We’re not keen to disagree with Steven Spielberg. We’re even less keen when the debate is about Steven Spielberg movies, which are probably his specialist subject. But he has revealed which of his best movies he thinks is perfect – and it’s the wrong one.
Spielberg’s filmography has a bit of everything, balancing weighty drama movies with exhilarating war movies and some of the best family movies ever made.
He’s also the undisputed king of the best shark movies having made the untouchable pinnacle of the genre with Jaws in 1975. By anyone’s measure, this tense thriller movie on the waves is perfection. It seems Spielberg is the only person who doesn’t think so.
Spielberg told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show: “I don’t look a lot at my movies after I’ve made them. I don’t look back too often but every once in a while I’ll see a movie with my kids.”
The filmmaking great explained that there aren’t many of his own movies he can stand to watch again, but pointed to science fiction movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial as an achievement he’s happy to revisit.
He said: “Sometimes I see things that I had intended to do that i didn’t do, and sometimes I see things that would have been a better idea than what I’m now seeing all these years later – but for the most part, ET is a pretty perfect movie.
“It’s one of the few movies I’ve made that I can actually look back at again and again. I’ve made like 34 films and – I’m not gonna name which ones they are beyond ET – there’s about five or six films that I can watch again, but I don’t usually do that.”
Spielberg said he didn’t want his kids watching the alien movie on their own, saying he wanted to “comfort” them through “the scary parts at the beginning” when they watched it for the first time.