The New Yorker Radio Hour - From Critics at Large: Steve Spielberg's Blockbusters

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

When “Jaws” hit theatres in 1975, no one—neither the studio executives involved nor the film’s twenty-six-year-old director, Steven Spielberg—was betting on its success. But it dominated at the box office and promptly revolutionized the way movies were promoted, distributed, and merchandised. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace how Spielberg inaugurated a new phenomenon in Hollywood: the blockbuster. He would tap his own playbook again and again with such hits as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.,” and “Jurassic Park,” all of which drew impressive audiences and profits. The hosts talk through his filmography, culminating in his new release, “Disclosure Day,” which both replicates and iterates on themes and techniques found in his earlier work. Though other directors may share his capacity for spectacle and action-packed set pieces, much of his appeal lies in his profound earnestness. “What Spielberg is so good at is bringing the human to the fore in these extreme, sci-fi circumstances,” Schwartz says. “And that’s what makes a great blockbuster.”   New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Adam Howard, one of the producers on the show. And we have a special treat just for you. The New Yorker's culture podcast, Critics at Large, is doing a deep dive into the extraordinary career of director Stephen Spielberg. This month, Spielberg debuted his first feature film in four years, Disclosure Day, which is being hailed as a return to his sci-fi blockbuster roots, with a bit of social commentary thrown in, too. On this episode, hosts Vincent Cunningham, Alex Schwartz, and Naomi Frye, all discuss their own personal blind spots and Spielberg's formidable filmography.

Please enjoy their takes on arguably the most commercially successful filmmaker of all time. This is Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz. I'm Naomi Fry. And I'm Vincent Cunning. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got it. Let me paint you a picture. Please.

It's June 1975. Colors are bright. The pants are bells at the bottom. School's out. School's out for summer. Damn right. It's hot.

The height of summer. What are you going to do? You're going to go to the movies. And what are you going to see? What about a little film called Jaws? Duh, da, da, da. You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the 4th of July. Jaws, in case you haven't heard of it, it was a big hit, okay?

It's often said to be the first modern blockbuster, directed by Stephen Spielberg, the most commercially successful director in history. After the success of Jaws, he goes on to make close encounters of the third kind, E.T., Jurassic Park, the Indiana Jones movies, the list goes. goes on and friends, you know it. Guys, what are some of the hallmarks? If we're talking Blockbuster, what are the hallmarks of the Blockbuster as genre? What does the term conjure in your minds?

Big action, posters everywhere, lines, lines out the door, which I think was not a phenomenon until Jaws even. Yeah. Enormous promotion. Yeah. The promotion is perhaps as important as the movie itself. Huge box office take. Fast pace. Maybe an explosion here or there.

Definitely. Definitely. There's the blockbuster for you. It's been decades, though, since Spielberg had a big, new summer, jawsy hit. And that's put a big question mark around his new release, Disclosure Day. Do you think there could be others? People have a right to know the truth. What are you going to do?

Full disclosure to the whole world all at once. The question is, can it excite audience? is in the way his earlier films did. Now, we have a partial answer to this. It's already been named his first summer blockbuster since Minority Port 24 years ago, if you can believe it. But still, the question persists. What is the blockbuster today?

Yeah. Spielberg is reentering this field. And he's tried to get back there before. But as you say, Vincent, it's been 24 years, not quite as long as the Knicks run since their last championship. But we're looking at a big pause between a generation. A generation. A generation, from a huge commercial summer hit

to another huge commercial summer hit. And there's a lot riding for the movie business on this question. And then for the culture, sense of itself is large. Are movies still important? Or people going to the cinema, still a thing? Or the youth like we were? All of those questions.

Those big cultural questions are coming up through Disclosure Day. Big questions, big movies. So buckle up. Because today we're talking blockbusters. The huge Spielberg hits that it vented and then perfected this form. How Spielberg picks up on those in Disclosure Day,

and, you know, we're hot off the huge success of films like backrooms and obsession, a very different kind of movie that younger audiences especially are responding to. I'm wondering whether this old idea of the blockbuster still exists today, still matters, at least in the Spielberg mold. That's today on Critics at Large. Stephen Spielberg's blockbusters. You know what my first encounter with Steven Spielberg was? It was a camp Ramah, my Jewish summer camp,

and there was a, I think it was a rainy day. There was a presentation on important American Jewish cultural figures. I mean, I was just going to say, and I know I always say this, but Stephen Spielberg is truly, truly the pride of the Jews. Well, someone showed up dressed as Albert Einstein. There was a second, can't remember. And then there was a counselor wearing tan shorts, like a safari outfit, which later I would understand referred to Jurassic Park. Who was that man? I didn't know who Steven Spielberg was. I had no idea. I just knew. Know me, as you say, that he was the pride of the Jews. There we go.

He was the pride of the Jews. I'm trying to think of my first encounter with Spielberg. I think it might have been, I remember being on the beach with my sister, definitely not on Martha's Vine. where Jaws was, I later realized was shot, but on the West Coast. And my sister telling me, you know this is the beach where they shot Jaws. And I kind of knew ambiently what Jaws was. That's dirty. That was about a killer, you know, shark. And I did not go in the water. Yeah, that's not cool.

I mean, it's very cool, but it's also not cool. Anyway, but I think that was my first encounter with Spielberg, making me not literally. not go in the water. Yeah. Just like after you watch Psycho, you didn't want to go in the shower. Yeah. Yeah.

For me, it's definitely like the sort of great, like, miracle year or one of the great miracle years of his career where in 93, both Jurassic Park and Schindler's List come out. I mean, I was just the right age to be totally freaked out by, but riveted by Jurassic Park. Every single

kid I knew had a Jurassic Park shirt. I still remember the logo for the movie just because I can see it on, you know, against the background of a black shirt. Oh, yeah. I saw one at a vintage store just yesterday. Really? Isn't that crazy? It's a great show.

Iconic. But Vincent, there was a Spielberg movie, which famously you did not see as we discovered when we chatted about it. Yes. And we were shocked to discover this horrible blind spot in your cultural diet. Shameful. Well, all of us have blind spots. Let me step in and defend my friend and colleague here. Absolutely.

I have many, many, many blind spots. So the idea of kind of Vincent's blind spot made us think about all of our respective Spielberg blind spots. And so in preparation for this episode, each of us watched one of these blind spots Spielberg films and we're going to talk about them a little bit and discuss them kind of leading up to disclosure day. So, Vincent, do you want to start? Absolutely. Yes. Well, here's the thing. I'd never seen Jaws, but boy, did I know it's about.

Yeah. It's one of those things, right? You knew to whom the Jaws belonged. I knew to whom the Jaws belonged. I knew that there was a big-ass shark and that that wasn't a great thing, okay? And then it was scary. I knew a lot about the movie before I saw it. But, News Alert, I liked Jaws.

Jaws is good. This is awesome. This is the news. This is the news I'm bringing to our listeners. Jazz is a great movie. I, you know, watched it, not just, was not just frightened by the idea of it as like a five-year-old when my sister, like, you know, freak me out about not going in the water because Jaws will get me. But later actually watched it, you know, in my teens and liked it. Yeah.

But then didn't watch it for many years. Return to it during the pandemic during lockdown. and I remember how much it struck me then that it was a movie about COVID. You know, the conflict between kind of like private enterprise and, you know, individual decision-making and kind of like the greater good, right? Right. And the kind of like binding of that against kind of like a force that comes from the outside and terrorizes a small town in this case.

But I was like, wow, this is really, this is really deep. Do you want to, like, give us a little synopsis? Sure. Jaws stars Roy Scheider. He's the police chief of a town called Amity. And the police chief has a problem, which is that there has been a rash of shark attacks. Right before, right around this time of year, right before the 4th of July. And to your point, know me about the common good.

The first half of the movie is setting up this sort of. problem, this commerce versus public safety versus economic advancement, et cetera. The mayor's like, no way, man. We're not shutting down. Larry, if we make an effort today, we might be able to save August. August. For Christ's sake, tomorrow's the 4th of July, and we will be open for business. It's going to be one of the best summers we've ever had.

Now, if you fellas are concerned about the beaches, you do whatever you have to to make them safe. But those beaches will be open for this weekend. First big beach day happens and predictably. Chomp! There's blood in the water. The police chief, Brody, goes out to sea with a marine biologist played by Richard Dreyfus, who is, I think, just so good. Also great outfits. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, Dreyfus is wearing a raglan sweatshirt out on the boat that's beautifully. I just love this gray sweatshirt. It's so true. And Robert Shaw plays this briny professional shark hunter named Quint. And they go out on a boat the three of them and the sort of a radical miniaturization of the crew in something like Moby Dick. It is, for me, it inaugurates this film, Jaws Witch, had a budget of $9 million and then had almost $500 million in box office at the time was the highest grossing film ever. It was the most successful movie that had ever been made. What it inaugurates for me in the other Spielberg movies that I've seen and enjoyed that we'll talk about is this primacy of knowledge.

What do people, the mass of people, deserve to know and what does that knowledge prompt us to do? This happens a lot in Spielberg. It's like a sort of cognitive or sort of informational or political or commercial elite. and trying to figure out what they owe to the masses of people in terms of sharing a kind of knowledge. Absolutely. I think that's something that would be great for us and for listeners also, honestly, to keep in mind

over the course of the episode because I think that is one of Spielberg's biggest concerns. He just hit the nail on the head. He's concerned with civics. I just want to come back, if I can, for one second, to the movie making of Jaws itself because it's one of the great movie-making stories. Our colleague Michael Shulman has a great job.

chapter on Jaws in his book, Oscar Wars, the podcast that I'm very into that I always love talking about, what went wrong, movie-making podcast is a great episode about it. But what is kind of crazy about Jaws in retrospect is that everyone thought it would be a big flop, and no one expected it to work. The studio Universal had already purchased this novel, which was forthcoming to adapt. Then the novel comes out and is a huge hit, so they need to move up the shooting, like, from a year and a half to basically two months. They have to cast this thing immediately. that all is going on. The technology of the sharks was a complete mess.

And I really encourage people, if you like stories about just like disasters, basically the movie Jaws was a disaster too. They could not get these huge sharks to operate. They couldn't do it. And that failure led to the genius of Jaws because Spielberg came to realize, and Spielberg was only 26, which was really mind-blowing to me. But he came to realize that not showing the shark, would be more terrifying than showing these big animatronic sculptures of sharks that they kept trying and failing to operate.

He came to this Hitchcockian view of things. And, Nomi, I think you referred to the shower of Psycho before. I mean, that's it. Yeah. I think Spielberg quite literally said he wanted people to have that to feel about going to the beach like people felt about going into the shower after Psycho. Yeah. And I think this connects back, this links back. to this issue of knowledge where it's like the most dangerous thing is being oblivious in a sense.

So like these people on the beach, these happy fools, there is that water. It looks so inviting, hot summer day. What could be better? What could be better? And yet under that water, that shark we don't see. And I think that, again, as you said, this is something that repeats. again and again in Spielberg's movies, what don't we know and what danger lurks in that which we don't know?

Totally. So when we talk about Jaws inventing this form of the blockbuster, there are a few things we're talking about. The first is promotion. It seems obvious to us now, but at the time, $1.8 million was spent on promoting Jaws, which was huge because the studio was trying to ride the high of the successful novel, and also because it figured out very quickly

that people loved this movie. People were spilling their popcorn screaming at this movie. The studio was like, this is a thing. Let's spend money to make it more of a thing. There were television spots promoting the film. All these things that seem super obvious to us now

that were not so obvious at the time. The summertime release, another like no-duh thing that actually was quite a duh because most big releases had happened in the winter and the spring. And suddenly, you get summertime. And, wow, kids are actually,

out of school. Teenagers want to go see this movie. The teen market is huge. Let's market movies to teens. That begins there. Merchandizing. Guys, there were Jaws T-shirts. There were Jaws plastic cups. There were Jaws record albums. There were Jaws. Bicycle bags. Not beach towels. Blankets. Costum jewelry, toys. And then finally, I would say the other big, big element that makes a blockbuster and seems obvious to us now, but was invented by this was mass distribution. Because up until that point, studios were still testing movies in certain markets, rolling them out slowly. And with Jaws, the movie was just an event. It was released wide.

It was everywhere all at once. Alex, you had a Spielberg film that you hadn't seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Oh, yeah. I had never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This is true. This is Spielberg's movie from 1977. And science fiction and the idea of science fiction, and aliens had never totally been my thing.

And I say had because it's an amazing movie. I think like this is going to be the theme. We each are watching a known minted Spielberg classic movie. Like, surprise, they're awesome. But in a way, I kind of think I like our, I mean, I'm anticipating No Me's reaction to her choice, and maybe she'll have hated it, and I'll be completely wrong in my prediction here.

But I do think that this is something that has dogged Spielberg forever, where because he became such a commercial filmmaker so young, because Jaws ended up being this huge surprise hit and because then he repeated it with close encounters and then he blasts out of the park with Jurassic Park. People like to think of him as, you know, oh, he's like the popcorn guy. And then you watch his movies and you're like,

these are amazing. What a great filmmaker. What is amazing about this movie is that it's a really human movie even though it's about aliens. It's something is going on in the skies. People all around the world. are noticing weird stuff.

In India, a whole group of people is ecstatically singing a melody. Ha, ha, ha. Do, do, do, do. And when they're asked, where did you hear this sound? Do they all point with their forefinger to the skies? Francois Trouffaut is running around in the guise of Lacombe, the character he plays. I mean, guys, there's an amazing Truffaut performance accompanied by a wonderful Bob Balaban as his assistant translating from the French. That duo would have watched a whole spin-off about that kooky duo.

They're trying to figure what's going on. And in the middle of all of this, Richard Dreyfus, who here is playing a guy called Roy. Roy Neary. Roy Neary, who works as a telephone lineman and lives with his wife and three kids, has an encounter, a close encounter with a UFO and is forever changed by it. And one thing I love about the movie is that Spielberg pays really close attention to the human cost of wanting to know more. There's a depiction of this totally chaotic family, which I really loved. I love the honesty about how much chaos there can be in a family with kids. It's so like 70s divorce, quoted this movie is.

So, so much so. He's making a fucking mess in the living room trying to create this, like, weird, like, mountain that he, keeps envisioning in his mind. He makes it out of mashed potatoes. Then he makes it out of dirt in the middle of the living room. Like, the family is gone. The family is like destroyed in the name of this kind of seeking. And I think it's also, I mean, obviously we also know, you know, whoever watched the fableman's like, this is autobiographical for a spilberg. This is autobiographical. This is autobiographical. You know, Spielberg himself was a child of divorce, et cetera. But there's also something that is so, you know, post-60s about this movie about, like, this is a person who

wants something different. And the family is collapsing because of that for, like, better or worse, you know, for this idea of kind of a self-fulfillment that has been wrought by societal changes. I love that take now, me. Yeah, that's so smart. Yeah, exactly. Oh, Dad's having his midlife crisis. So we all have to, so the family breaks out.

Everybody's going to talk about aliens. Exactly. And then, of course, there's the aliens of it. These are Spielbergian aliens. And by that I mean kind, cute, not as cute as ET, but cute, aliens who want to make contact, who are benevolent figures. It has the stuff, Vincent, that you mentioned, that's going to be important for Disclosure Day, also, where there's a government body that doesn't want people to know. things. It's trying to keep people in the dark. But there is a benevolence and a hopefulness to this movie. It's so great. It's a wonderful movie because I think what you're saying, Alex, similarly to you,

and I think you know this, I'm not a sci-fi person. I'm not a fantasy person. I'm a realism person, canonically. And yet, this is one of my favorite movies because it's a movie about people. That's right. And just in keeping with our theme here, close encounters, it's no jaws, but it does really well at the box office. He made it for less than $20 million. It makes more than $300 million. Yeah. It's pretty good. You know, this is Spielberg in his, at the crest, one of the many crests of his career. One of the many crests.

And on to another crest. The crest. The crest of crest. The crest of crest. Which was my blind spot. I shockingly had never seen Jurassic Park from 1993. And my co-hosts were shocked and dismayed to hear that that was the case. And so I hasten to rectify.

Also excited. I hasten to rectify this. And I watched Jurassic Park for the first time a few days ago. Great movie. I was glued to my seat. I was riveted. In this movie, we have these three scientists, Alan Grant, played by Sam Neal. We have Dr. Sattler, Ellie Settler, played by Laura Dern, his colleague.

And we have the kind of like Semitted Good Looks mathematician, Ian Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum. And they are chosen to go to this new theme park that is being kept heavily under wraps where scientists have managed to recreate dinosaurs. How fast are they? Well, we clock the T-Rex to 32 miles an hour. You said you've got a T-Rex? Uh-huh. Say again. We have a T-Rex.

Wow. It's once again that thing about like the dangers of knowledge and what is done with knowledge that is hidden for many and used by few. there's a kind of like scientific and is actually kind of like I felt was very appreciate about these kind of like Elon Muskie type figures who are like, I am God. I will create this like my own Wonderland and nothing will go wrong. Of course. And then of course when there's that euberistic impulse, all hell breaks loose. And it's a great movie. Did you have a favorite among the dinosaurs? Okay, I thought the raptors were super scary. Yes. Like, I was like, okay, I don't want to tangle with them.

I kept being like, why, why? Don't do it. I like the sick triceratops. We like him sick. Yes, yes. The sicker the better when it comes to dinosaurs, I would imagine. Do you guys remember, do you guys remember watching Jurassic Park? Oh, of course.

And Lara Fox is home on her kitchen TV. and I want to say 1997. Yeah, I had not been allowed to see this. I was mesmerized, absolutely mesmerized. And I didn't understand. I was watching something that had grossed $1.058 billion. One billion dollars. I mean, my lord, did people love this film.

And, again, what Spielberg is so good at is bringing the human to the fore in these extreme sci-fi kind of, circumstances. And Jurassic Park does that in an amazing way. I remember the dinosaurs when I think of Jurassic Park. But what I really think about is Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum and the people and how they faced this situation. And that's what makes a great blockbuster. In a minute, from the classics to the present, Disclosure Day. Critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back. Before we get back to the episode, we want to tell you about a project we're working on and we're really excited about.

July 4th is on the way, as I'm sure all of our listeners know, 250 years of our country, America. And I've been wanting to develop a playlist made up of songs about America. I guess really songs about our feelings about America, whatever that means right now. Yeah, and we want this to be a joint project. We three are each going to pick some songs to share, and listeners, we really want you to help us pick some songs too,

and we'll work all of our picks into a whole episode built around this idea of America's seen through music. Right. I mean, the song that you pick could reflect, you know, the hopes you have for America or the fears you have for America or the things you hate right now about America. And get specific. Tell us about the lines that speak to you, the lyrics that speak to you. Yeah, give us a range. Contemporary, old, in between, whatever you got. We're here for it. I'm so psyched for this. And so I want you guys to pick up your phones, record a voice memo, and tell us what song reflects your feelings about America today. And then please send these voicemails that you record to us at the mail at new yorker.com subject line critics. I'm keeping him.

I'm too dirty. Can we talk E.T for a second? We can always talk E.T. I watched E.T on the plane. a mere few days ago. And I was crying as if it was 1982 and I was watching it for the first time. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. I mean, I'm going to just come out and say it.

E.T. is a movie I'm afraid to rewatch because I don't know if I can go to that place emotionally right now or ever. I will. This episode will inspire me and I'll probably be sobbing within a number of days along to E.T. but the emotional nakedness of that wrinkled little alien and that shriveled up little old man baby. That little guy. And the abandoned children who care for him is the most... Again, the children of divorce.

The children of divorce. That American scourge. What happened to the American family, my friends? The way that E.T. has been baked into the culture, I think it's still there. Growing up, not even just with E.T. itself, but with the commercials for the Universal Studios ride, E.T. ride. All I wanted to do in my one life on Earth was to get in that little bicycle ride and go. Go.

Go up. Silhouetted against the moon. Amblin. Send me up. Send me up. Vincent, have you seen E.T. recently? What's your feeling about it? Again, it's a very emotional film.

again, Spielberg's autobiographical penchant, you know, it's sort of based on an imaginary friend he created after the divorce of his parents. So he's always talking at his own heartstrings first. Yeah.

And thereby, talking at ours. But yeah, I just remember it as maybe it was my, I mean, between E.T. and Alph. I'm not sure which one was my first engagement with the sitcom Alf, which

centered around a furry puppet who was also an alien, right? Of course. It came from Melmac. There you go. Never forget. These were my first aliens. Alpha sexy, though. That's, I don't even know how, but it's so you.

What? Because he's so her suit, because he has like a little, you know, a little hair tough. Yeah, he's her suit and he's a little mean. Nomilex tortured, troubled, chest hair. The next, in one second, we're about to hear that Alf had submitted good looks, and we're just not going to know what to do with it. I've been trying not to say it.

Okay, sorry. apologies to everyone. Whereas E.T. is merely heartbreakingly cute. Exactly. Okay. Yes. We brought it back. We brought it home.

Well, I think that just even the mention, the brief mention of E.T. is a great way to get now on to Disclosure Day, which is in theaters now. doing very well, as we mentioned before. Who would like to offer a synopsis of Disclosure Day? I feel like we have only one woman. I'm kind of feeling it today, guys. You got it. I see the spark.

I'm feeling it. We got Josh O'Connor, my man, Josh O'Connor, as a rogue. Of course. Josh O'Connor, the rogue, has been working at a sinister corporation whose name, I want to say is Hendricks, even though that's not its name. close to that. What is it? What is it?

What is it? Wembex. What is it? When? Windex. He's been working at Windex. I'm sorry. War Dex.

War Dex. Rolex. Windex. No, it's Wardex. I just love thinking about how they workshop to find the appropriately evil name. Wardex has some information. It doesn't want the people to know.

Namely, as we find out very quickly, that aliens have made contact with the human race. The word is not out, but fortunately, Josh O'Connor, whose name in this movie is Daniel Kalmer, has lots of little files that have all this evidence on them. He's stolen them from Wordex, and now he's trying to get away. Meanwhile, over in Kansas City, we have Emily Blunt as Margaret Fairchild, a weather woman, and she one day sees its cardinal pop into her window and begin speaking every language on the globe. And this is because the aliens have made contact with her. And these two need to find each other. They are the pieces in the puzzle that will allow for Disclosure Day,

which is going to be the day when Daniel Kellner lets the whole world know this has been going on. The nemesis of this movie is Noah Scanlon and absolutely unrecognizable Colin Firth. It took me a minute. Yeah. He has a little device that looks like a mazuzza and he likes to hold it. And that evil mazzoza lets him drop in. on other people and speak to them inside their own heads. And it's a chase.

It's a chase. Are the good guys going to be able to reach the global population before the bad guys can stop them? Because this movie has a very clear ethics, which is people deserve the right to know. And something that is very painful is the mistreatment of these aliens that is being revealed,

these poor aliens who seem kind of, you know, frail and sympathetic, they're very similar in appearance to aliens we've seen in Spielberg before, ET and close encounters, kind of Elfin, uh, wemby-like. They are, they're wemby-like, perhaps slightly shorter,

but, but, you know, kind of like, many little wembies. Um, that is, that is very painful and in fact, you know, this also reminds me of Schindler's list. You know, there, there is, I think, in Spielberg's work, and this might like the Jewishness or I don't know. I think there is this kind of fear or pain around the idea of abusing or repressing a more

vulnerable race or group or whatever you want to call it. I don't know. I mean, in terms of whether we liked this movie or not. Well, did you? Let's start there. I will say the first 45 minutes or so, I was like, fuck, this is great. Like, Spielberg is so back. Like, this is amazing.

Emily Blunt is amazing. She's so good. She was great. She was great. She's funny. And she's like, she's so talented. And she does a great job. And it's just like very gripping.

You know, you're like, what's going to happen? Oh, my God. It kind of starts in Medius. Russ. Immediately you're kind of tossed into this world of dangerous. and intrigue and you don't totally understand what's happening. And so I was gripped and I was really enjoying and I was like, yes, Spielberg is like, yes, he's doing his blockbuster thing where it's like great performances, really well written, but also

like really taught and kind of like action-packed. But then it started, I felt like there was a lot of that was superfluous, I guess. I was like there was the whole kind of like story with like Jane. the Eve Houston girlfriend character, her faith and her like coming up as a nun or aspirant nun. And like those theological questions that kind of like I felt like way down the kind of the main crux of the whole thing. I felt like Coleman Domingo, you know, great actor, love him. But I was like, how has he suddenly become like the new Morgan Freeman, you know, this kind of like soft. you know, kind of like wise black man who knows everything and can lead us to the, it was like a little much, I felt like.

And also just like on the level of plot, there was a lot going on. And I was like, couldn't we have like whittled this down a little bit more? What did you think, Alex? I think I appreciated this movie more than I enjoyed it. I appreciated a few things. I appreciated being at a movie theater on opening weekend with a bunch of people around me. That experience. Fun.

Fun. I appreciated the chases. Joyed them very much. Bursting through buildings. A nice train chase sequence, which feels old-fashioned just the fact that a train was involved. But trains still ride among us every day. They're out there. Use them.

Big train sequence. Big train sequence. Jumping around on trains. Love Josh O'Connor and Emily Blunt. And yet I felt that this movie, I don't want to say it felt formulaic because it's not Spielberg exactly painting by numbers. I think it's Spielberg revisiting many of his obsessions and themes with a huge sincerity to him. You know, we did an episode on earnestness. Listeners may recall.

And this movie would fit right in there. This movie deals, treats this question of human life and extra human life with great earnestness and religion with great earnestness. There's a nun has a very prominent role. It's the second big movie in recent memory. The other one is Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, where a nunnery, a convent, is treated as a place of refuge and political resistance. That was kind of interesting to me that that idea came up for both of these filmmakers. But all that said, I just didn't feel the human element in the way that I really want to in a movie,

particularly in a Spielberg movie. And I felt Spielberg trying for it. But I just wasn't touched by it, and the intellectual ideas about what it would be like to make contact with another species, I feel that Spielberg has treated, another, more than species, I feel that Spielberg has treated more interestingly before, which is itself interesting to me because Spielberg has given interviews lately in which he makes it very clear that he does believe that alien life exists and that he would like to meet it. This is all coming from a very real place for him. Vincent, what did you think? Yeah, it's interesting because I do think that it's not really tugging out the heartstrings, partially because to me, of the Spielberg films that I've seen, it seems to be the most sort of conceptual and abstract.

I think it's trying to sort of rearrange, again, our society and see it through, like, the pain of a different window. It reminds me of a poem by Robert Hayden. I might have even mentioned it on this podcast. He has this poem. It's called American Journal. And it's from the point of view of an alien, visiting America. Can I read a stanza?

Please. And so the poem is, as the title suggests, it's a journal by this alien who has been sent by his overlords to come. and sort of take notes on America. He's like an alien Tokvill or something like that. Crowds gathering in the streets today for some reason obscure to me. Noise and violent motion,

repulsive physical contact, sentinels, pigs I heard them called, with flailing clubs, rage and bleeding and frenzy and screaming, machines wailing, unbearable decibels. I fled lest vibrations of the brutal scene

do further harm to my metabolism already overtaxed. It's this being who... It's about UFC at the White House. There you go. Just like of confused by American bloodlust and dynamism. But also, as we see throughout the poem, we kind of come to understand that the alien overlords are also kind of softly authoritarian.

And he's like sort of also attracted this alien to, I don't know, so there's some like sort of charisma of the barbaric Americans or something like that. And we get to see through this film, too. You know, there is this moment when the, I don't know, slight spoiler. There's a moment when the tapes are finally released, and there is a newscaster who is seeing them concurrently with them being shown to people on television. And she's kind of almost crying, and she's saying it's just like, this just calls into question our place. And you can tell she means this existential.

And like, what is a human being and what are they for? But also, as they show these scenes of, like, you know, aliens being whatever, like, operated upon or, like, proto-waterboarded or whatever, you know. What is our place? Like, what are we? That we would do this, too. You know, so there's all these. I think that question comes so much to the fore in this film that it overrides. And I think purposely, any human drama.

which is to me plays against the Spielbergian thing. I don't think it's ever trying to make us cry or weep or feel for a human being or even the aliens really. It's a thought experiment where the existence of these beings and they're sort of the unmasking of this fact, I don't know, creates this grand, like, counterfactual. So I was kind of riveted by that. I thought it was really funny. So I think I may, I think, and I'm still,

working through this. I saw it last night. I think I liked it, but I'm still thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. When we're back, the state of the blockbuster and Stephen Spielberg's legacy. That's in a minute on Critics at large from the New York. So we've been talking about the state of the blockbuster. Does Disclosure Day, maybe it's box office success, maybe it's actual existence as an artifact, does it make you think differently about where this form

the blockbuster is headed? I think one of the main things that we haven't really talked about yet is that this is not an IP-based movie. Right. I mean, we've had blockbusters. We have blockbusters.

We have all of the Marvel movies, which are enormously expensive and usually do enormously well in the box office. but they are not original stories. And there was like, when I was sitting, I went to see it in a theater on the Upper West Side Friday afternoon.

So, you know, the theater was full. Yeah. You know, there were like 10 trailers before. Almost all of them were some form of, like, IP, kind of like mega entertainment. type thing. Yeah, like, Supergirl. I was like, I could not be less interested than seeing a movie about Superman's cousin. How dare you? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The only movie that was that I saw that I was like, okay, this is maybe like super stupid, but I'm like, so in was the movie about like

Brad Pitt and his dog. Did you see that? No. I didn't see that. I didn't get that trailer. There is some action movie where Brad Pitt has a trusty dog. And they go through to hell and back together. Holy shit. And I was like, okay, this is, I mean, it's Brad. Yeah. And it's a dog. And it's a dog.

It's Brad and it's a dog. Sounds like a formula. Heart of the beast. Heart of the beast. I was like, I'm going to fucking going to, I'm going to see this movie because it, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's also an original story. There you go. And I was like, here we go. Set in the wilds of Alaska.

Set in the wilds of Alaska. I'm like, we're so bad. In a harsh landscape that would likely kill any other man or dog. I know. And so. Yeah, man. And so I was like, okay, you know what? This might be like totally stupid.

But I'm like, oh, Hollywood. Still got it. You know. A man in his dog. It's magic. But not just any man. Not just any dog. I mean, listen, Brad looks incredible.

I was thinking, and I'm going to offer my answer first because I've been thinking about him a lot. But I wonder what you guys think of who is working in the Spielberg vein these days. And it's a hard answer because, of course, part of what the Spielberg vein is is working in many different veins, right? At least genre-wise. I've been thinking about Ryan Cougler a lot. Because, like, you know, like sinners, yeah. Doing like sinners, but then also having Fruitvale Station is like, it's like having Jurassic Park and Chandler's List, you know? Right.

He's this very versatile but also very commercially minded filmmaker who is nonetheless trying to really speak in language we can comprehend on the level of society or whatever. Are there other people doing the thing, this thing? I mean, I think that I think that the combination of kind of history and fantasy politics, you know, society and in sci-fi. I think, yeah, I think Coogler and just within even sinners in and of itself that combines so many of these impulses. I think that's a great read interpretation. I'm also thinking about someone like Jordan Peel who directed the movie Nope, which came out in 2022. Nope is very, very much in the Van derives film. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this kind of like wonder of the 80s. You know, someone who grew up... Hands across America and us. Yeah. Clearly grew up on Spielberg. And, yeah. And the kind of like, I guess, playfulness, I would say. Yeah.

To me, it seems like if there's a legacy there, it's almost like what we call pop-timism and music criticism. That, like, the assurance that you can make art in the context of not only genre, but sort of... The market. The market. The other person that I meant, I was think about in this van, was Greta Gerwig. Yeah.

Who, you know, Barbie next is Narnia, but also has, you know, very indie-seeming films at the onset of her career and seems unashamed to say, yeah, I can do all of that and put forward a vision, whether it's literally,

how could you get more commercial than Barbie or something else? So that's, you know. I think that's so right, Vincent. I think that one of the paths that Spielberg blazed was being a kind of autur within the big capitalist commercial framework.

And he's gotten shit from both sides for the fact that he straddles this divide, you know, whether it's being called not an artist or what have you. But when you talk about blockbusters and movies that are getting people in their seats, beyond a question the movies to be talking about right now are obsession and backrooms. And those are what makes this an interesting story of the blockbuster where Spielberg fits in, is that we have 79-year-old Spielberg going up against two guys who are roughly the same age he was when Jaws came out. So we have someone, he's not done making movies. I hear he's about to make his first Western, can't wait to see it all in, but we have someone at the latter part of his career and the end of his career who's back again trying to use his own formula reinvented to make a big hit film.

And then we have these two other super scrappy filmmakers. A lot has been said about them. They're coming from the Internet. They're making these movies on shoestring budgets. But these are both original horror concepts that just keep giving and giving and giving and generating great excitement at the box office. So I think we're spying. I don't know and no one knows if those things become a kind of Spielbergian formula. But we have like grandfather's special, which is a blockbuster at the moment.

And we have the young guys thing. And Spielberg's movie is very successful. About 59% of its audience we've read was over the ancient age of 34, you know, us three included. I think there's a lot of general complaining about, of course, we know there is about Gen Z killing the movies and they don't appreciate it with the screens in front of their faces. Like, actually, no. Here the young people are showing up to watch movies in the theater to enjoy them. and it's really older people who have not come back and force to the movies since COVID. So Spielberg has got them back, and for that I'm very glad.

But I don't think it is pointing a new direction in the way that backrooms and obsession is. What do you think, Vincent? I think that's probably right. Again, I do think it's trying to – it's almost like Spielberg is trying to bring sort of a space of like, I don't know, almost discourse about belief. This is, to me, the whole thing about the nunnery and the conversations. Yeah, see to a nunnery. I insist on going to nunnery. Laura asking these questions, but by what right would you bring it to light?

And all these, you know, I do think he's trying to do something else, which I think is interesting to do in the space of the blockbuster. It's almost like Spielberg created the blockbuster, but then also created a space within the blockbuster to not parody the blockbuster. comment on it. Like he's like, he created a blockbuster and the meta blockbuster or something like that. But it's interesting to me that these new films, backrooms obsession, are horror, and therefore they are still

following a now-time-tested path. It's like, we'll trust you if you could scare us real good first. Like, you could say that that's what Jaws is. You know? If you could do that, then we'll let you, you know, we trust you. You can take us anywhere you want. to of a summer, you know.

So I do think that they're still working in the tradition. To your point about the demographics of Disclosure Day, we should just say it made $44 million in North America over the opening weekend, which is quite respectable. And, you know, as we have been saying, he is back. Yeah, I mean, we have no idea if this movie will turn out to be considered overall a success. It's funny. We're at the beginning of it to make money back. It's going to have to generate a huge amount of money.

The one, the other thing we should say about Spielberg blockbusters, and I'm sure many people listening know this, is that the other thing that Spielberg did was not just deliver enormous opening weekends. It was keeping movies in theaters for a very, very long time. Right. Movies that people that kept generating intense interest that people wanted to see for months and months and months, which was and remains extremely rare. So that's going to be the test. Does it have staying power? But Spielberg is Spielberg. And, you know, it's, I just keep thinking back on some episodes we've done and how.

how nicely Spielberg could have fit into so many of them because like the suburban episode we did, you know, Spielberg, the bard of the suburbs, just for one example. And he really just is still going. Still going. That was the Critics at Large podcast, and this is New Yorker Radio Hour.

You can find them and us wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back later this week with the hosts of the popular podcast. The rest is history. David Remnick talks with them about when it comes to the American Revolution, we've been thinking about it all wrong. That's next time on the New Yorker Radio Hour. I hope you'll join us.