[q]S.S.'s style may be sophisticated, but thematically he's still an immature boy who wants love from his daddy, and therefore will never be an artists on the level of the true cinema greats, regardless of how many Oscars he wins or tickets he sells.
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see, this is where i stop taking criticism about him seriously. i appreciate your other comments, but so much that's leveled at Spielberg -- calling him "Unka Stevie" or whatever -- seems so personal in nature. yes, his films are filled with lost boys, but could we not also call this thematic consistency? i can't think of a more searing portrait of divorce than the small scene in that massive blockbuster E.T. where Elliot says the simple words, "I can't, he's in Mexico with Sally." to me, that single line, over the dinner table with the single mom, the quick portrait of a broken family, is as memorable and emotionally impactful as any film i've ever seen that's dealt with divorce.
(and on that topic -- E.T. is about suburban transcendentalism, and it's almost overtly Christian with E.T. as a Christ-figure, resurrected and through faith the bicycles fly. there is indeed more than meets the eye with many Spielberg films, just not always)
and i'll maintain that Spielberg is as versatile as Scorecese or Wells or Kubrick (and, my goodness, what company to be compared to, an embarassment of riches, and the vaunting of one isn't meant to degrade the other). i'd also maintain that the battle scenes of SPR are much more than shaky cameras and blood on the lense. what Spielberg does is give you utterly coherent chaos, and as a professor of mine -- who doesn't like Spielberg much -- once said about those scenes is how brilliantly they depict the randomness of the ferocity of combat, and the ferocity of the randomness. those scenes are masterful, and while i haven't seen the Wells film (and i'd now like to), they are as innovative and immitated as anything from the past 10 years. his films are far more than pretty pictures, and i think SPR, despite my complaints, might be the film that has most "advanced" cinema more than any other over the past 10 years. and i also can't agree with your assessment of "Schindler's List." but that's too much to get into here.
ultimately, all these men do different things. they have different goals, and i think much of the criticism has to do with personal taste as opposed to independent aesthetic judgements. and that's perfectly fine. if anything, i find the adoration of Scorcese and the degradation of Spielberg by the intelligentsia quite off putting. Raging Bull, for all its brilliance, is almost unbearable to watch. is this a good thing or a bad thing? and "Gangs of New York" was pretty shitty, imho, with "Catch Me If You Can" the better film of Christmas 2002. simpler, less ambitious, more fun, happy ending, all true, but uplifting art isn't necessarily dumb, and that happy endings aren't always a cop out. life isn't always a despairing slog through the shit of human existence (nor does it need a warm Spielberg ending either, admittedly).
i suppose my big point is kind of a Bonoism. it's easy to despair, it's easy to show the awfulness of man to his fellow man, it's easy to chronical a psychopath. it's quite hard to pull off joy, and i think the educated among us -- and i count myself in this group -- are suspicious of things that don't hurt, that aren't "challenging" in an expected manner.
and to swing a bit farther ... and to touch on some Camille Paglia ... so much of the problem, i find, with "today's" art is that it is so, so, so painfully self-conscious, created as if someone is trying to be nothing more than impervious to academic criticism. there's no attempt to elevate, to engage, to uplift, to find optimism and humor, because these things have been labled "easy" or "dumb" or "degraded" or, worse, "pop" by the intellgentsia.
so ... yeah, don't know how coherent this is going to be, it's such a massive subject and one that i haven't engaged with on an intellectual level since being an undergrad. but it's fascinating, and all points are well taken.
Spielberg is the man.
My uncle just signed another 3 year contract to fly the Dreamworks jets. 
