Steven Spielberg
Raiders of the Lost Ark Revisited
Ten years ago, we decided to start up a little podcast called Movies We Like with a conversation about ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark.’ Well, that podcast has grown and blossomed over time, becoming The Next Reel, and the day this episode releases – November 11th, 2021 – will be our ten year anniversary! Join us as we return to where it all started for a look back at the origins of our podcast as well as Spielberg’s film.
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Ready Player One
The book “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline was hugely popular but polarizing for some, and it was loaded with 1980’s nostalgia set a seemingly un-filmable, un-license-able virtual world. It’s very possible that Spielberg is one of the few people that could have made this a reality for the big screen.
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E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
Steven Spielberg didn’t have a sense that his little, personal alien film was going to blow up like it did when he was making it. Universal Studios saw it as another kids film that likely would only be seen by moms taking their kids to the theater. But E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial managed to touch pretty much the hearts of everyone who saw it, turning it into the #1 film in the world in short order.
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind
In 1977, Devil’s Tower went from being known as the first National Monument (for those who had actually heard of it) to the iconographic image marking the rendezvous point where the aliens want to meet the humans in Steven Spielberg’s third theatrical film, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” The release and success of the movie saw visits to the monument skyrocket, which shows the power in Spielberg’s film. Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we jump back into our Original SciFi series with this fantastic entry into the genre.
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Jaws
When someone says the word ‘jaws’ to you, it inevitably conjures up the man-eating great white shark in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller masterpiece. It’s hard to imagine a time when the word ‘jaws’ didn’t do this. But that’s what Spielberg’s film “Jaws” did, as well as birth the notion of the summer blockbuster and make people not want to swim in the ocean. Join us—Pete Wright and Andy Nelson—on this week’s episode as we chat about this film, the next in our Richard D. Zanuck series.
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
It’s nonsensical, silly, and surreal sci-fi mumbo jumbo that amounts to nothing. That being said, the long-awaited return to Indiana Jones and his adventures still manages to take viewers on a wild ride, even if it steers off course most of the time.
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Five years after Steven Spielberg and George Lucas dipped into the dark waters for the second Indiana Jones film, they brought the Man with the Hat back in a much brighter story and, as the posters announced, this time he brought his dad.
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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas both approached their 1984 follow-up to “Raiders of the Lost Ark” from a dark place while they were simultaneously going through divorces. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps because they were trying to create something different, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” has always been the ugly red-headed stepchild of the series, having a schizophrenic imbalance between goofy campiness and gruesome horror.
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Raiders of the Lost Ark
Everything about Steven Spielberg’s 1981 adventure film, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” is iconic. From the unforgettable lines that are so easy to quote, to the brilliant characters saying them and the pitch-perfect actors playing them, to the countless scenes full of adventure and danger, to John Williams’ score, to Jones’ hat and whip.
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