You've made a canon of films that stand up as some of the finest works in the history of cinema. You've redefined the expectations (for better or worse) of generations of filmmakers and moviegoers, and ensured that none of my time between Memorial Day and Labor Day will be spent in a movie theater watching some gay, artsy crap (I know, you're saving that for the Oscar season). You have more money than you can count, and a business empire that might actually rival your filmography. You had a good run there. We all had some laughs. But I saw Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this weekend, and it's clear to me that you've grown mad with power, and it's time to for you to be put out to pasture. . .
Exhibit A: The unnecessary sequels and special editions.
Maybe you' ve just been spending too much time around your friend Mr. Lucas, but this seems to be a problem that isn't going away. We looked the other way at two awful Jurassic Park sequels, but what's this I hear about another one in the works? I know that you have lots of new toys and gadgets that you wish you had when you were making movies that mattered. But, guess what? All of those movies that you made with those cheesy models and matte paintings still hold up. And War of the Worlds was shit. I don't know if that means you need to go back to using miniatures and optical mattes, but maybe it'll make you realize how bad of an idea it is to have a whole sequence of Shia LaBeouf swinging through the jungle on vines with a pack of monkeys when you see the whole thing rigged up in a studio. Like Mr. Lucas, you might think that you're introducing your stories to a whole new generation of moviegoers, but speaking from the standpoint of someone who was introduced to all your early films on home video and TV, as long as there are DVD players and parents who don't have time to raise their children themselves, your films will be watched and loved for generations to come. Not only does it destroy the cohesiveness of a film or series to interject material 20 years after the fact, it's more than a little patronizing to the people who grew up on your films to tell them that the essential experiences of their childhood were flawed and incomplete. So, just save your time, save your money, and work on putting all those classics on Blu-Ray with as little mediation as possible and we'll all pretend that ET was always a puppet and Indiana Jones never met aliens. Speaking of which. . .
Exhibit B: The aliens. What the fuck is up with all the aliens?
Now, don't get me wrong, I too had an unhealthy obsession with extraterrestrials when I was younger and fully appreciate the use of otherworldly beings as a means of exploring the meaning of human existence on Earth. I also realize that the use of aliens as a plot device is so lame that even daytime soaps avoid it like the plague. Here's a good rule of thumb, if the story of the film primarily involves aliens visiting or invading Earth, then you have full permission to geek out; but when the movie is about, I don't know, a mid-20th century archaeologist protecting biblical artifacts from fascist military leaders, it's probably best to play it safe and leave the big-eyed spacemen out. Which reminds me. . .
Exhibit C: The endings. Is it that fucking difficult to tactfully resolve a story?
I, like you, have the utmost respect for Stanley Kubrick as an artist and a filmmaker, and have often thought it would be a great tribute to the legendary master of understatement and subtlety to create an elaborate alternate ending sequence to A Clockwork Orange where aliens abduct Malcolm McDowell and show him the error of his ways, followed by a 10-minute shot (Kubrick loved long takes) of myself pissing on Kubrick's gravestone, but I think that would be somewhat redundant. While you're usually smart enough not to pen your own films, as a producer and director, you should really know better than to even sign off on any of this shit. You seem to think that the fantastical subject matter of your films gives you license to include situations that make genocidal aliens, genetically engineered dinosaurs, and self-aware robots seem totally plausible by comparison. I was totally ready to love your relentlessly dark interpretation of War of the Worlds until it ended in some fairy tale version of Boston, conveniently untouched by the swarms of bloodthirsty alien death machines that lay waste to the rest of the world, with Tom Cruise and his family miraculously all alive and intact. Which is not so different from the ridiculous coda to AI (see above), where a team of benevolent (but apparently very bored) aliens improbably arrive on Earth to give the lonely android boy the loving family he never had. Look dude. I get it. You still haven't gotten over your parents' divorce. But I don't want to pay 12 bucks a ticket to fund your 100 million-dollar therapy sessions.
So stop. Please stop. I know that legions of film critics, who are all just as deluded as you are, will continue praising all of these pathetic misfires, and small children will continue to marvel at all of the bright colors and CG fireworks, and I will long for the days when you didn't have your own studio, when you didn't have an army of visual effects artists, when you just had your ideas, and that was enough.
