With the success of his latest film “Ready Player One,” Steven Spielberg (born 1946) became the first director to ever generate $10 billion worldwide at the box office. Following closely on the heels of this achievement comes the announcement that he’s ready to begin work on his first DC Comic super-hero movie: “Blackhawk.”

Spielberg’s own super-hero story is almost Bill Gates-like for the fact that he dropped out of college and went on to achieve extreme success, wealth and fame. Although he began making home movies when he was a young boy, he started in the entertainment industry in his early 20s by working on several TV series, include “Columbo,” “Marcus Welby,” and Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery.” In 1975 at age 29, he directed “Jaws,” the movie that did more to discourage swimming in the ocean than any other movie. In 1982, he produced and directed the wildly successful “E.T.”

Among his most well-known movies, are there any recurring themes? Actually, what is remarkable is that there are so many recurring themes. War, especially World War II, has a major presence in his work; he produced both “Band of Brothers” and “Saving Private Ryan.”  He also created the video game,  “Medal of Honor.” His movies range from the very serious – “Schindler’s List” (which he’s called “the most personal professional experience of my life”), “The Color Purple,” “Munich” (the story of the murder of 11 Israeli athletes and their coach at the 1972 Olympics), “Amistad” and “Lincoln.” His career has checked off the box of animated features -- “The Adventures of Tintin,” and “An American Tail” -- as well as family friendly movies “Hook” and “The War Horse.”  

In addition, there are his “based-on-true-events” movies – “The Post” and “Bridge of Spies.” And his science fiction movies: “Men in Black,” “Deep Impact,” “Jurassic Park,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and “Back to the Future.”

Spielberg is credited with being on the leading edge of big special effects movies and also introducing the idea of product placement in movies – for example, the highly visible Reese’s Pieces in E.T.

If that isn’t enough influence, he had a hand in developing the PG-13 designation for films. Two of his films – “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Gremlins” were coming out in the same year. Spielberg made the point to the president of the Movie Picture Association that there was a whole lot of space between PG and R and many movies were falling into “a netherworld of unfairness.”

One of the best interviews with Spielberg was published by Vanity Fair in 2008, so if you’d like to know more about his movie-making, click here for that article.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)