“The movie industry has changed a lot since the glory days of art films and film criticism.
Spielberg helped to change it: what people praise in him now isn’t what they praised in Bergman or Antonioni.”
I agree and I think that is one reason to disdain him.
He brought film down (one of the contributors). He was an efficient TV movie maker of cheesy horror thrillers.
Making B movies in to well crafted technically excellent products that use technical expedience as a substitute for art or creativity or even entertainment did us no favors.
Going back to my original opinion that he’s a hack, I will compare to the two you mentioned, Bergman or Antonioni. I might think Antonionis films are a bunch of garbage, but he wasn’t a hack.
The idea that Spielberg brought down the quality of mainstream Hollywood product is a myth. It’s belied by the fact that the most popular films of the early 1970s were cheesy disaster films like ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ and Mel Brooks films. Jaws was miles above that stuff. Close Encounters and E.T. were quite artful and display an independent vision. Ray Bradbury called C.E. the best Science Fiction film ever made. As for who made worse films than the two you mentioned, I don’t regard 1941 as a bad film...in its uncut version its an exhilarating cinematic vaudeville with a great sense of constant motion. And even the very best filmmakers have made duds, Hawks, Ford, Bergman, Hitchcock. If Hook stands out its because there was more attention paid to it.