With a career spanning more than four decades, Steven Spielberg has a number of Hollywood box office hits under his belt. Whether its soldiers, dinosaurs, or aliens, the US director has a talent for bringing any character to life. As US author Dean Kowalski put it, “Few movie directors have had a greater impact on popular culture than Steven Spielberg.”
His work Ready Player One, a sci-fi adventure, scored 9.2 out of 10 on Chinese social networking website Douban.
The movie tells a story set in 2045 about people who escape their tough reality by visiting a virtual world where imagination is the only limit. Ready Player One poses a question to its characters, and indeed to those who watch it: With a readily available world of fantasy to escape to, is it possible to strike a balance between real life and virtual reality?
In the film, people find it hard to say goodbye to their virtual life every night, because “the world of 2045 can no longer provide the social interaction and human connection they crave”, The Guardian noted.
This is a typical way Spielberg reflects both reality and humanity through his movies, drawing attention to how society could possibly change to work better.
Spielberg believes that “the way you create a better future is by studying the past”, as he said during a speech at Harvard University in 2016.
His Jewish roots and his fathers experience as a soldier in World War II encouraged him to study the history of the Holocaust. In Schindlers List (1993), Spielberg tells the story of this terrible incident through the eyes of German industrialist Oskar Schindler.
The director feels that one of the most fulfilling things in his career is having “the public discussing history again”, he told the National Endowment for the Humanities.
One of Spielbergs best-known works, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), presents sentiments about the Cold War through the loving story of a child and an alien from outer space. “If a young boy can bond with a life-form from a distant world, there is absolutely hope for one to be at peace with his fellow man, sharing the same small planet,” Matthew Honovic of Long Island Film Society commented.
To the average person, Spielbergs movies are nothing more than entertainment. “However different their subjects, his productions have a common thematic DNA of humanity, so we are enlightened as well as entertained,” Tom Brokaw of Time magazine wrote. “The power of his films remained long after the closing credits, and so it is with his career.”
從影四十多年來,史蒂文·斯皮爾伯格執(zhí)導了多部好萊塢票房大片。不論是大兵、恐龍還是外星人,這位美國導演有著能讓任何角色栩栩如生的天賦。正如美國作家迪恩·科瓦爾斯基所言:“幾乎沒有哪個電影導演能比史蒂文·斯皮爾伯格對流行文化的影響大。”
他的作品《頭號玩家》是一部科幻冒險片,在中國社交網站豆瓣網上獲得9.2分(滿分10分)的高分。
電影講述了一個發(fā)生在2045年的故事。為了逃避殘酷的現實,人們前往一個虛擬的世界,在那個世界,凡是你能想到的都能得以實現?!额^號玩家》向影片中的角色,甚至是影片的觀眾拋出一個問題:如果有一個現成的能夠供人逃避現實的幻想世界,人們有可能平衡現實生活和虛擬現實嗎?
影片中,人們每晚都對虛擬生活戀戀不舍,因為“2045年的世界無法給人們提供他們渴望的社交互動以及人際關系”?!缎l(wèi)報》指出。
這是斯皮爾伯格通過電影反映現實和人性的典型手法,讓人們關注如何能夠讓社會變得更好。
斯皮爾伯格認為“了解過去才能創(chuàng)造更好的未來”,這正是2016年他在哈佛大學的演講中說過的話。
斯皮爾伯格的猶太血統(tǒng)以及他父親的“二戰(zhàn)”從軍經歷促使他去研究第二次世界大戰(zhàn)中納粹對猶太人的大屠殺的歷史。在電影《辛德勒的名單》(1993)中,斯皮爾伯格通過德國工業(yè)家奧斯卡·辛德勒的視角,講述了這一可怕的事件。
這位導演認為,他職業(yè)生涯中最有意義的一件事便是“讓公眾再次探討歷史”,他曾對美國國家人文基金會這樣表示。
《外星人E.T.》(1982)是斯皮爾伯格最知名的電影之一。影片是通過一個孩子和一個來自外太空的外星人之間的愛的故事,來呈現對冷戰(zhàn)的觀點?!叭绻粋€小男孩能和一個來自遙遠星球的生命建立起親密的關系,那么人們之間也絕對有可能和平共處,共享這個小小的星球?!遍L島電影協(xié)會的馬修·霍洛維科評論道。
對于普通人而言,斯皮爾伯格的電影不過是消遣罷了?!安徽撾娪暗闹黝}有多么不同,他的作品中都帶著共有的人性主題基因,所以我們在得到消遣的同時也受到了啟發(fā)?!薄稌r代周刊》的湯姆·布羅考寫道:“影片結束之后,他的作品所帶來的影響力依然長久不衰,正如他長青的事業(yè)一樣?!?/p>