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Which filmmaker is better: Steven Spielberg or Christopher Nolan? X-Ray Vision co-hosts Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight complete their debate trilogy with this cinematic clash. Jason argues that Spielberg redefined cinema by establishing the blueprint for the modern blockbusters that dominate summer releases. Rosie counters that Nolan also redefined cinema by taking that blockbuster blueprint and adding grittiness, seriousness, and severity, creating the first billion-dollar superhero movie. Will Ronald Young Jr.’s ruling give Rosie a series sweep or will Jason pull off his first PCDC victory?

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Rosie Knight, Jason Concepcion, Ronald young Jr.

Ronald young Jr.  00:01

Indiana Jones, ET,Jurassic Park and Jaws, all classic films and all directed by Steven Spielberg. Throughout much of his career, he’s been known for making crowd pleasing films that stand the test of time. In recent years, his titles have changed a bit during the musical, West Side Story and The Oscar buzzy drama, The Fable Mens. But all in all, putting the name Spielberg on a film is going to get audiences into a theater. There is another name who crowds show up for Christopher Nolan with hit films like The Dark Knight, Inception, TENNET and the 2024 Best Picture Academy Award winner Oppenheimer. Nolan is also putting together a portfolio of films that we may be talking about for decades to come. But which filmmaker is better, Steven Spielberg or Christopher Nolan, we decide once and for all, right here and right now on Pop Culture Debate Club.

 

Ronald young Jr.  01:43

Welcome back to PCDC. I’m your host, Ronald Young Jr, let’s meet our panelists for the day, representing Steven Spielberg is writer and Emmy award winning host, who co hosts the hit nerd culture podcast X Ray Vision at iHeart. Hello and welcome back to the show, Jason Concepcion.

 

Jason Concepcion  02:01

It is wonderful to be here. JC, phone home.

 

Ronald young Jr.  02:09

Okay, I see you’re starting early. Also joining us, representing Christopher Nolan is a writer for publications like Esquire, Hollywood Reporter And Nerdist, who also co hosts X Ray Vision with Jason. Hello and welcome back to Rosie night. Hello.

 

Rosie Knight  02:24

It’s good to be here.

 

Ronald young Jr.  02:32

Y’all really commit. This is this one’s for the nerds. I’m not even gonna explain that. This is for the nerds. Rosie, you have won two out of three of these meetings with Jason, who I think is too nice to you in these debates.

 

Rosie Knight  02:49

To each other. We just really compliment each other. We usually agree on things, but I think this is going to be an interesting battle.

 

Ronald young Jr.  02:58

Yes, for us, it’s funny, because I feel like you talk like this, and you draw Jason into this niceness, and then he has no, he has no choice but to reciprocate nicely. Jason, what do you think?

 

Jason Concepcion  03:08

I think that this is a lot like Steve Nash’s two MVPs. It’s really the first, it’s really the first MVP that, if you look at it, is kind of fraudulent. People got excited, and then in the second one, he actually had better stats. So what are you going to do? You have to give them to him again. Now, did it make sense, in retrospect, for him to have two MVPs? No, and I feel the same way about my two losses.

 

Rosie Knight  03:36

That’s I see he’s not being nice today, okay.

 

Ronald young Jr.  03:42

All right. Basketball aside, Are we all ready to fight? Wait, what happened now we’re fighting. All right. Let’s start with opening arguments. Jason presenter case. Steven Spielberg is a better director than Christopher Nolan.

 

Jason Concepcion  03:55

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my esteemed opponent. You know, tonight we’re talking about not just filmmakers. We’re talking about cinema. And I think only one of these two filmmakers actually redefined cinema and the cinema business, and that’s Steven Spielberg, who, along with his incredibly lauded star studded and award winning filmography essentially helped birth the Hollywood blockbuster and the era of the summer blockbuster with his film Jaws. This is a person who has transitioned from these kind of early genre films of his filmography and sci fi and kind of the monster movie that Jaws was, to do things like Schindler’s List, to do things like Raiders of the Lost Ark, to do things like ET to do things like Saving Private Ryan. He is a filmmaker whose films are iconic, have been seen worldwide and again, who changed the business and who created the modern business as we know it? Steven Spielberg deserves a much better interlocutor than me, but I’m here, and I’m here to defend the incredibly historic lineage of Steven Spielberg.

 

Ronald young Jr.  05:22

Okay, I like it, that’s a great opening shot. Rosie Knight, your opening argument. Christopher Nolan is a better filmmaker than Steven Spielberg.

 

Rosie Knight  05:32

Wow, you said it not me. So I just want to start that off there. Okay, that’s your pitch. But I will say.

 

Ronald young Jr.  05:38

This is your position. Rosie Knight, you know why you’re here?

 

Rosie Knight  05:41

Oh no, I’m okay. Look, if you’ve listened to X ray vision, if you’ve read my work, you may be like, Wow, I can’t believe Rosie’s on here, supporting Christopher Nolan. This is not on her part of her personal brand. But you know what? I can debate objectively. And I will say, I do think that while my esteemed opponent, Jason made some great points, I’m a Jaws lover. I love jaws. I do not believe it’s true that only one of these directors redefined cinema, because it was Christopher Nolan, who, after having a similar career to Steven Spielberg, beginning with indie movies and genre flicks like memento, ended up directing the first billion dollar superhero movie with the Dark Knight, and I think that redefined the modern Blockbuster and what studios came to expect from it. I would also say, if you’re an anime fan, you guess who else is an anime fan? Christopher Nolan. You can find anime all over his movies. You maybe he should have been paying the creators to use those stories. But maybe not. Maybe that’s just what he does. And I would say that his success as both a blockbuster director with the Dark Knight and also his Oscar success recently with the best picture for Oppenheimer, showcase a similar range to Spielberg. And I feel like for many younger film lovers. Christopher Nolan is their Spielberg. He is the one who started shooting on Super Eight camera, who started doing stop motion homages to Star Wars when he was a kid, and then turned it into a billion dollar business. But he bought a grittiness and a seriousness and a severity, which to some people, was missing from the superhero and blockbuster genre, and just like 1986 and 1987 redefined comics with dark tales like the Dark Knight and watchmen. When Christopher Nolan bought his vision of Batman, Batman Begins, he continued that and kind of reshaped how we were seeing superhero movies and IP adaptations for a good decade.

 

Ronald young Jr.  07:44

It’s funny, you both have said, talked about redefining cinema, and I’m wondering, is this a case of Spielberg walked so that Nolan can run? Jason, I’ll go to you first, because you obviously have Spielberg first.

 

Jason Concepcion  07:59

Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, Spielberg made Nolan possible and made the filmmakers that have reached the top of their craft post him possible. It is Spielberg that created the essentially the modern blockbuster format that everybody else is working in. It is Spielberg who built the infrastructure that allowed Nolan ites and others to thrive by creating these kind of elevated genre pieces. But the thing that Spielberg has, I think, over Nolan and over many of his contemporaries and the people and the folks who have come after him is just the sheer longevity. You know, we talked about Nolan’s evolution to Oscar winning filmmaker now with Oppenheimer from his start. And I think that that is absolutely true, but where Nolan is now two decades in to his career. I mean, if you look at Spielberg, you’re talking first decade, JAWS, Close Encounters of a third kind. Second decade, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, The Color Purple. Third decade, Jurassic Park shouldn’t lose list Saving Private Ryan. That’s essentially where we are with Nolan, right? But then he continues 2000s Munich, War of the Worlds. Catch Me If You Can, 2010s, Lincoln, Bridgers Spies, the not that great, Ready Player One, but he still doing it. 2020s, with the wonderful reimagining of West Side Story and then his autobiographical the fablemans, not to mention the fact that, like his IP like Jurassic Park continues to create films. So yes, that is correct. Spielberg made Nolan possible. And also the version of Steven Spielberg that is still out there is still in competition with Nolan, and by my lights, is still better than Nolan.

 

Ronald young Jr.  10:00

Rosie, is this an issue of preference? Because a lot of what I’ve noticed that a lot of what Jason is naming, especially from the first half of his career, is stuff that, yes, it did redefine cinema, but it was also stuff that was set up in a time when cinema was different from what it is today, especially the three of us, three nerds that are here, that know about movies like this. But when you talk about audience wide and audience appeal. Do you think this is just an effort, an issue of preferring Spielberg to Nolan?

 

Rosie Knight  10:26

I think it’s an issue of timing. I think that you make a great point, because the truth is, look, we can’t deny that Steven Spielberg was a trailblazer for many directors, many great directors, but Steven Spielberg suffered from the same issues that Christopher Nolan suffered with Despite his success. He should have been nominated for JAWS. He should have been nominated for ET he should have been nominated for Jurassic Park, but it wasn’t until Schindler’s List that he gets that nomination. And I think that that is a similar route to Christopher Nolan, who, and I will say this is something Steven Spielberg has said about Christopher Nolan that if the Dark Knight movies were coming out today, they would get a Best Picture nomination. Now I will say I do think there is a preference issue here, too. Because Steven Spielberg, when we think of him, we think about the Amblin, the warmth the family, obviously Saving Private Ryan Schindler’s List, but they still have that emotional depth, emotional gravitas. I think that the preference for Christopher Nolan comes from people who feel like they want their genre films to be intellectual. This is a man who’s very interested in theology, who likes deep concepts, like in Inception and Interstellar. You’re more likely to find a long character based story and less kids. If you don’t like kids, then you probably have been turned off. Spielberg at some point. Nolan, you know what? You know he can’t have any kids. Kills off every wife. Not even an issue. No wife at the beginning the movie. You can’t have a kid. You know maybe if you do have a kid, like an inception, you’re only gonna see him for like two minutes. So if you like an adult genre film, that’s gonna make you feel smart, that’s gonna make you feel inspired, that’s going to make you feel like you’re having deep thoughts. And I think the fact that he consistently makes films like that, where even a film like tenor, which a lot of people did not enjoy, and it did have some interesting sound design choices, but that movie, I find, is one of the movies that people talk about the most from his over, maybe because they don’t get it, maybe because they do get it, maybe because, like me, they believe it’s a gay love story about two guys going through time because they just love each other so much and they want to hang out. I think that’s one of the coolest things he ever did. And I just think that when it comes to preference, if you like a grim, gritty, real story, I think a lot about the Dark Knight and how a lot of the positive reviews of that movie, and a lot of what people still speak about now is the idea that that movie would have been great without Batman. That says everything I think you need to know about Christopher Nolan, which is he can widen the audience of something that, for years, was seen as niche and campy, and then he brought it into a place that, for some people, elevated it and changed the way that studios and stories were approached as we headed into the prestige TV era, where, of course, we love a dark, gray reimagining of a superhero or some kind of character that you haven’t seen for a while, like Perry Mason.

 

Ronald young Jr.  13:16

It sounds a lot like you’re saying that Christopher Nolan movies are Steven Spielberg movies for grown ups. Am I characterizing that right?

 

Rosie Knight  13:25

I think that is how true Christopher Nolan fans feel about it. I think it’s one of the things that really entices them, is that he can make a movie like Inception. And while a bunch of people will never watch the incredible movie Paprika, which is an anime movie that’s very similar. They will feel comfortable to watch a movie about people exploring dreams. He makes genre feel like it’s worthwhile to people who maybe don’t love the same. B movie elements of it people who don’t understand that part of the magic of comics is that they’re disposable. You know, he makes a movie that makes people feel like this is a story worth telling, and I think that’s very interesting as a director.

 

Ronald young Jr.  14:06

Your argument was so sharp that Jason actually got up and left for a second so.

 

Ronald young Jr.  15:31

Jason, when it comes to the back half of Steven Spielberg’s career, I would say that, like he’s the competition that he’s in with a lot of others is, like, the movies are different now. They’re not what they used to be. It’s funny, and it’s funny. You mentioned Ready Player One. I actually loved Ready Player One. I watch it anytime it’s on, if it’s on the streaming service, I’m like, I’m always in the mood for it. So really liked it. Wish they would make a sequel. But then some of his others, if you think about like the family’s Bridge of Spies, those are different from what he started with, even though, in a lot of ways, if you’ve walked been watching Spielberg for your whole life, you could sense that same sense of like, wonder and amazement, and even the scoring that he uses that, uh, that begins to like kind of draw you in. Do you think that his second half or his his his most latest act is as strong as his earlier acts. Or do you think all of his work has been done for him in the first half of his career?

 

Jason Concepcion  16:47

I don’t think it’s as strong, but I also think that we’re going to come to appreciate it in a different way. I think post, let’s say 2012 post Lincoln, and starting with Lincoln, and maybe even starting with War of the Worlds in in 2004, five in it in a different way, Spielberg was clearly beginning to become concerned with the ways in which American society governs itself. Deals with crisis. Deals with crisises of leadership. Crisis is like the second world war with Watergate, etc, and even War of the Worlds, which he has talked about, and which is clearly a, you know, a metaphor for 911 and the kind of panic that one sees in societies that have been attacked in such a shocking way. And I think because of that, and because of the era we’re in, we’re gonna see movies like 2012 Lincoln differently. We’re gonna see movies like The Post 2017 post and even Bridget’s spies a little bit differently. Now, would I say that these are movies with, you know, the hook of Indiana Jones or ET? No, clearly not. But they are a they are evidence of a filmmaker who is trying to grapple with the world around him in a different way. They have their value because of that. But listen, I’m not going to stand here and say the BFG is as good as JAWS or is impactful as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or, you know, that’s not the case, but it’s a different chapter in a filmmaker’s life, and I think one that we haven’t actually been able to look at within the context of the times that they were created.

 

Ronald young Jr.  18:47

Rosie, do you think that in terms of knowing the difference between the front half and the back half of Steven Spielberg’s career? And I know Steven Spielberg is older than Christopher Nolan, and maybe closing in on the end of his career. Marty Scorsese is still making film, so we don’t know how long Steven Spielberg’s gonna keep making film. So good old mom, I’m not saying that it’s over for him, but knowing that like Christopher Nolan is kind of in his prime right now, do you think that there’s a difference between Christopher Nolan at his best and Christopher Nolan as at his worst? Do you think that that like delta between those two things is the same as someone like Spielberg’s delta between his best and worst.

 

Rosie Knight  19:24

I think that something that Christopher Nolan has is a consistency of quality throughout his work. Now, does that mean he ever reaches the highs of a Spielberg film? That is a perception choice, like, if you love Jaws, then you you know, maybe you won’t think Interstellar is as good, but maybe you will. But I do think so far consistently, even his stranger movies like The Prestige, which, until tenet was one of my was probably my favorite Christopher Nolan movie about two warring magicians. He brings an interesting. Kind of a dark emotional heart that is usually more about what’s wrong with humanity or the bad choices we make in life and the way we’re consumed by them, and that goes through even to Oppenheimer Batman, obviously. So I think that he has a great consistency. Now look, he is about to make the Odyssey we don’t know when it’s coming out that could be his megalopolis. We don’t know. You know, I can’t speak to the future, but I generally feel like the power of Christopher Nolan, something that’s quite unbelievable about him is when he makes a weird what should be an Oscar movie like Oppenheimer, where it’s a character driven, historically based film, that movie can make $975 million that is what I don’t think Spielberg has achieved in his later years. One obviously compared to what movies used to make that was successful to now the numbers don’t really make sense. But when he makes, you know, West Side Story, which was a great movie, and is, was, you know, hindered by HBO Max’s day to date release scheme. But that movie, it was not a wicked level success. But West Side Story is arguably the bet, the more famous musical. You know, I would also say that something like Lincoln or those kind of movies, the way Christopher Nolan approaches it, and the way the studios approach him and the way the audiences approach him, he can make a movie like that that should be a small art studio, kind of we make a little bit of money on the long legs of the Oscar, but he can make it a massively financially successful film. And I think that is something he has managed to do throughout his career, obviously, you know, I think insomnia was a miss for him. It was a remake. It was an R rated film. Oppenheimer was his first, actually, since then, so I think he’s been able to keep up a success level, and even 10 at which, you know, also was hit by that HBO Max day to day release. That’s part of why Nolan split with WB and ended up going to it was not, he wouldn’t allow it, right?

 

Ronald young Jr.  22:11

Yeah, he let it. He made it have a theater.

 

Rosie Knight  22:13

And it was a small theatrical release, but I will say, even that movie during COVID, during that situation, it grossed $363 million so it was no joke, and I think it’s one of his most interesting and funny movies. And also for somebody who’s so intelligent to me, but like, it’s not purposefully funny, it’s like he listened to all the critiques of bane’s voice in The Dark Knight Rises and was like, oh, I should just make everyone talk like that. That’s a deranged choice. But you know what worked for me, but even with movies like that, where he is not at his highest, his ability to draw in an audience and to the trust that the audience has in him to tell these stories, I think, is unlike really any other director, because he does balance that line even Interstellar, which is a really long movie and incredibly scientifically accurate to the point where people have written academic papers about it. That does not seem like a movie that would make over $700 million but it did. There’s something that he manages to put into his films that makes people feel like they’re both accessible enough that you can take your family, but also important enough that you feel like you have to see it. Also my favorite and this, will this get me points? Will it not give me points? My favorite thing about tenant is that when the movie was in kind of pre production, and Christopher Nolan was doing interviews about it, he said it was inspired because, like, he didn’t understand how mirrors worked. And I just think that’s like one of them, that’s like a ICP level, like magnets. How do those work? How do they yeah, like, so every time I think about 10, I think about how Chris vanilla doesn’t understand a mirror, and I love that.

 

Ronald young Jr.  23:49

We’ll be back with more PCDC after this break.

 

Ronald young Jr.  24:06

Jason, let me ask you about premises for a second. Like, I one thing that I’ve noticed, and probably my least favorite movie, is I feel like Inception does not hold up over time. If you watch it again, you you kind of realize that it’s just a bunch of people on a long flight that are asleep. Like, if you were to show the camera of them on the plane, they’re just asleep for nine forever. How long it takes to get there? Which, the more I think about that, the more the movie falls apart, which doesn’t feel as dramatic or awesome for that reason. Do you think that’s that that is the case with any Spielberg movies where they’re just not holding up after watching after many years?

 

Jason Concepcion  25:38

Sure, but this is also a person who, you know, we’re talking about the difference between a movie that was in Inception, that was released, what 14 years ago, 15 years ago, versus a person whose filmography goes back 50 years. So some of that is just simply natural. I find it a little humorous to be like, yeah, Oppenheimer, what an amazing achievement. Box Office wise, 900 million when we, you know, we have to acknowledge the pink swan event that was the pairing of that movie with Barbie that is like a once in a lifetime will never be replicated, though, the industry might try kind of situation and the rising tide that lifted both of those boats that said, Yeah, I mean, like, here’s if you want, a critique of one of Steven Spielberg’s great movies, for me, Saving Private Ryan. The movie opens with Private Ryan, now an adult, visiting the cemetery at at in France, in Normandy, he falls to his knees, and then he begins imagining the story of how he came to be rescued by Tom Hanks’ character. And we get this entire, like, 40 to an hour and 15 minute story that Private Ryan was not there for, but that somehow he knows everything that happened up to his rescue and discovery by Tom Hanks in his and his squad. So like that has always, like really bothered me. The the loving shot of the flapping American flag is not particularly my taste at the end of that movie. And I think there are other things, you know, throughout the filmography of Steven Spielberg, but that is ultimately, and things like that, ultimately, to me, are small notes in a much longer story of someone who has had, you know, groundbreaking industry and artistic success in the space, in the place of in this kind of filmmaking world that he has had a massive hand in creating himself. I mean, it almost feels like cheating to like list off Steven Spielberg movies, but like Minority Report honest, even the misses like stuff, you know, even the misses, like some would call Minority Report a little bit of a miss artificial intelligence, AI Artificial Intelligence, which was essentially a co direction, right with, with Stanley Kubrick, who passed away, was not able to finish it and who, and the fact that, like only one person could be thought of to finish it, and it was Steven Spielberg. I think says a lot about students Steven Spielberg, but like Amistad, there’s a movie that I think is imperfect as a 1997 movie about a slave revolt, like I think it fails in a lot of ways, Empire of the Sun. I think there are movies that kind of don’t Delve contextually with huge issues like World War Two or slavery, in a way that I that feel very incomplete to me. But again, we’re talking about a filmography that spans 50 years, and I think that’s natural as we pull away from the Nolan era, as we pull into the final third of the Nolan era. I think that’s going to happen as what has happens with any artist you know, if I watch the searchers, which you know, is held up as a landmark, iconic Western film by John Ford that deals with racism in a very kind of modern context. Does it deal with that, or was it just John Ford made a racist movie and didn’t realize it at the time? I think there’s a lot of that culture moves and will continue to move. And so, yeah, there’s things within Stephen’s filmography that don’t hold up, and the same could be said of Christopher Nolan, but the body of work speaks for itself.

 

Ronald young Jr.  29:59

Rosie, let me ask you a question, and I’ll ask you the same one. Jason, pick a Steven Spielberg movie that Christopher Nolan could have executed better.  And why?

 

Rosie Knight  30:11

Wow, interesting question.

 

Ronald young Jr.  30:13

The reverse question is to you, Jason, okay, start thinking about that now, but go ahead, Rosie.

 

Rosie Knight  30:18

Okay, I don’t know that he could have done it better. I think something that Steven Spielberg has always done well is he has tried to tell, like, really diverse stories. He directed The Color Purple. He introduced, you know, Oprah as an actress, like with Quincy Jones. Like, um, he made lot of choices. Like Chris vanilla is not someone who does that. Like, speaking about this, I cannot pretend, you know John David Washington is like the first lead black person in a Christopher Nolan movie. It took that long to 10 it. So I think that the thing that Christopher Nolan does well is when it comes to, like a science fiction movie where he’s staying in his lane and he’s got his, like Matthew McConaughey, and he’s and he’s doing a little thing about, like a smart white guy and aliens, I think he does that really well. So I’m gonna say that the movie that I would I’m not gonna say, I can’t say it’s better because I do not know. But I would say, if I was picking Christopher Nolan to go back in time and do a movie Steven Spielberg would do, I would pick ET. Wow, I can’t pick Jurassic Park was long. I love Jurassic Park. I think that is a perfect movie. I think everything about it is perfect. But I think that for Christopher Nolan, I think it has to be a science fiction movie. I would love to see what he would do. I think that that is also one of Spielberg’s most depressing movies when you really get into it. And I remember every time it would get into that second half where Elliot’s in the hospital and they’re taking et, I think Christopher Nolan could have done some really scary stuff with that. I think that I, even as a kid, wanted there to be less kids in that movie. I really wanted Drew Barrymore to be the lead. I think Christopher Nolan could make an interesting version of ET as a science fiction fellow. I think that is the one that I would like to see him do the most, if it comes to what would actually be better. I actually think Ready Player One, Christopher Nolan could have done a really interesting version of that wasn’t as heavily based in the IP though. I know that is the point of the book. I’ve read it, but I think Christopher Nolan could have done a version that maybe people would have thought was a little bit was a little bit cooler and a little bit less directly connected to Spielberg’s kind of oeuvre.

 

Jason Concepcion  32:28

ET formally the highest grossing film of all time so.

 

Rosie Knight  32:32

Yeah, and Christopher Nolan would have probably brought that money there too. That man has lots of high grossing movies.

 

Ronald young Jr.  32:38

What about you, Jason?

 

Jason Concepcion  32:39

You know, this is an interesting question. And I actually think, because of the breath of Spielberg’s filmography, there are maybe a couple of candidates here. I think, I think Spielberg would do 10 it better, and I think he would do Interstellar, interstellar better. Listen, I think that both, I think both of those films, for me, Interstellar is interesting in that it’s so heady and so hard science based, and ultimately, the movie hinges on, does the emotional beat land with you, or does it not you know, the you know going through the bookcase, because love is the force that, like, I guess, binds the universe together. On a quantum scientific level, I didn’t quite get it, but it didn’t hit for me. And tenon is a movie that is sad. It is very interesting and very funny. You know, I’ve been wondering for five years now whether farts go back in and P goes back like, are you when you’re peeing? Do you catch the P back and go back in. You’re catching the P like you catch the bullet, like this ruin today, like you’re sitting there and the backwards war is happening, right? And you’re watching The terrorist attack happen, and as and as you know, David Washington catches, like, as he’s sitting there in the theater, does his fart go back in his butt? Like, I’ve been wondering these and that’s very funny to me. But I think tenon is a movie where Spielberg’s straightforwardness with story really would have improved that film, which I think is overburdened by its ideas. The fact that in that movie, a character has to come out and say, Hey, don’t think about it. It just works. Like, literally, that’s a scene in the movie. Is a character saying, Don’t worry about the backwards stuff. I know it’s crazy, but it just works. That would never happen to Steven Spielberg movie, because the story would be more straightforward now.

 

Ronald young Jr.  34:36

Okay, I think I’m about ready to rule, but I’d like to hear your closing arguments and Rosie, we’ll start with you. How did y’all both make that shock face ready to rule now, Rosie, close me out on yo ur no lint base.

 

Rosie Knight  34:54

I am gonna quote or paraphrase from Christopher No. Most financially successful and generally beloved film, which is the Dark Knight. And in it, you know, we get Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, and he says, you know, Batman isn’t the hero we needed, but he is the one we deserved. And I think that the truth is that in 2025 Christopher Nolan might not be the director. You know, we might have needed a more magical director like Steven Spielberg, but his dark, realistic, grounded, gritty takes of reshaped cinema for the last like 15 years. And I think that the success of something like Oppenheimer, even with the barbenheimer help, which we know it did. And everyone who’s listened to the podcast knows my feelings about Oppenheimer, not, not a great fan, necessarily, of some of the ways that it approached the story. But right now, he is the director we deserve this dark, gritty, political, over smart, overthinking kind of director, I think, and in a way, that’s kind of the one that we need, because people are getting dumber every day. So someone who’s going to inspire people to Google Ideas like, you know, the leap of faith, or like theological ideas that he’s putting in, I think that’s only a good thing. And I believe that Christopher Nolan is a director who regularly works in England and works with his brother and works with his wife and has this little family team. And when he lets Elizabeth de Becky be tall like he did in 10, and he’s really doing stuff that other people aren’t doing in Hollywood.

 

Ronald young Jr.  36:38

I love it. Jason, close me out. Spielberg, better than Nolan.

 

Jason Concepcion  36:42

Nolan is a brilliant director, but Steven Spielberg is the standard. And I think you could, you could argue that several different ways. One is in the box office grosses. You’re talking about multiple films in the highest grossing movies list of the 20th century. You can talk about his redefining of the industry, not just the summer blockbuster, but elevating sci fi to a different level, elevating pulp action, as with Indiana Jones, to a different level, putting dinosaurs on the screen in the most realistic way ever seen to the point that the Toronto Raptors name themselves the Raptors because of the Jurassic Park film, the fact that he’s created maybe the greatest war World War Two movie ever, and Saving Private Ryan, a movie that brought, in a very unspielbergian way, the horrors of war, and that opening storming of Normandy beach scene to screens in a way that showed you the violence in a more visceral way that people did not associate with. Steven Spielberg. Then, of course, there is Schindler’s List bringing the that particular sad chapter of history to the screens, a movie that he did, that he created and directed while he was doing Jurassic Park, which has got to be one of the craziest feats ever in cinema history. ET, Minority Report, War of the Worlds. He’s continuously redefined what it means to be a filmmaker, and now, 50 years after he began his filmmaking career, he is still doing it at the highest level, disclosure set to be released in 2026 where he will return to form, perhaps with another UFO Alien story, The legacy, the technical brilliance, the storytelling range, the box office impact simply can’t top, Steven Spielberg.

 

Ronald young Jr.  38:47

All right, these are great arguments. Are y’all ready for my ruling?

 

Jason Concepcion  38:51

Yes.

 

Rosie Knight  38:51

Ready, I’m ready.

 

Ronald young Jr.  38:53

You know, it’s funny. I I was asking y’all questions because I really was deciding as y’all were talking like, this is what? Yet again, I’ve put you two in a position where, yet again, I’ve put y’all in a position where I’ve picked two things that I like and I’ve just been like for me, yeah, exactly. Why don’t y’all make the decision for me as to whether or which of these things that I like better? And in this case, I am the kid that grew up with Spielberg movies. And just a note for Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park is still the best Jurassic Park movie. It is still the original, like, when they put it in theaters, I’m like, Oh yeah, I’ll go watch that again. Because in terms of the ability for Steven Spielberg to build tension in which I felt real fear for the characters in the movie. He is very good at doing that in his films. Like very good, even the ways in which, if you go back to Indiana Jones or et all of that real feelings I feel watching those movies, it’s also the same feeling I felt when I watched Ready Player One, but. Apparently I’m the minority on that one. Also the idea of like something like artificial intelligence, which, again, co directed, and I can feel the parts of that that are Spielberg versus Kubrick, but the ending, especially as someone who’s recently lost their mom, the ending portion with the most very emotional interaction between the AI and the mother character, is one of the most best things I’ve seen in film in terms of, like, defining what love is. And that’s just one little scene. We know that Spielberg is good at what he does. I always hesitate on arguments that are basically saying that this person is the standard, like, if not for this person, this other person wouldn’t, wouldn’t exist. However, in this case, I really do agree with it, because I think that without Spielberg, we would not have Nolan. But the truth is, when I watch Nolan films, I get the same feeling I get as an adult that I get when I was watching Spielberg films as a kid, I watched TENNET seven or eight or nine times, and after the seventh or eighth or ninth time, I finally understood it, it started to make more sense.

 

Rosie Knight  41:04

[…]

 

Ronald young Jr.  41:06

That’s the thing. The truth is, he did not execute parts of that movie. Well, if you watch it again, there’s parts of there. Rob was like, oh, well, that should be backwards. If we’re on this side of the mirror, I should be seeing that backwards. If we’re on the other side of the mirror, it’s going forwards. So if I’m on the other side of the mirror, things shouldn’t be rotating backwards. For me, they should still be going forward. Which is something that bothers me about Nolan movies. Sometimes, every now and then, he develops a very cool concept, and because he’s making these long, sprawling epic films, he can’t be bothered with some of the details that I think are very important. I want to be clear, not every detail like because he’s a very detail oriented director, but every now and then, especially if you’re like me and watched him more than once, you’re like, I don’t know about that one. I don’t know. Let’s fast forward to the future. 50 years from now, what are we still going to be talking about? I think we’ll still be talking about a few films from Nolan’s cannon. I think we will. But I think the truth is, we’re never going to stop talking about ET we’re never going to stop talking about Jurassic Park. We’re never going to stop talking about Jaws. We’re never going to stop talking about Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And the truth is, while I think that Nolan is a great director, and I don’t like a lot things that Steven Spielberg is saying about cinema and what we should be doing, and where we should be in the movies, and how we should be watching the movies and all that. I don’t agree with that, because a lot of it sounds like very like, you know, Boomer based nonsense to me. I will say that in this case, it is hard for me to argue against the catalog of Steven Spielberg, especially when he did that much good in his first third and I think maybe in the future, Nolan will be in a position where we’ll be like, I’m sorry, did you see the last four or five films that he made? All nominees, whatever that might be the case, but it’s not the case right now, I think Steven Spielberg is a better director than Christopher Nolan. Jason, you have won.

 

Rosie Knight  43:02

He finally goes […] now that it’s over, I could say, I do think the right man won. I think in a few years, like, not just you, Jason, though I do think that about you, but also I just think generally, like Jaws, people are talking about that movie, like, 45 years later, 50 years later, in a way holds up. Nobody talks about a Christopher Nolan movie, even from like five years ago. Honestly, there’s a lot more critique of Nolan and The Dark Knight movies were very much like a reactionary kind of response to 911, and even 15 years later, they seem kind of outdated, but something like Jaws, I regularly see people say that is my favorite movie. Like, if Jaws is in the movie theater. I will go and see it. I watched it on the beach at Long Beach like I think Steven Spielberg won. I think he was right to win, and […]

 

Jason Concepcion  43:47

When he did draw 27 which makes me sick. Makes what did […]

 

Rosie Knight  43:52

I do when I was 27 nothing […]

 

Ronald young Jr.  43:57

Well, I love having y’all here. I’m glad y’all came back. You guys are always welcome back. This is not the end. There’s always something to argue. At some point, I think next bill, maybe we’ll do comic books versus movies, which I know we’ll probably get at least one of you to levitate into the air.

 

Rosie Knight  44:14

When can I come on and argue that Paul Verhoeven is better than Spielberg? Because then I’ll be back.

 

Ronald young Jr.  44:21

Oh, I’m gonna give you something like Swamp Thing versus, I don’t know, the Creature from the Black […] Thank you both for being here. This has been great.

 

Rosie Knight  44:34

Yay, thanks for having us fun.

 

Ronald young Jr.  44:39

Thanks again to Rosie Knight and Jason Concepcion, and be sure to check out their nerd culture podcast, X Ray Vision. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Debate Club if you haven’t yet. Now is a great time to subscribe to Lemonada Premium. You’ll get bonus content like Chelsea and Selena discussing the best text and phone call they’ve ever received. Just hit the Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, or for all other podcast apps, head to lemonadanapremium.com to subscribe. That’s lemonadanapremium.com.

 

CREDITS  45:10

Pop Culture Debate Club is a production of Lemonada and the BBC.   It’s produced by Jamela Zarha Williams, Kryssy Pease,  Dani Matias and me, Ronald young Jr. Our mix is by Noah Smith. Rachel Neel is VP of new content. Our Senior Vice President of weekly content  and production is Steve Nelson. Commissioning editor for the BBC is Rhian Roberts. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer.   Follow Pop Culture Debate Club, wherever you get your podcasts.