Ace director Steven Spielberg has given numerous box office hits in his career including the cult classic Indiana Jones. His other remarkable franchises include the Jaws series, Jurassic Park, and others. The 76-year-old director is known for his incredible cinematography and storytelling method. He has given some of the best movies in movies in various genres ranging from sci-fi to Western spaghetti. Despite his long list of hits, there are few films that he feels he could have made better.
The director-producer elaborated on one of the films that he considers a box office failure. Spielberg revealed the film 1941 was one of his biggest embarrassments.
Steven Spielberg listed 1941 as his least favorite film
Schindler’s List director shared in an interview about the films, that he considered his worst works. He shared about the film 1979’s comedy about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s movie Pearl Harbor. The film 1941 was a box office disappointment and received negative reviews from critics as well as viewers.
Spielberg shared his thoughts on the film,
“It was like I had committed a war crime.”
Spielberg confided with Variety that he had a great time shooting the film as it experienced no interference from the movie’s studio. But the director thought that it worked against him. Spielberg thought that the studio should have given their input to him on set, which could have saved the film from becoming a huge disaster.
Spielberg added that the studio just wrote checks for the film,
“And they gave me an unlimited celling to make 1941. And it took me 178 days to shoot the picture because I directed all the miniature work… That was the worst mistake you could have made.”
Still, Spielberg reiterated that he enjoyed making the comedy film and considered it the first comedy ever made which did not make anyone laugh.
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Ben Affleck on his role in Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor was a romantic war drama film directed by Michael Bay film. Actors and former couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner played the leads in the film. The actor shared that the preparation for the role was not only tough but also incredibly agonizing.
Batman star recalled,
“I don’t know how they got permission to do this, but they put us in a boot camp in the actual U.S. Army. And it was horrible. It was an incredibly agonizing, painful, miserable experience, and I would have definitely quit, like the first day, if I just wouldn’t have been too embarrassed to have it get out that I quit the training.”
In the boot camp, the cast was addressed by their Pearl Harbor character. Affleck added,
“It was exhausting physically, and to this day, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was really personally satisfying to get through it and to, like, after it was over, have the drill sergeants treat me like a normal human being.”
Pearl Harbor was released in 2001 and dealt with the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. It was a commercial success and grossed $450 million worldwide.
Source- Variety
