In present day, Steven Spielberg might be the first name that comes to mind when you think of the Hollywood establishment. For decades, though, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. One of the defining figures of the auteur-driven New Hollywood era, and the progenitor of the blockbuster, Spielberg was long snubbed and in many ways artistically undervalued by the establishment, never winning an Oscar until 1994, despite having numerous critically lauded all-timers under his belt by then.
The following chronologically lists the most egregious instances of Steven Spielberg movies losing the Academy Award for Best Picture. If you read this and think, “Where’s Jaws?,” please consider that Spielberg’s Hollywood breakthrough, masterpiece though it is, lost Best Picture to Miloš Forman‘s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. To reference another pivotal movie of the New Hollywood era, that’s one hell of a Sophie’s Choice. It’s really hard to say anything was “robbed” when One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is in the equation.
4
‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (1981)
Lost to ‘Chariots of Fire’
Image via Paramount Pictures
A venture that started with Spielberg being rejected by Eon to direct a James Bond film, Raiders of the Lost Ark was co-fathered with George Lucas in the wake of his industry-shaking success with Star Wars. Lucas sought to recreate the spirit of cheap, endearingly pulpy film serials of his childhood on a Hollywood studio dime. Raiders of the Lost Ark gave audiences an unforgettable hero for all time in Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones, along with some of the best action ever filmed, a great John Williams score, wonderfully macabre scares and gore, and swashbuckling romance. It’s easily one of the most exciting and satisfying genre films ever made.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is the movie that actually won Best Picture at the 54th Oscars. Hugh Hudson‘s Chariots of Fire is a respectable, undeniably dull and stuffy sports picture about two British athletes of different faiths who competed against each other in the Olympics. It’s a pretty good movie, and inspirational, but today it’s best remembered for the earworm Vangelis score, and for being the movie that beat Raiders of the Lost Ark for Best Picture.
Lost to ‘Gandhi’
Henry Thomas as Elliott and E.T. watch the UFO land in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.Image via Universal Pictures
Affectingly simplistic in its storytelling and masterful in every technical aspect, if E.T the Extra-Terrestrial isn’t Spielberg’s absolute best movie, then surely it’s his most universally beloved. The nakedly emotional family sci-fi film toppled Star Wars‘ half-decade-long reign as the highest grossing movie ever made. It’s genuinely timeless; if only you could say the same about Gandhi, directed by Spielberg’s future Jurassic Park star Richard Attenborough. It’s one of those biopics that was esteemed in its day and bears virtually no cultural relevance or imprint today.
This was a year when the Academy apparently had their priorities deeply out of whack. Out of the nominees, E.T. deserved Best Picture, but it didn’t deserve to win for visual effects over Blade Runner. E.T. was re-released on its 20th anniversary in a “special edition” Spielberg would later express regret about. E.T. didn’t need walkie-talkies or a blinking alien; it was perfect from the jump, as surely reflected in its historic box-office haul.
2
‘The Color Purple’ (1985)
Lost to ‘Out of Africa’
Whoopi Goldberg as Celie in The Color Purple.Image via Warner Bros.
Based on Alice Walker‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, this epic drama of perseverance brought the king of blockbusters into a new dimension of filmmaking. Whoopi Goldberg gave a career-defining breakthrough performance alongside Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey. She was nominated for Best Actress, but The Color Purple failed to win any of its 11 nominations, a record tied with 1977’s The Turning Point.
Though it’s certainly an important landmark, The Color Purple isn’t even top-tier Spielberg; it’s an uneasy blend of brutality and schmaltzy at times, and the debate over the years about whether Spielberg was even the right man for this job is at least worth considering. However: Out of Africa. Virtually all the nominated films this year, Witness especially, were more deserving than Sydney Pollack‘s glacially paced and airy romance that’s hardly brought up much at all these days except in relation to its sweeping seven Oscar wins. Like The English Patient, it’s a movie that feels tailor-made for the Oscars, and pretty sterile.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
1
‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998)
Lost to ‘Shakespeare in Love’
Image via DreamWorks Pictures
This is the big one. Whether this is correct or not, Saving Private Ryan‘s loss to John Madden‘s period rom-com is widely remembered as the Academy’s worst-ever mistake in the top category. People hated the call back then, and it’s only become more reviled with time, especially in recent years as we’ve all become more aware of producer Harvey Weinstein’s disgusting, bullying campaign tactics behind the scenes. So many members of the general audience consider Saving Private Ryan to be the best war film ever made, and not without reason. The genre can be divided into two eras; before and after Spielberg’s unforgettably realistic drama, a feature made with the supervision of veterans with the intention of achieving hyperrealism.
One thing that people seem to forget is this: Shakespeare in Love is a wonderful film. It has a great script, fine performances, and immaculate period detail. The controversy—really, all thanks to the Weinsteins—has given Shakespeare in Love a negative reputation it doesn’t deserve for some time. This upset isn’t as ghastly as Crash winning over Brokeback Mountain—that actually takes the cake for all-time Academy shame—but it was a grave mistake all the same.
