Steven Spielberg

Honestly? Every single criticism of this is accurate. It's a teen geek boy Mary Sue wish-fulfilment novel that's come from the SciFi Boys Club.

Did I also enjoy it a lot despite every flaw and every annoying thing about it?

Yes.

But there is no way in hell I would have got through the written text.

I started reading "CE3K: the Novel" when I was camping at Devil's Tower, Wyoming.

Too "on the nose"? Maybe, but like Roy Neary with his living-room sculpture of the Wyoming national monument, I was nerdily obsessed. I began the book with low expectations. I should have kept them even lower.

This is a great book, if you like a textual detailed description of what we got on screen with "Close Encounters." It follows the movie closely with only the smallest of side roads into scenes that we never show more saw on film. Those were best left on the cutting room floor for the book as well.

This is a book with low self-esteem. It hardly rises to the level of art and in many places, the writing comes across as a high-school freshman trying to impress their English teacher who only ends up cringing with horror that he has not been doing as good a job at teaching as he supposed. In other words, "CE3K: the Novel" is paperback dreck which should only appeal to the most Mothership-obsessed fan who wants to prolong their Spielbergian cinematic masterpiece experience (for the record, I think the movie is pretty close to a masterpiece; the book is not).

For the record, "Steven Spielberg" didn't write this book, he only put some spit and polish on the hard work of Mr. Leslie Waller. As the movie's Wikipedia page explains, quoting Spielberg: "I didn't write the first, second, or third drafts. Those were written, based on my screenplay, by Leslie Waller, a very good* writer. (*eh....The Eds.) When I read his drafts, though, I told the publishers that unless it was cleaned up I wouldn't let my name go out with the book. So I sat down and spent less than a week – I wouldn't say rewriting the novel – but polishing it, and taking a lot of the plot and twisting it back into the direction of the screenplay. All told, there's about 20 percent of me in the book. I wish I could say there was more, but there's not. I cringe when I see my name on the cover, and I usually avoid it at bookstores." show less

A lawyer is appointed to defend a Soviet spy.

It's entertaining (although it feels long), but surprisingly forgettable for a Spielberg prestige film. It's loaded with big, corny Spielberg Moments, which bulldoze over everything that might have been interesting or unique about the movie. And Tom Hanks' character is so perfectly to type, it's impossible to notice any acting he might be doing.

Concept: B
Story: C
Characters: C
Dialog: B
Pacing: C
Cinematography: C
Special effects/design: C
Acting: show more B
Music: C

Enjoyment: C plus

GPA: 2.3/4 show less

Gets an undeservedly bad reputation, in my opinion. This was my initial impression in the movie theatre, and it's stayed my impression on rewatches in the many years since. While certainly far from perfect, the film feels like a natural and genuine continuation, and has virtually the exact same tone and feel as "Last Crusade" did. The callbacks are cute, relatively organic (and in several cases, surprisingly subtle by the franchise's standards) and the plotline is exciting and different show more without being jarringly so. I definitely like "Lost Ark" and "Last Crusade" better, but the latter not by much, and all three of them are immensely superior to "Temple of Doom" (Short Round aside). show less