Science & Tech Quote by Steven Spielberg

Spielberg isn’t name-dropping Cecil B. DeMille for trivia points; he’s staking out a particular kind of ambition: not “the most imaginative” science-fiction filmmaker, but the most legible, crowd-moving, cathedral-building one. DeMille’s brand was spectacle with moral clarity, engineered for maximum audience reach - towering sets, clear stakes, and a confidence that entertainment could double as civic ritual. By invoking him, Spielberg frames sci-fi not as niche futurism or brainy puzzle-box work, but as mass mythology.

The subtext is strategic. In film culture, science fiction often gets treated like a genre that has to justify itself: either elevate it into “serious” allegory or keep it safely pulpy. Spielberg’s DeMille comparison refuses that apology. It suggests a sci-fi cinema that’s unapologetically big, emotionally direct, and spiritually charged - wonder as a delivery system for ideas. That’s the spine of his best work: the cosmic awe of Close Encounters, the moral terror of War of the Worlds, the glossy fable logic of E.T. Even when his films flirt with darkness, they’re built to play in the largest room possible.

Context matters: Spielberg came up in the post-60s era when “New Hollywood” prized grit and cynicism, while blockbuster filmmaking was being invented in real time. Claiming DeMille is a way of saying: I’m not here to shrink the medium into realism; I’m here to make belief scalable. Science fiction, in his hands, becomes less prophecy than modern scripture - designed for people who want to feel small in front of something enormous, and leave the theater a little rearranged.