Steven Spielberg recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1971 · Film

Duel recap

Duel (1971) traps a travelling salesman on the desert highways of California with a tanker truck whose unseen driver is set on killing him. Steven Spielberg made it for ABC's Movie of the Week from Richard Matheson's story and script. Dennis Weaver plays David Mann, a commuter on his way to a business meeting who passes a rusty, smoke-belching truck. The truck overtakes him, blocks him, then waves him into the path of oncoming traffic. At a roadside diner Mann accuses the wrong customer and gets punched. He tries to help a stranded school bus, is nearly shoved into a passing train at a crossing, and narrowly escapes when the truck rams the phone booth where he is calling the police. All the while his car's radiator hose is failing. The driver is never shown beyond a boot and an arm. Duel is the first film in Spielberg's career on this list, released abroad in cinemas with added scenes, and precedes The Sugarland Express.

How Duel ends

Duel ends with a showdown on a cliff above a canyon. With his radiator hose burst, Mann barely crests a mountain pass and turns to face the truck on a dirt road. He wedges his briefcase on the accelerator, aims the car at the truck and jumps out. The car bursts into flames on impact, and the truck, its view blocked, follows the burning wreck over the edge. Mann whoops in triumph, then sits alone at the cliff edge at sunset, tossing stones down at the wreckage.

Post-credits scenes

No. Duel has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 02 · 1974 · Film

The Sugarland Express recap

The Sugarland Express (1974) follows a Texas mother who breaks her husband out of prison to reclaim their son from foster care, with police in slow pursuit. Steven Spielberg directs a script by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, based on a real 1969 case. Goldie Hawn plays Lou Jean Poplin, who persuades her husband Clovis Poplin (William Atherton) to escape from prison four months before his release. When a highway patrolman, Maxwell Slide (Michael Sacks), stops their stolen car, they take him hostage and drive across Texas toward Sugar Land in his cruiser. Behind them grows a convoy of dozens of police cars, news crews and fans, directed by Captain Tanner (Ben Johnson), who would rather talk them down than shoot. Along the way townspeople cheer the couple and hand them gifts, vigilantes open fire, and Slide grows to like his captors. The Sugarland Express is Spielberg's first theatrical feature, after Duel and before Jaws.

How The Sugarland Express ends

The Sugarland Express ends with an ambush at the foster parents' house in Sugar Land, where Texas Rangers lie in wait. Tanner gives up on negotiation, and both Slide and Clovis sense a trap, but Lou Jean insists Clovis go in for the boy. Two marksmen fatally wound Clovis, and after a last chase the police arrest Lou Jean. Slide walks away unharmed. An epilogue says she served 15 months of a five-year sentence and later won the right to live with her son.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Sugarland Express has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 03 · 1975 · Film

Jaws recap

Jaws (1975) sets a great white shark loose off Amity Island, a New England resort town, on the eve of the summer season. Steven Spielberg directs from Peter Benchley's novel. A night swimmer is killed, and police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), a New Yorker afraid of the water, wants the beaches closed. Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) refuses, fearing for the tourist trade, and a boy named Alex Kintner is killed in front of a packed beach. Marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) confirms the culprit is a great white, not the tiger shark local fishermen catch. After the shark strikes again on the Fourth of July, Vaughn hires Quint (Robert Shaw), a hard-bitten shark hunter, and Brody and Hooper go out with him on his boat, the Orca. On board, Quint tells of surviving the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. Jaws follows The Sugarland Express and precedes Close Encounters of the Third Kind in Spielberg's career.

How Jaws ends

Jaws ends with Brody blowing the shark apart. The shark wrecks the Orca, Hooper's cage dive goes wrong and he hides on the seabed, and Quint slides into the shark's jaws and is eaten. As the boat sinks, Brody jams a scuba tank into the shark's mouth, climbs the mast and shoots it until the tank explodes. Hooper surfaces and the two paddle home. In Benchley's novel, Hooper dies and the shark succumbs to its wounds. Three sequels followed without Spielberg, starting with Jaws 2 in 1978.

Post-credits scenes

No. Jaws has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 04 · 1977 · Film

Close Encounters of the Third Kind recap

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) follows an Indiana power lineman whose UFO sighting sends him on an obsessive path to a meeting with aliens. Steven Spielberg wrote and directed it. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is out investigating a blackout when lights sweep over his truck and burn half his face. The same night, young Barry Guiler (Cary Guffey) runs out after the craft, followed by his mother Jillian (Melinda Dillon). Both Roy and Jillian become haunted by an image of a flat-topped mountain, and Roy sculpts it in shaving cream and mashed potatoes before building it in his living room, driving his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) to leave with their children. Meanwhile, French scientist Claude Lacombe (François Truffaut) tracks lost planes and ships turning up across the world and a five-note signal from space. Aliens take Barry from his home. Close Encounters follows Jaws and precedes 1941 in Spielberg's career.

How Close Encounters of the Third Kind ends

Close Encounters of the Third Kind ends with Roy boarding the alien mothership at Devils Tower in Wyoming. The army fakes a nerve gas spill to clear the area, but Roy and Jillian slip through and reach a secret landing site, where scientists greet the ship by playing the five-note tune. The mothership releases pilots and others taken decades ago, Barry among them. Lacombe chooses Roy to join a team of volunteers, and the ship lifts off with him. Spielberg released a Special Edition in 1980 showing the ship's interior, which the 1998 director's cut removed.

Post-credits scenes

No. Close Encounters has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 05 · 1979 · Film

1941 recap

1941 (1979) is a slapstick comedy set in Los Angeles six days after Pearl Harbor, when a Japanese submarine surfaces offshore and the city panics. Steven Spielberg directs a script by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. Commander Akiro Mitamura (Toshiro Mifune) and a German observer, Captain von Kleinschmidt (Christopher Lee), decide to hit Hollywood. On shore, a tank crew under Sergeant Frank Tree (Dan Aykroyd) includes the hothead Corporal Chuck Sitarski (Treat Williams), who clashes with diner dishwasher Wally Stephens (Bobby Di Cicco) over Betty Douglas (Dianne Kay) and a jitterbug contest. Her father Ward (Ned Beatty) gets an anti-aircraft gun in his front yard. Captain Wild Bill Kelso (John Belushi), a reckless pilot, hunts for the enemy, and an aide, Captain Loomis Birkhead (Tim Matheson), takes Donna Stratton (Nancy Allen), who is aroused by aircraft, up in a bomber. A dance hall riot spills into a night of friendly fire. 1941 follows Close Encounters and precedes Raiders of the Lost Ark.

How 1941 ends

1941 ends with the morning after the chaos. The submarine trades fire with Ward's gun, and a hit sends the amusement park's Ferris wheel rolling into the sea. The tank charges onto the pier and plunges into the water, and Kelso swims to the submarine and demands to be taken to Tokyo; the crew obliges. General Stilwell (Robert Stack) arrives at the wrecked Douglas house, Ward hangs a Christmas wreath on his door and the remains of the house slide down the hill. Stilwell tells Tree it is going to be a long war.

Post-credits scenes

No. 1941 has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 06 · 1981 · Film

Raiders of the Lost Ark recap

In 1936, after narrowly escaping a booby-trapped temple in Peru, only to lose a golden idol to his French rival Rene Belloq, Indiana Jones returns to teaching. Two US Army intelligence officers tell him the Nazis are searching for the Ark of the Covenant, which carried the Ten Commandments and is said to make any army invincible. Indy travels to Nepal to find his old mentor's daughter, Marion Ravenwood, who has a medallion, the headpiece to the Staff of Ra, needed to find the Ark. Marion, still angry at Indy from years before, joins him after Nazis led by the sadistic Toht burn down her bar. In Cairo, they team up with Indy's friend Sallah, and Marion appears to die in a truck explosion. Indy finds the true location of the Ark, the Well of the Souls, full of snakes, and finds Marion alive, but Belloq and the Nazis seal them in the tomb.

How Raiders of the Lost Ark ends

The Nazis open the Ark on an island, and the spirits inside kill them all while Indy and Marion survive by keeping their eyes shut. Indy and Marion escape the tomb, Indy chases the Ark on a truck, and later they are captured on the island. Back in Washington, the government says "top men" are studying the Ark, which is crated and stored in a vast warehouse.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 07 · 1982 · Film

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial recap

A group of alien botanists collecting plants in a California forest are chased off by government agents, and one of them is left behind. Ten-year-old Elliott, whose father has left the family, finds the creature in the garden shed, lures it inside with candy and hides it in his closet. He shows it to his older brother Michael and little sister Gertie, keeping it secret from their mother Mary. The alien, E.T., learns words from Gertie and television, and Elliott starts to feel what E.T. feels, getting drunk at school when E.T. drinks beer at home. E.T. builds a radio from a Speak and Spell and an umbrella to phone home, and on Halloween Elliott takes him into the woods to send the signal, the bicycle lifting into the air on the way. E.T. falls ill, and so does Elliott. Government scientists seal the house, and E.T. appears to die.

How E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ends

E.T. comes back to life as his ship returns. Elliott, Michael and their friends smuggle him out in a van and escape the agents on bicycles, which E.T. lifts into the sky. In the forest, the ship lands; E.T. says goodbye to the family, tells Elliott he will be right here, touching his forehead, and flies home, leaving a rainbow across the sky.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 08 · 1984 · Film

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom recap

In 1935, a year before Raiders, Indiana Jones escapes a gangster's nightclub in Shanghai with the singer Willie Scott and his young sidekick Short Round. Their plane, owned by the gangster, is abandoned mid-air, and they jump out on an inflatable raft and land in India. A poor village begs Indy to recover its sacred Sankara stone, stolen by the Thuggee, and its children, who have been taken. At the Pankot Palace, they meet the young Maharaja and his prime minister, and find secret tunnels into a temple where the Thuggee priest Mola Ram tears out a man's heart and sacrifices him in a pit of lava. The cult is forcing the village children to dig for the last two Sankara stones. Indy is captured and forced to drink a potion that puts him under Mola Ram's control, and Willie is chosen to be sacrificed.

How Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ends

Indy rescues the children and the stones, and Mola Ram falls to his death from a rope bridge, eaten by crocodiles. Short Round breaks Indy's trance with a torch. They free the children and escape on mine carts. On the bridge, Indy calls on Shiva and the stones burn through their bag; Mola Ram falls into the river. British soldiers arrive, and Indy returns the stone and the children to the village.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 09 · 1985 · Film

The Color Purple recap

The Color Purple (1985) follows Celie, a Black girl in rural Georgia in the early 1900s, through decades of abuse toward independence. Steven Spielberg adapts Alice Walker's 1982 novel. Celie (Whoopi Goldberg), who has borne two children by the man she calls her father, both taken from her, is married off to Albert Johnson, known as Mister (Danny Glover), who beats her and drives off her younger sister Nettie (Akosua Busia) when she resists his advances. Nettie promises to write, but no letters come. Mister's son Harpo (Willard Pugh) marries the defiant Sofia (Oprah Winfrey), who is later jailed for hitting the mayor and forced to work as his wife's maid. Mister brings home his ailing lover, the blues singer Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), and Celie nurses her; Shug becomes her friend, then more, and teaches her to see her own worth. The Color Purple comes after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and before Empire of the Sun in Spielberg's career.

How The Color Purple ends

The Color Purple ends with Celie reunited with Nettie and her grown children. Shug and Celie find decades of Nettie's letters that Mister hid, revealing Nettie has been in Africa with the missionaries who adopted Celie's children. At a family dinner Celie stands up to Mister and leaves with Shug. When her stepfather dies she inherits her real father's house and shop and opens a tailoring business. A broken Mister quietly arranges Nettie's return, and the sisters play their childhood clapping game in a field of purple flowers. The film received 11 Oscar nominations and won none.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Color Purple has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 10 · 1987 · Film

Empire of the Sun recap

Empire of the Sun (1987) follows a British boy in Shanghai who loses his parents when Japan seizes the city in 1941 and survives the war in a prison camp. Steven Spielberg directs Tom Stoppard's adaptation of J. G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel. Christian Bale, aged 13, plays Jamie Graham, a privileged boy obsessed with aeroplanes. Alone in his empty house after the family is split up in the crowds, he goes back into the city, where the American hustlers Basie (John Malkovich) and Frank (Joe Pantoliano) take him in and rename him Jim. All three end up in an internment camp at Suzhou, beside a Japanese airfield. By 1945 Jim runs errands and trades for everyone, learns from the camp doctor, Dr. Rawlins (Nigel Havers), is looked after by Mrs. Victor (Miranda Richardson), and befriends a teenage Japanese trainee pilot across the wire. When American Mustangs attack the airfield, he cheers from a rooftop. Empire of the Sun follows The Color Purple and precedes Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

How Empire of the Sun ends

Empire of the Sun ends with Jim reunited with his parents, though he barely seems to recognise them. The Japanese march the prisoners to a stadium full of looted belongings, where Mrs. Victor dies and Jim sees a distant flash he believes is her soul; it is the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Back near the camp, his pilot friend is shot by an American who mistakes his sword for a threat. Jim turns down Basie's offer to come along, is found by soldiers, and is sent to a shelter where his mother and father find him.

Post-credits scenes

No. Empire of the Sun has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 11 · 1989 · Film

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade recap

A prologue shows a teenage Indy in 1912 trying to save the Cross of Coronado from robbers, earning his hat, his fear of snakes and his whip. In 1938, the businessman Walter Donovan tells Indy that his father, Henry Jones Sr., has disappeared while searching for the Holy Grail, and Indy receives Henry's Grail diary in the mail. Indy and his old friend Marcus Brody go to Venice, where Dr. Elsa Schneider is working with Henry. Indy finds a knight's tomb in the catacombs and learns that Henry is held by the Nazis in a castle in Austria. He rescues his father, and they learn that Elsa and Donovan are working for the Nazis. Indy and Henry, never close, argue across Europe, going to Berlin to recover the diary and fleeing on a zeppelin. They follow the diary to the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, where Sallah joins them, and the Nazis capture Brody.

How Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ends

Indy finds the Grail, saves his dying father with it, and the temple collapses as Elsa reaches for the cup; they ride off into the sunset. Donovan shoots Henry to force Indy through the traps. Donovan drinks from the wrong cup and dies, and the ancient knight guarding it tells Indy the Grail cannot leave. Elsa falls, Henry tells Indy to let it go, and they ride away with Sallah and Brody.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 12 · 1989 · Film

Always recap

Always (1989) follows a daredevil firefighting pilot who dies on a mission and returns as a spirit to guide a rookie who falls for his girlfriend. Steven Spielberg remakes the 1943 wartime film A Guy Named Joe, moving it to aerial firefighters in the American West. Pete Sandich (Richard Dreyfuss) takes risks that frighten his girlfriend Dorinda Durston (Holly Hunter), a pilot and dispatcher, and worry his best friend Al Yackey (John Goodman). He agrees to take a safer training job, then flies one last run, saves Al's burning plane and explodes in the fire. In a burned forest he meets Hap (Audrey Hepburn, in her last film role), who tells him he is dead and must now inspire another pilot as others once inspired him. Months later at a training base in Colorado, Pete whispers advice to the rookie Ted Baker (Brad Johnson), and is jealous when Ted and Dorinda grow close. Always follows Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and precedes Hook.

How Always ends

Always ends with Pete letting Dorinda go. To keep Ted out of danger, she takes his plane on a rescue of trapped firefighters, and Pete rides along unseen, guiding her through the drop and finally telling her what he never said in life. She ditches in a lake and, reluctant to escape the sinking plane, sees Pete reach out and lead her to the surface. He releases her, and she walks back to the base and into Ted's arms while Pete smiles and walks away.

Post-credits scenes

No. Always has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 13 · 1991 · Film

Hook recap

Peter Banning is a workaholic lawyer who has no memory of his childhood and breaks his promises to his children, Jack and Maggie. On a family trip to London to see his wife's grandmother Wendy, the children are kidnapped, and a note is signed by Captain James Hook. Wendy tells Peter that he is Peter Pan, grown up. Tinker Bell carries him to Neverland, where Hook is disappointed by the overweight, out-of-shape man who cannot fly or fight. Tink persuades Hook to give Peter three days to get ready. The Lost Boys, now led by Rufio, doubt Peter but train him. Meanwhile Hook, with Smee's help, sets out to win Jack's love, and Jack starts to see Hook as a father. Peter finally remembers his past and finds his happy thought, the birth of his son, and he flies again.

How Hook ends

Peter leads the Lost Boys against the pirates and wins back his children, but Hook kills Rufio. Peter beats Hook in a duel and spares him, and Hook is swallowed by the stuffed crocodile that crashes down on him. Peter names Thudbutt leader of the Lost Boys and returns to London with Jack and Maggie, a changed father who says to live would be an awfully big adventure.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 14 · 1993 · Film

Jurassic Park recap

When a park worker is killed by a velociraptor, the investors in John Hammond's new island theme park demand experts sign off on it. Hammond brings palaeontologist Alan Grant, palaeobotanist Ellie Sattler, mathematician Ian Malcolm and lawyer Donald Gennaro to Isla Nublar off Costa Rica, along with his grandchildren, Lex and Tim. The park holds living dinosaurs cloned from DNA preserved in mosquitoes trapped in amber, with gaps filled with frog DNA, and all of them are female so they cannot breed. Malcolm warns that life will find a way. During the tour, a storm hits, and computer programmer Dennis Nedry shuts down the park's security to smuggle embryos out for a rival company. The fences go dark, a Tyrannosaurus breaks out and eats Gennaro, and Nedry is killed by a Dilophosaurus. Grant finds hatched eggs: the dinosaurs are breeding.

How Jurassic Park ends

Ellie restores the power, and the raptors, now loose, kill the game warden Muldoon and hunt the children through the visitor centre. Lex reboots the security system, and as the raptors corner the group, the T. rex bursts in and kills them. The survivors escape by helicopter, and Hammond gives up on his park.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 15 · 1993 · Film

Schindler's List recap

Schindler's List (1993) tells the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved over a thousand Jews from the Holocaust by employing them. Steven Spielberg directs, mostly in black and white, from Steven Zaillian's adaptation of Thomas Keneally's novel Schindler's Ark. Liam Neeson plays Schindler, a Nazi Party member and charming opportunist who arrives in Kraków in 1939 to make money from the war. His Jewish accountant, Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), runs his enamelware factory and quietly classes workers as essential to protect them. When the ghetto is liquidated in 1943, Schindler watches from a hill and spots a little girl in a red coat, one of the film's few touches of colour. The Jews are moved to Płaszów labour camp under commandant Amon Göth (Ralph Fiennes), who shoots prisoners from his balcony. Schindler begins spending his fortune on bribes. Schindler's List follows Jurassic Park, released the same year, and precedes The Lost World.

How Schindler's List ends

Schindler's List ends with Schindler fleeing as the war ends, having saved about 1,100 people. When Płaszów is closed, he and Stern draw up a list of workers to move to a new factory in Brünnlitz, and he rescues a train of women sent to Auschwitz by mistake. At the surrender, the workers give him a ring inscribed with a Talmud line about saving one life, and he breaks down over the people he did not save. In colour, survivors and actors place stones on his grave in Jerusalem. It won seven Oscars, including Best Picture.

Post-credits scenes

No. Schindler's List has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 16 · 1997 · Film

The Lost World: Jurassic Park recap

Four years later, InGen, now run by Hammond's nephew Peter Ludlow, plans to capture dinosaurs on Isla Sorna, a second island where they were bred, and bring them to a new park in San Diego. Hammond sends Ian Malcolm to document the animals before it happens; Malcolm goes because his girlfriend, palaeontologist Sarah Harding, is already there. Malcolm's daughter Kelly stows away. Hammond's team, with photographer Nick Van Owen and engineer Eddie Carr, sabotages the hunters and frees their captive animals. Nick rescues a wounded baby T. rex, and its parents come for it, pushing a trailer over a cliff and killing Eddie. Both groups are stranded together, and the big-game hunter Roland Tembo tranquilises the adult male.

How The Lost World: Jurassic Park ends

The captured T. rex is shipped to San Diego, kills the crew and escapes into the city. Malcolm and Sarah use the baby to lure it back to the ship, where the baby kills Ludlow. Both are returned to Isla Sorna, which is declared a protected preserve.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 17 · 1997 · Film

Amistad recap

Amistad (1997) dramatises the 1839 revolt by captive Africans aboard a Spanish slave ship and the court battle over their freedom in the United States. Steven Spielberg directs a script by David Franzoni. Sengbe Pieh, called Cinqué (Djimon Hounsou), breaks his chains and leads the uprising aboard La Amistad off Cuba, sparing two Spaniards to steer for Africa; they sail north instead, and a US ship seizes the schooner off Long Island. Charged with murder and claimed as property by the Spaniards, the officers who seized the ship and Spain's young Queen Isabella II (Anna Paquin), the Africans are defended by property lawyer Roger Sherman Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey), backed by abolitionists Lewis Tappan (Stellan Skarsgård) and Theodore Joadson (Morgan Freeman). With interpreter James Covey (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Cinqué tells of his capture in Sierra Leone and the Middle Passage aboard the Portuguese slaver Tecora. President Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne) swaps in a new judge to please the South. Amistad comes after The Lost World and before Saving Private Ryan in Spielberg's career.

How Amistad ends

Amistad ends with the Supreme Court freeing the Africans. A district judge rules them free, but Van Buren appeals, and former president John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) argues the case, invoking the nation's founding ideals. Afterwards, British forces led by Captain Fitzgerald storm the slave fort of Lomboko and destroy it. Closing captions say Cinqué returned home but found his family gone amid war in Sierra Leone, and that Van Buren lost the 1840 election. Joadson is a fictional character created for the film.

Post-credits scenes

No. Amistad has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 18 · 1998 · Film

Saving Private Ryan recap

Saving Private Ryan (1998) sends a squad of US Army Rangers behind German lines after D-Day to find a paratrooper whose three brothers have all been killed. Steven Spielberg directs a script by Robert Rodat, opening with a long, brutal recreation of the landing at Omaha Beach. Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks), a schoolteacher in civilian life whose hand shakes, survives the beach and is ordered by General George Marshall's command to bring Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon) home to his mother. He takes Sergeant Mike Horvath (Tom Sizemore), Privates Richard Reiben (Edward Burns), Daniel Jackson (Barry Pepper), Stanley Mellish (Adam Goldberg) and Adrian Caparzo (Vin Diesel), medic Irwin Wade (Giovanni Ribisi) and Corporal Timothy Upham (Jeremy Davies), a translator who has never fought. Caparzo is killed by a sniper, Wade dies attacking a machine gun nest, and Miller lets a German prisoner walk free, angering his men. Saving Private Ryan comes between Amistad and A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

How Saving Private Ryan ends

Saving Private Ryan ends with Miller dying at the bridge in Ramelle. They find Ryan guarding it with a few paratroopers, and he refuses to leave his unit, so the squad stays to hold off a German armoured attack. Most of them are killed, and Miller is shot by the German he released. American planes arrive in time, and Miller's last words to Ryan are "Earn this." Upham shoots the German. Decades later, an elderly Ryan visits Miller's grave in Normandy and asks his wife whether he has led a good life. Spielberg won his second Best Director Oscar.

Post-credits scenes

No. Saving Private Ryan has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 19 · 2001 · Film

A.I. Artificial Intelligence recap

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) follows David, a robot boy programmed to love, who sets out to become a real boy after his human mother abandons him. Steven Spielberg wrote and directed it from a project Stanley Kubrick had developed for years, based on Brian Aldiss's story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long". In a future of flooded coastlines, Henry and Monica Swinton (Sam Robards and Frances O'Connor), whose son Martin is in suspended animation, are given David (Haley Joel Osment), made by Professor Allen Hobby (William Hurt). Monica bonds him to her for life. When Martin (Jake Thomas) recovers and returns home, he goads David into trouble, and after a near-drowning in the pool Monica leaves David in a forest with his robot teddy bear, Teddy. Hoping the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio can make him human, David is caught for a Flesh Fair where robots are destroyed for crowds, and escapes with Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a lover robot framed for murder. A.I. follows Saving Private Ryan and precedes Minority Report.

How A.I. Artificial Intelligence ends

A.I. ends with David spending one perfect day with a recreated Monica. In the drowned ruins of Manhattan, Hobby reveals David is the first of a line of copies, and David throws himself into the sea. He finds a Blue Fairy statue at a sunken Coney Island and prays to her until the ocean freezes over him. Two thousand years later, after humanity has died out, advanced machines revive him and use a lock of Monica's hair kept by Teddy to bring her back for a single day. That night she tells him she loves him, and he falls asleep beside her.

Post-credits scenes

No. A.I. has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 20 · 2002 · Film

Minority Report recap

Minority Report (2002) follows the chief of a police unit that arrests murderers before they kill, until its psychics predict he will commit a murder himself. Steven Spielberg directs this adaptation of a 1956 Philip K. Dick story. In Washington, D.C., in 2054, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) runs Precrime, which acts on visions from three precogs floating in a pool, chief among them Agatha (Samantha Morton). Since his son Sean vanished, Anderton has been estranged from his wife Lara (Kathryn Morris) and uses drugs. Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell), a Justice Department agent, arrives to audit the programme before it goes national, and Precrime's founder Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow) is his mentor. When the precogs show Anderton killing a man named Leo Crow in 36 hours, he runs, gets new eyes from a back-street surgeon to fool the city's retina scanners, and learns from Precrime's co-creator Iris Hineman that precogs sometimes disagree. He kidnaps Agatha. Minority Report comes after A.I. and before Catch Me If You Can, released the same year.

How Minority Report ends

Minority Report ends with Precrime shut down. Anderton finds Crow, who claims to have taken Sean but was paid to stage it; Crow grabs Anderton's gun and is killed. Burgess murders Witwer and has Anderton locked in suspended detention. Lara frees him after working out that Burgess killed Agatha's mother, Anne Lively, and used the system to hide it. At a gala, the precogs predict Burgess will kill Anderton, and Burgess shoots himself instead. Prisoners are released, Lara is pregnant, and the precogs retire to a remote cottage.

Post-credits scenes

No. Minority Report has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 21 · 2002 · Film

Catch Me If You Can recap

Catch Me If You Can (2002) follows teen con artist Frank Abagnale Jr., who poses as a pilot, doctor and lawyer as an FBI agent chases him through the 1960s. Steven Spielberg directs from Abagnale's memoir. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Frank, who runs away from home at 16 when his parents divorce and his father, Frank Abagnale Sr. (Christopher Walken), is ruined by tax trouble. He learns to forge cheques and passes himself off as a Pan Am co-pilot to cash them across the country. Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), a dogged FBI bank fraud agent, picks up his trail. Frank reinvents himself as a paediatrician in Georgia and gets engaged to a nurse, Brenda Strong (Amy Adams), and passes the Louisiana bar exam to work for her father. Every Christmas Eve he phones Carl. When the FBI raids his engagement party, Frank escapes, recruits trainee flight attendants as cover and flies to Europe. Catch Me If You Can follows Minority Report and precedes The Terminal.

How Catch Me If You Can ends

Catch Me If You Can ends with Frank working for the FBI. Carl tracks him to a printing village in France, where he is arrested and jailed, and on his flight home Carl tells him his father is dead. Frank slips off the plane and finds his mother with a new family, then surrenders. In prison, he helps Carl crack a cheque case, and Carl gets him released into the FBI's fraud unit. When Frank tries to fly off again, Carl lets him choose, and he comes back. Captions say the two men remained friends.

Post-credits scenes

No. Catch Me If You Can has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 22 · 2004 · Film

The Terminal recap

The Terminal (2004) strands a traveller at New York's JFK Airport when a coup in his home country voids his passport mid-flight. Steven Spielberg directs, drawing loosely on an Iranian refugee who lived for years in a Paris airport. Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), from the fictional Eastern European country of Krakozhia, cannot enter the United States or fly home. Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), the airport's acting field commissioner, wants him to be someone else's problem before a promotion review. Viktor sets up home at a gate under renovation, learns English from guidebooks, earns quarters returning luggage carts, and is hired under the table by a construction crew. He befriends the janitor Gupta Rajan (Kumar Pallana), food service driver Enrique Cruz (Diego Luna), whom he helps woo customs officer Dolores Torres (Zoe Saldaña), and baggage handler Joe Mulroy (Chi McBride). He falls for Amelia Warren (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a flight attendant stuck in an affair with a married man. The Terminal comes after Catch Me If You Can and before War of the Worlds.

How The Terminal ends

The Terminal ends with Viktor finally walking into New York. After nine months the war in Krakozhia ends, and Dixon threatens to have Gupta deported unless Viktor flies home. Gupta runs out in front of a departing plane to stall it and is arrested, and Viktor walks out of the airport. Dixon's officers let him go. In the can of Planters peanuts he has carried all along is the photo "A Great Day in Harlem"; at a hotel, he gets the last autograph his late father wanted, from saxophonist Benny Golson. Then he takes a taxi home.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Terminal has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 23 · 2005 · Film

War of the Worlds recap

War of the Worlds (2005) follows a divorced dock worker trying to keep his two children alive when alien war machines rise from the ground and attack. Steven Spielberg directs David Koepp and Josh Friedman's update of H. G. Wells's 1898 novel. Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), a crane operator, has his teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and young daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) for the weekend when lightning storms strike his neighbourhood. Huge three-legged tripods, buried long ago, climb out of the streets and vaporise people with heat rays. Ray steals the only working car and flees toward Boston, where their mother Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) is staying. A mob seizes the car, a ferry is capsized, and Robbie breaks away to join the army against a hill full of tripods. Ray and Rachel hide in a farmhouse cellar with Harlan Ogilvy (Tim Robbins), whose growing madness threatens to give them away. Morgan Freeman narrates. War of the Worlds follows The Terminal and precedes Munich.

How War of the Worlds ends

War of the Worlds ends with the invaders killed by Earth's germs. Ray kills Ogilvy to keep him quiet, then loses Rachel to a tripod and is captured too; inside its cage, he pulls grenades from a soldier's belt and blows it up from within. In Boston, Ray notices birds landing on a tripod and tells soldiers its shield is down, and they bring it down. Ray delivers Rachel to her mother and finds Robbie alive. As in Wells's novel, a closing narration explains that bacteria finished what human weapons could not.

Post-credits scenes

No. War of the Worlds has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 24 · 2005 · Film

Munich recap

Munich (2005) follows a Mossad agent leading a secret squad to kill the men Israel blames for the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Steven Spielberg directs a script by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, based on George Jonas's book Vengeance. Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana) leaves his pregnant wife and officially resigns from Mossad so the operation can be denied. His handler Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush) gives him a list of eleven names and four men: driver Steve (Daniel Craig), toymaker turned bomb maker Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), cleaner Carl (Ciarán Hinds) and forger Hans (Hanns Zischler). A French informant, Louis (Mathieu Amalric), sells them locations. They shoot a translator in Rome and bomb targets in Paris and Cyprus, then join commandos in a raid on Beirut. In Athens they share a safe house with Palestinian fighters, and Avner argues about homeland with one of them, Ali. Munich comes after War of the Worlds and before Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

How Munich ends

Munich ends with Avner refusing to return to Israel and his old life. The hunters become the hunted: Carl is killed by a contract killer, whom the others then execute, Hans is found stabbed and Robert dies in an explosion. A last try at the planner Ali Hassan Salameh fails. Haunted and paranoid, Avner settles with his family in Brooklyn. When Ephraim comes to bring him back, Avner invites him to break bread, and Ephraim declines. The final shot frames the Manhattan skyline with the World Trade Center. A title card says nine of the eleven men were killed.

Post-credits scenes

No. Munich has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 25 · 2008 · Film

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull recap

In 1957, Indiana Jones and his friend Mac are kidnapped by Soviet agents led by Colonel Irina Spalko and taken to the warehouse in Nevada where the Ark is stored, to find the remains of an alien. Indy escapes, survives a nuclear test by hiding in a lead-lined fridge, and is suspected by the FBI of being a communist. At his college, a young greaser, Mutt Williams, tells him his old colleague Harold Oxley has found a crystal skull in Peru and vanished, and Mutt's mother has been kidnapped. In Peru, Indy and Mutt find Oxley's trail and the crystal skull, then are captured by the Soviets, along with Oxley, who has gone mad, and Mutt's mother, who is Marion Ravenwood. Mac turns out to be a double agent. Marion tells Indy that Mutt is his son.

How Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ends

Spalko is destroyed when the aliens she wants to learn from share too much knowledge, Indy and the others escape as the alien ship leaves, and Indy marries Marion. They chase through the jungle and reach Akator, the lost city, where thirteen crystal skeletons, beings from another dimension, wake. Mac falls into the vortex. At the wedding, Mutt goes to put on Indy's hat, and Indy takes it back.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 26 · 2011 · Film

The Adventures of Tintin recap

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) follows a young Belgian reporter who buys a model ship at a market and is drawn into a race for a sunken pirate treasure. Steven Spielberg directs this motion-capture animated film, produced with Peter Jackson and drawn from three of Hergé's comic albums. Tintin (Jamie Bell) and his dog Snowy buy a model of the Unicorn, which Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig) is desperate to get. A scroll hidden in its mast is one of three that together point to the wreck of the real Unicorn, sunk in the 17th century by Sir Francis Haddock to keep its cargo from the pirate Red Rackham. Kidnapped aboard the freighter Karaboudjan, Tintin meets its drunken captain, Archibald Haddock (Andy Serkis), Sir Francis's descendant, whose crew has mutinied for Sakharine. The two escape by lifeboat and seaplane, crash in the Sahara and reach the port of Bagghar. Detectives Thomson and Thompson (Nick Frost and Simon Pegg) chase a pickpocket. Tintin is Spielberg's first animated feature, released the same month as War Horse.

How The Adventures of Tintin ends

The Adventures of Tintin ends with Tintin and Haddock planning a voyage to find the wreck. In Bagghar, Sakharine steals the last scroll during a concert by the opera singer Bianca Castafiore, and the chase moves back to Europe, where Haddock fights Sakharine, Red Rackham's descendant, with dockside cranes, and the detectives arrest him. The scrolls lead to Marlinspike Hall, the Haddock family home, where a hidden globe holds some of the treasure and a clue to the wreck. A sequel to be directed by Jackson was announced but has not been made.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Adventures of Tintin has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 27 · 2011 · Film

War Horse recap

War Horse (2011) follows Joey, a Devon farm horse sold to the British Army in 1914, through the First World War, and the young man who goes looking for him. Steven Spielberg directs this adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's 1982 novel, which had become a stage play. Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) raises and trains the colt after his father Ted (Peter Mullan) overspends to buy him at auction, and Joey saves the farm by ploughing a stony field. When rain ruins the crop, Ted sells Joey to Captain James Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston), who promises to look after him. Nicholls dies in a cavalry charge against German machine guns, and Joey and another horse, Topthorn, pass to the Germans, then to two young German deserters who are executed, then to a French girl, Emilie (Celine Buckens), and her grandfather (Niels Arestrup), then back to the German artillery. Albert enlists when he is old enough. War Horse came out days after The Adventures of Tintin and precedes Lincoln in Spielberg's career.

How War Horse ends

War Horse ends with Albert riding Joey home to the farm at sunset. Topthorn dies of exhaustion, and Joey bolts across no man's land and is tangled in barbed wire, until a British and a German soldier cut him free together under a truce. Albert, temporarily blinded by gas, recognises Joey by his owl call just before an officer shoots the horse. At the war's end, Emilie's grandfather outbids Albert's comrades at auction, then gives Joey back to Albert along with his father's regimental pennant.

Post-credits scenes

No. War Horse has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 28 · 2012 · Film

Lincoln recap

Lincoln (2012) follows Abraham Lincoln in January 1865 as he pushes the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, through the House before the war ends. Steven Spielberg directs a script by Tony Kushner, drawn in part from Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Lincoln, who fears his Emancipation Proclamation will not survive the peace and needs some Democratic votes to pass the amendment. Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) hires three political operators, among them W. N. Bilbo (James Spader), to win over lame-duck Democrats with jobs. Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) must soften his public stance on racial equality to keep moderates on board. Meanwhile, Confederate envoys are on their way to discuss peace, which could kill the vote. At home, Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Field) still grieves their son Willie, and their eldest, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), insists on enlisting. Lincoln comes between War Horse and Bridge of Spies.

How Lincoln ends

Lincoln ends with the president's death and a flashback to his second inaugural address. Lincoln states, with careful wording, that no peace envoys are in Washington, and the amendment passes by two votes as the gallery erupts; Stevens goes home to his Black housekeeper and partner. The peace talks fail. After Lee's surrender, Lincoln leaves for Ford's Theatre, and his son Tad hears the news at another theatre. He dies the next morning. Day-Lewis won his third Best Actor Oscar.

Post-credits scenes

No. Lincoln has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 29 · 2015 · Film

Bridge of Spies recap

Bridge of Spies (2015) follows a Brooklyn insurance lawyer who defends a captured Soviet spy and later negotiates his swap for an American pilot in Berlin. Steven Spielberg directs a script by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen, based on real events. In 1957, James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) is appointed to represent Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), a quiet painter arrested as a KGB agent. Donovan defends him seriously, turning down the CIA's request to share privileged information, and talks the judge out of a death sentence, arguing Abel may be useful in a future trade; the public turns on Donovan and someone fires shots into his home. In 1960, CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is shot down over the Soviet Union in his U-2 and captured. The CIA sends Donovan to East Berlin, just as the Wall goes up, to arrange a swap, and he learns East Germany also holds an American student, Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers). Bridge of Spies follows Lincoln and precedes The BFG.

How Bridge of Spies ends

Bridge of Spies ends with the exchange on the Glienicke Bridge between Berlin and Potsdam. Against the CIA's wishes, Donovan insists that both Powers and Pryor be freed for Abel, and plays the Soviets and East Germans off each other. On the bridge, Abel waits until Pryor is confirmed released at Checkpoint Charlie before crossing. Donovan returns home to find his family has learned of his work from the news. Captions say he later negotiated the release of prisoners in Cuba. Rylance won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Post-credits scenes

No. Bridge of Spies has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 30 · 2016 · Film

The BFG recap

The BFG (2016) follows Sophie, a London orphan snatched from her window by a giant who turns out to be the only kind one in Giant Country. Steven Spielberg directs Melissa Mathison's adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1982 novel for Disney. Ruby Barnhill plays Sophie, and Mark Rylance gives a motion-capture performance as the Big Friendly Giant, a 24-foot dream-catcher who speaks in a muddled language of his own and lives on foul snozzcumbers. The other giants, led by Fleshlumpeater (Jemaine Clement) and including Bloodbottler (Bill Hader), are twice his size, bully him as "Runt", and go out at night to eat children. The BFG takes Sophie to Dream Country, where he catches dreams as glowing lights in jars and blows good ones into the bedrooms of sleeping children. When the giants nearly find Sophie, he tries to send her home to keep her safe. Sophie decides to ask for help from the Queen. The BFG comes after Bridge of Spies and before The Post in Spielberg's career.

How The BFG ends

The BFG ends with the giants marooned and Sophie living at Buckingham Palace. The BFG gives Queen Elizabeth II (Penelope Wilton) a nightmare about child-eating giants, and Sophie appears at her window to prove it. After breakfast, and fizzy frobscottle that makes the corgis break wind, the Queen sends soldiers and helicopters to Giant Country. Sophie unleashes a nightmare on the sleeping giants, and they are carried off to a remote island with only snozzcumber seeds. The BFG returns home, and Sophie still talks to him from afar. In Dahl's book, the giants are imprisoned in a giant pit.

Post-credits scenes

No. The BFG has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 31 · 2017 · Film

The Post recap

The Post (2017) follows Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham as she decides whether to print the leaked Pentagon Papers in defiance of Nixon. Steven Spielberg directs a script by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer. Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) copies a secret study showing that four presidents lied about Vietnam, and The New York Times begins publishing it in June 1971 until a court stops it. Meryl Streep plays Graham, who took over the family paper after her husband's suicide and is about to take the company public, while her board doubts her. Her executive editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), wants to catch the Times. Assistant editor Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk) tracks down Ellsberg and gets the full report. Graham's old friend, former defense secretary Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), is implicated, lawyers warn of criminal charges, and the investors could pull out. The Post comes between The BFG and Ready Player One in Spielberg's career.

How The Post ends

The Post ends with a Watergate security guard discovering a break-in. Graham tells Bradlee to publish, even after learning the Post shares the Times's source, which could put them in contempt of court. Papers across the country follow, and on June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 for the newspapers. Nixon bars the Post from the White House. A year later, guard Frank Wills finds the burglars, setting up the story told in All the President's Men (1976).

Post-credits scenes

No. The Post has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 32 · 2018 · Film

Ready Player One recap

Ready Player One (2018) follows Wade Watts, a teenager in the slums of Columbus, Ohio, in 2045, hunting a hidden prize that grants control of a virtual world. Steven Spielberg directs this adaptation of Ernest Cline's 2011 novel, scripted by Cline and Zak Penn. Most people escape to the OASIS, created by the late James Halliday (Mark Rylance), who hid three keys behind challenges built from his love of 1980s pop culture. Wade (Tye Sheridan), playing as Parzival, is the first to win the Copper Key by driving backwards in a race full of monsters. He teams up with Art3mis, the avatar of Samantha Cook (Olivia Cooke), and his best friend Aech, the avatar of Helen Harris (Lena Waithe). Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), head of the corporation IOI, wants the OASIS for advertising; when Wade turns down his bribe, Sorrento bombs his home and kills his aunt. The second challenge sends the players into a recreation of The Shining. Ready Player One comes after The Post and before West Side Story.

How Ready Player One ends

Ready Player One ends with Wade and his friends running the OASIS together. In a battle on Planet Doom, Sorrento detonates a bomb that wipes out every avatar, but Wade survives with an extra life won in a bet, finds the egg in the Atari game Adventure, and refuses to sign away the OASIS. Halliday hands him control, and the Curator turns out to be co-founder Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg). Sorrento is arrested. The friends close the OASIS on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The novel's challenges, such as a replay of WarGames, are mostly replaced.

Post-credits scenes

No. Ready Player One has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 33 · 2021 · Film

West Side Story recap

West Side Story (2021) returns to the 1957 Broadway musical, with rival New York street gangs and two lovers from opposite sides. Steven Spielberg directs a new adaptation by Tony Kushner, set in the slums of San Juan Hill on Manhattan's Upper West Side as they are demolished for Lincoln Center. The white Jets, led by Riff (Mike Faist), fight the Puerto Rican Sharks, led by the boxer Bernardo (David Alvarez). Riff's friend Tony (Ansel Elgort), on parole after a year in prison for nearly killing a boy, works at a drugstore owned by Valentina (Rita Moreno), a new role created for Moreno, who won an Oscar as Anita in the 1961 film. At a dance, Tony meets Bernardo's sister María (Rachel Zegler), and they fall in love at once. Bernardo's girlfriend Anita (Ariana DeBose) argues with him over life in America, and the gangs set a rumble. María makes Tony promise to stop it. West Side Story is Spielberg's first musical, after Ready Player One and before The Fabelmans.

How West Side Story ends

West Side Story ends with Tony shot dead. At the rumble Bernardo stabs Riff, and Tony kills Bernardo. María forgives Tony, but after the Jets assault Anita when she comes with a message, Anita says María is dead. Tony runs into the street calling for Chino, Bernardo's friend, to kill him; he sees María alive just before Chino shoots him. María turns the gun on both gangs, then drops it, and Jets and Sharks carry Tony's body together. DeBose won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the same role Moreno had won for.

Post-credits scenes

No. West Side Story has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 34 · 2022 · Film

The Fabelmans recap

The Fabelmans (2022) follows Sammy Fabelman, a boy who falls for filmmaking after his first trip to the cinema and watches his parents' marriage come apart. Steven Spielberg co-wrote the semi-autobiographical film with Tony Kushner, drawing on his own childhood. In 1952 New Jersey, young Sammy restages the train crash from The Greatest Show on Earth with his model trains and films it. His mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams) is a concert pianist turned homemaker, and his father Burt (Paul Dano) a computer engineer whose career moves them to Arizona, along with his best friend, 'Uncle' Bennie Loewy (Seth Rogen). Teenage Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) makes war films with his Scout troop. His great-uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch), a former lion tamer, visits and warns that art will tear him from his family. Editing camping-trip footage, Sammy sees his mother and Bennie in love. The Fabelmans comes after West Side Story and before Disclosure Day.

How The Fabelmans ends

The Fabelmans ends with Sammy meeting John Ford. In California, Sammy is bullied for being Jewish and dates a devout Christian girl, Monica. His film of the senior beach day makes his chief tormentor, Logan, look like a hero, which shakes Logan more than any insult. His parents divorce and Mitzi goes to Bennie. A year later, while in college, Sammy gets a meeting with Ford (David Lynch), who gives him one lesson about horizons in a frame. Sammy walks off down the studio lot as the camera tilts to follow his advice.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Fabelmans has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 35 · 2026 · Film

Disclosure Day recap

Disclosure Day (2026) follows a Kansas City weather presenter and a whistleblower on the run as they try to prove that extraterrestrial life exists. Steven Spielberg directs from his own story, with a script by David Koepp and a score by John Williams, their 30th film together. As the world nears nuclear war, cybersecurity specialist Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor) steals an alien device and the Archive, decades of hidden UFO evidence back to Roswell, from his employer, the secretive government contractor Wardex. With his girlfriend Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), a former novice, he hides at her old convent. Meanwhile, television meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) starts reading thoughts and, live on air, speaks a language no one knows. Wardex chief Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) sends agents after both, and uses an alien device to make Jane turn on Daniel. Margaret finds Daniel in a black site and they flee with the Archive. Disclosure Day follows The Fabelmans and is the latest Spielberg film on this list.

How Disclosure Day ends

Disclosure Day ends with Margaret beginning to relay a message from an alien to the world. She and Daniel join Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), a Wardex defector, and learn they were both abducted as children and given linked powers. They take over Margaret's station; Jane arrives with the device to restore the power, and Scanlon's team stands down. Daniel broadcasts the Archive worldwide and the looming war appears to pause. Wakefield brings in an elderly alien he freed, which whispers to Daniel, and Margaret turns to the camera and says, "Listen."