While Spielberg has made some good movies since Jaws, he also made (sort of) A.I. and Munich. And as a friend has pointed out, Jaws wouldn’t have been the movie it was (nor would Star Wars have been the movie it was) if Spielberg (or Lucas) had the unlimited budget and free reign that they have now. Spielberg wanted more of the shark and had to work around a mechanical shark that didn’t work right, probably making a better movie in the process. There are also plenty of directors who writers who hit gold early and never seem to be able to recapture the magic, such as M. Night Shyamalan.
Yes, I was over-generalizing but when more than a few moviemakers and authors got wealthy or successful, people stopped saying “no” to them, they stopped having to work around limitations, and they felt free to let their political hair down. Sometimes they still produce movies, yes, but Terminator, Jaws, and the original Star Wars were more than special effects extravaganzas in part because they couldn’t afford the special effects or the technology wasn’t there for them.
You left out Predator, one of the most gripping SciFi movies ever made.
Jaws wouldn’t have been the movie it was if the shark actually worked. Spielberg has all but admitted it.
Certainly lack of push back can be a factor in turning good artists into bad. They are artists after all and as such tend towards weird ideas and do occasionally benefit from people pointing out they just said something really stupid. That also plays into the problem frequently referred to as “believing their own press” nothing screws up a genius more than actually thinking they’re a genius. Most of the best artists aren’t impressed with themselves, when you hear a director complain that he hates watching his own movies because all he sees is the mistakes that guy is probably going to keep getting better.
But really most people get better with experience, because there’s really only a handful of guys with the kind of flopless track record that really leads to problems. And if they do get that track record and make the problem product then they no longer have the track record and get brought back down to earth. I go back to my previous reference to Ridley Scott, he had a great run to start the century with Gladiator and Hannibal and Blackhawk Down and was starting to enter “can do no wrong” territory when A Good Year blew up in his face, but he came back strong with American Gangster and Body of Lies and is signed on to come back to his roots with the next Alien movie.
Your point about Shamalayan is very well taken. One-trick pony, he.
Every director makes a few stinkers along the way. I think Saving Private Ryan is a damn good movie, and Raiders of the Lost Ark was a ball. The first 2 hours of Munich were excellent. The last 20 minutes stunk up the joint.
So yes, you were over-generalizing. Something I myself never do and never have done. Ever. In my entire life. or in my past lives as Cleopatra and Chopin.