7 Steven Spielberg Movies That Are Just Kind of Average

Outright misses are very rare, especially considering how prolific Spielberg’s been, and how many different genres he’s tackled. The misses aren’t even the focus here, because the movies below are either just kind of okay, or they’ve got a roughly equal number of good and bad qualities, thereby averaging out to… well, sort of average, like, overall.

7 'Amistad' (1997)

1993 was already alluded to as a big year for Spielberg, in terms of him directing both a critically acclaimed historical drama/epic (Schindler’s List) and a big blockbuster (Jurassic Park) that came out in the same year, and a similar undertaking was done in time for 1997. That year saw the release of both Amistad and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, so you can line up those two with the two very different 1993 movies Spielberg directed, albeit neither is quite as good as what came out in 1993.

Still, Amistad is not bad. It’s about the aftermath of an uprising on board a slave ship in 1839, with a good deal of focus on the trial that followed the event. It’s perhaps a little dry, and also quite slow-going, at a point, being one of those Steven Spielberg movies that’s about half an hour longer than it needs to be. Still, there are good performances here, and it certainly doesn’t feel lazy from a filmmaking (or technical) perspective, even if it lacks a certain something to make it feel truly monumental by the end of it all.

6 'Bridge of Spies' (2015)

There are five Steven Spielberg movies that star Tom Hanks, and of them, Saving Private Ryan is probably the only one that’s an outright masterpiece. Well, Catch Me If You Can is also very good, albeit a touch long. They both fare better than Bridge of Spies, which is another solid – if slightly underwhelming – historical drama directed by Spielberg, this time being set during the Cold War and with a premise that involves a prisoner exchange.

It’s technically a thriller, just not a very thrilling one. Bridge of Spies never really takes off or feels impactful the way something like Munich does (another Spielberg film that takes place in the not-too-distant past while involving an overall tense situation). There is a slight feeling of “that’s it?”, come the end of Bridge of Spies, even if very little of it can be called bad. It’s competently written, solidly directed, decently acted, and then not much more.

5 'The Post' (2017)

For better or worse, this feels like an appropriate double feature with Bridge of Spies. The Post has the same kind of vibe as Bridge of Spies, and is another overall competent, but slightly underwhelming, Spielberg film. It is just there. It goes through the motions. It is about The Washington Post and the role that journalists there played in making the Pentagon Papers public knowledge.

You can look at the cast list, note it’s a 2010s Spielberg film, read a summary of the premise, and then probably watch a movie in your head that lines up very closely with The Post (2017) in practice. There is a feeling of very few people here going above and beyond, yet if the cast is talented and the director is, maybe that’s enough. It’s certainly enough to make The Post decent and watchable overall. It’s hard to call it bad, and yet there’s also a difficulty in finding things that are truly impressive or even memorable here.

4 '1941' (1979)

Some people will be quick to point out that 1941 is an absolute mess of a movie, and those same people aren’t wrong. That means some will question the idea of it being “average,” but coming out of 1941 feeling that way might have something to do with the film’s abysmal reputation leading to an expectation of something awful, which then leads to a subsequent pleasant surprise when there ends up being some things here to genuinely appreciate.

Essentially, 1941 is a slapstick comedy on an almost epic scale, with a good deal of destruction and chaos that feels like it’s going for an It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World kind of thing, just not as effectively. It’s energetic and has a surprisingly impressive cast, though you do have to be prepared for the actual funny parts being as inconsistent as the rest of the movie is loud and chaotic.

3 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' (2008)

For almost 20 years, Indiana Jones existed as a trilogy, and a pretty great one, at that. The three films in the series that came out in the 1980s are the three best ones, quite comfortably, while the 21st-century Indiana Jones movies don’t fare quite so well. Though, to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s credit, it is a potentially better movie than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which came and went and has been subsequently forgotten, even though 2023 was not all that long ago, in the overall scheme of things.

There are more divisive moments in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but at least it went for something, and there are good sequences in the film (mostly in the first half). There’s still some energy here, just not enough to make it a great film. It’s probably more “okay” than you remember, though. Time will tell if anyone ever wants to re-evaluate it to the same extent as the Star Wars prequels… probably not likely, but it deserves enough by way of reappraisals to make its reputation better than that of Dial of Destiny’s.

2 'Always' (1989)

Always might be most notable for being the final film Audrey Hepburn ever starred in, and not quite a high note within her acting career, or anything… but not the worst final movie to be in. It’s one of the more sentimental Spielberg films, making it potentially aggressively sentimental, with its premise involving the ghost of a pilot providing guidance to a new pilot, from the afterlife, and the turmoil that comes when that new pilot falls in love with the ghost’s still-grieving partner.

It could well sound a bit silly, and maybe it is. Always is definitely not great, yet it’s also not terrible. There are more ways a movie like this could’ve gone wrong, and while “Eh, it could’ve been worse” isn't great praise, it’s something. It’s enough to save Always from feeling like one of the rare outright bad Spielberg films (but that being said, it’s not hard to see where potential Always detractors are coming from).

1 'Hook' (1991)

Hook certainly has its fans, but Steven Spielberg isn't one of them. Still, it’s not his worst movie by any means, and it’s the kind of thing that ends up being “just” okay overall because it’s got some good things and bad things in it, which makes it a little more interesting than the Spielberg films that are sort of just there, and a bit whatever. There are good ideas in Hook, some of it’s creative, and the score does stand out, a little more than the John Williams scores for the previously-mentioned movies do.

The narrative here sees a now-adult Peter Pan having to return to Neverland to save his own children, after Captain Hook kidnaps them. It’s undeniably high-concept, as a premise, and it kind of works. It works enough. It’s also a bit too long, and has some problems tonally (alongside 1941, it makes for a good argument that Spielberg isn't at his best when he’s helming a comedy), but you can also sort of see why it has its defenders, and it’s overall not an outright bad film or anything.