidedly un-Spielberg. There’s a true terror to this tale and a welcome bleakness to its depiction of revenge as a false method for achieving closure. Munich includes some of the tensest scenes Steven Spielberg has ever filmed, with the hotel room bomb sequence almost unbearable in its tension. What causes Munich to stumble is its lack of clarity over the socio-political realities of the central conflict and a readiness to let screenplay proselytizing do all the hard work.
The adaptation of J.G. Ballad’s semi-autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun was initially meant to be directed by David Lean before Spielberg came on board. Spielberg was drawn to the material due to his fascination with World War II, and the aircraft of that era (his father was a radio operator on B-25 Mitchell bombers). Unfortunately upon release, it was considered something of a minor effort from the director. However, since then, Empire of the Sun‘s reputation has only grown and justifiably so. Featuring a young Christian Bale in the lead role, Empire of the Sun is Spielberg’s most profound work on the loss of innocence, showing the atrocities of war as witnessed through the whimsical gaze of a child.
1971’s Duel was only supposed to be an ABC TV movie, a 74-minute thriller to plug up the schedule over the winter season. It didn’t take long for audiences and the industry to realize that this was the work of someone truly special, and Duel went on to receive a theatrical release, with new scenes added to bump the runtime up to 90 minutes. Its simple premise of a man being relentlessly chased and terrorized by a truck was expertly brought to life by the then 25-year-old Spielberg. Almost fifty years since it premiered, Duel still retains much of its power. Seeing what Spielberg could do with a tiny budget and limited resources had everyone hungering for his next big step. Spielberg would apply the power of Duel’s “fear of the unknown” to even greater effect a few years later for Jaws.
Bridge of Spies marked the fourth collaboration between Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, and they certainly chose the right project after the disappointment of The Terminal a decade earlier. Hanks brings his A-game to play an insurance lawyer tasked with representing a communist spy, played to Oscar-winning perfection by Mark Rylance. Bridge of Spies is a handsomely mounted and deceptively layered drama, the kind of classic movie that Hollywood doesn’t really make anymore. What makes the movie sing is its humor, partly thanks to a script co-written by the Coen brothers, and brought to life by Hanks and Rylance. Spielberg ends up being the perfect choice for the story, and he teases out many subtle layers of morality and duty in what could have been a cut-and-dry good versus bad tale.
It’s strange to think of any Spielberg blockbuster as underrated, but Minority Report, adapted from a story by Philip K. Dick, is seldom discussed as one of the director’s best, even though it’s clearly deserving. Spielberg tried to present a plausible world 50 years into the future, and some of the technology dreamed up (such as 3D screens and direct advertising) for the movie has proven prescient. Thanks to a seriously tight script, some old-school action work that blends well with the futuristic setting, and Tom Cruise running as fast as he can, the film’s central themes of free will versus determinism are deftly handled. There’s a striking sense of paranoia to the entire narrative. The whole cast, including Colin Farrell and Max von Sydow, is on top form, with Samantha Morton especially offering one of the best and most strikingly underrated performances in any Spielberg movie. The complaints of plot holes in Minority Report are legitimate, but when the rest of the movie is so thrilling, who cares?
Father-son relationships have always been a key tenet of Spielberg’s work, but it’s seldom been depicted with such rollicking fun as it is in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The quest for the mythic Holy Grail is intrinsically tied to Indy reconnecting with his estranged father, and the gruff banter between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery brings real energy to the adventure. The sense of fun does come at the cost of pacing and a tight plot, both of which try to emulate Raiders of the Lost Ark, and come up short. Notwithstanding this, the third act, with Indy facing the trials of the grail, is a series highlight. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is easily the most emotional movie of the series, and its warmth and fun make it the perfect Sunday afternoon movie.
Spielberg is many things, but he’s seldom considered a suave director. With Catch Me If You Can, a retro crime caper inspired by the true story of Frank Abagnale’s conman, he made the coolest film he’s ever put his name to. The genius of the film, aside from how wonderfully it uses the Rat Pack aesthetic of 1960s dramas, is in its impeccable balance of frivolity and depth. Frank Abagnale’s con adventures are slick and stylish, contrasting with the more traditional good cop investigations of Tom Hanks’ FBI agent. Catch Me If You Can was (along with Gangs of New York in the same year) was the film that allowed Leonardo DiCaprio to leave the teen heartthrob image behind and showcase his talents as a serious actor. Catch Me If You Can is highly enjoyable but never at the cost of the narrative’s surprising intimacy about a fractured family trying to be held together by a sad little boy.
One can see the passion in every second of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, an adaptation of the iconic Broadway musical remake of the Oscar-winning original film. Wanting to make a musical for decades, Spielberg’s camera movements, use of color, shadows, and reflections alone justify the movie’s existence within the first 5 minutes. Wisely not tinkering too much with Leonard Berstein’s music and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics, the changes that are made from the 1961 film version of West Side Story only serve to surpass it. If there is a criticism it’s that the central love story isn’t always as interesting as the wider themes of race, gentrification, gang violence, and pride going on around Tony and Maria. Still, the cast is excellent, and the song and dance numbers show that Spielberg can turn his hand to almost any genre.
Even if Saving Private Ryan had ended after its astounding opening 20 minutes, it would still be one of Spielberg’s greatest achievements. Saving Private Ryan’s D-Day assault on Omaha Beach redefined how to present the horrors of war, in film, and while endlessly copied, has never been bettered. Some critics grumble that the rest of the movie is nowhere near as good as that sequence, but that does a disservice to what remains a riveting war drama that is unflinching in its brutality but also unafraid to invest in some true emotional optimism. It’s still unbelievable that back in 1998 Saving Private Ryan, lost the Best Picture Oscar to Shakespeare in Love, but Spielberg was rightly recognized for his work with his second Best Director Oscar.
A Spielberg-directed biopic of Abraham Lincoln written by Tony Kushner and starring Daniel Day-Lewis almost seems too good to be true. It’s such a powerful combination of talents, and Lincoln is a perfectly balanced drama that sees the trio working in tandem to elevate one another’s abilities. Focusing on just one specific part of Lincoln’s life (the end of the Civil War and the battle for passing the Thirteenth Amendment) the movie wisely avoids a cradle-to-grave narrative that derails so many biopics. Daniel Day-Lewis is exceptional as Lincoln, completely disappearing into the role. The rest of the cast, including Tommy Lee Jones, Jared Harris, and Sally Field adeptly rise to the challenge set by Day-Lewis, making for one of Spielberg’s greatest ensemble pieces. Spielberg’s Lincoln is a wonderful historical drama in large part because it shows the real work that goes into making history.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a quintessential Spielberg sci-fi movie. It was a story he’d been wanting to tell since he was a kid; it owes a lot to his teenage film Firelight, as many scenes were re-filmed for Close Encounters on a shot-for-shot basis. It’s one of the best examples of Spielberg’s mixing of technical prowess and a childlike innocence with this story of first contact and the regular husband and father who finds himself in the heart of humanity’s greatest development. There’s no way Spielberg could make this movie today — as demonstrated by War of the Worlds, humanity is long past the point of wilful joy and hopefulness when it comes to the idea of visiting aliens – but his sustained sense of awe endures. The dazzling sound and light show of the third act is pure filmmaking mastery.
Jaws is responsible for blockbuster cinema as it’s known today. Almost everything about Steven Spielberg’s Jaws works (aside from the shark, which famously broke down at every opportunity). Jaws has been copied, mocked, and enshrined to a near-mythic state, but its power remains. Spielberg is so adept at sustaining that agonizing, existential panic that it doesn’t matter the shark doesn’t look convincing. It’s what the audience doesn’t see that gives the film its dread. To this day, people are still afraid of the water thanks to Spielberg. Jaws welcomes audiences in with the jokes, the scenery, the actors, and then makes them jump every single time.
In 1993, Spielberg released two undeniable masterpieces in the form of Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, with the latter finally landing him that long-sought-after Oscar for Best Director. Starring Liam Neeson as Oscar Schindler, the war drama feels like the culmination of everything Spielberg spent the previous 22 years of his career working towards and features some of the director’s finest work. Filmed in a documentary style in order to maintain a sense of realism, it’s as close as cinema will ever get to a mainstream Hollywood movie about the Holocaust that truly captures the horrors of this atrocity. It’s an emotionally draining viewing experience, but for all the aliens, dinosaurs, and adventurers in his resume, Schindler’s List is the most historically and culturally important film he has ever made.
E.T. is arguably the greatest movie about childhood. Spielberg extracts mesmerizing performances from his young actors, asking them to carry much of the emotional weight while acting opposite a puppet. That it works so well is a testament to his direction, with E.T.’s ending being the greatest tear-jerking moment in Spielberg’s canon. While almost everything about the film is now iconic, the movie has endured for decades because it taps into that feeling of loneliness and the power of friendship that every kid experiences. E.T. conveys the preciousness of childhood friendships in a way that few other films have managed to pull off.
Once Alan Grand points to the sky and (almost not believing his own words), says “it’s a dinosaur,” movies changed forever. The animals Spielberg and his team brought to life for Jurassic Park remain as awe-inspiring today as they were back in 1993. Like Star Wars before it, the movie revolutionized special effects and inspired a new generation of filmmakers. Spielberg’s Jurassic Park is a non-stop pleasure from start to finish, one of the true sublime blockbusters of the ’90s and indeed of all time. Try as they might no sequel or homage has ever recaptured the wonder of Jurassic Park.
Many film fans consider Raiders of the Lost Ark to be practically a perfect movie (notwithstanding The Big Bang’s Theory’s “plot hole” criticisms). It’s one of the most thrilling and endlessly rewatchable action capers of the 20th century, a ceaseless romp of adventure, charm, and retro-styling that breathes new life into 1930s pulp serials. Within almost every scene in the movie, there is something iconic to marvel at. Raiders is the work of a director in his prime with nothing to lose and the industry at his feet. Spielberg and George Lucas created a hero for the ages in Indy, and it’s impossible to overstate the immense influence that Indiana Jones’ adventures had on the blockbuster genre for decades, a feat that continues to this day. While his other classic movies are special in their own way, with Raiders, Steven Spielberg made his best film.