Age: 79
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Steven Allan Spielberg KBE (born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema and is the highest-grossing film director of all time. Among other accolades, he has received three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and three BAFTA Awards, as well as the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995, an honorary knighthood in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2009, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, and the National Medal of Arts in 2023. According to Forbes, he is the wealthiest celebrity. Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He moved to California and studied film in college. After directing several episodes for television, including Night Gallery and Columbo, he directed the television film Duel (1971), which Barry Diller approved. He made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express (1974), also beginning his decades-long collaboration with composer John Williams, with whom he has worked for all but five of his theatrical releases. He became a household name with the summer blockbuster Jaws (1975). He continued directing acclaimed escapist box-office hits with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and the original Indiana Jones trilogy (1981–1989). He also explored drama in The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987). In 1993, Spielberg directed back-to-back hits with the science fiction thriller Jurassic Park, the highest-grossing film at the time, and the epic historical drama Schindler's List, which has often been ranked among the greatest films ever made. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the latter as well as for the World War II epic Saving Private Ryan (1998). Spielberg has since directed the science fiction films A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2002), War of the Worlds (2005) and Ready Player One (2018); the historical dramas Amistad (1997), Munich (2005), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015) and The Post (2017); the comedies Catch Me If You Can (2002) and The Terminal (2004); the animated film The Adventures of Tintin (2011); the musical West Side Story (2021); and the family drama The Fabelmans (2022). Spielberg co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks Pictures, and he has served as a producer for many successful films and television series, among them Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), An American Tail (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Animaniacs (1993), Freakazoid! (1995), Twister (1996), Band of Brothers (2001) and Transformers (2007). Several of Spielberg's works are considered among the greatest films in history, and some are among the highest-grossing films of all time. Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". In 2013, Time listed him among the 100 most influential people. In 2023, Spielberg was the recipient of the first-ever Time 100 Impact Award in the US. Description above from the Wikipedia article Steven Spielberg, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
In Kentucky, a family watches in confusion as a herd of cattle starts running past their home, on fire. A spaceship explodes before it returns to Mars, and hundreds of other Martian ships leave Mars and head towards Earth. President James Dale, along with his aides, addresses the United States concerning the historic event. The President's science aides set up a first contact meeting with the Martians in Pahrump, Nevada as President Dale watches the development on TV with his wife Marsha and his daughter Taffy. Using a translation machine, the Ambassador of Mars announces that they "come in peace". When a hippie releases a dove as a symbol of peace, the Ambassador shoots it before he and the other Martians slaughter most of the people at the event, including General Casey, news reporter Jason Stone, and Billy-Glenn Norris, before capturing chat-show host Nathalie Lake and her pet Chihuahua. Thinking that the Martians assumed that the dove was a symbol of war, President Dale tells Professor Donald Kessler to renegotiate with the Martians, whose Ambassador later requests to address the United States Congress. At this meeting, the Martians massacre most of Congress. Kessler begs the Martian Ambassador to stop, but is knocked unconscious and taken aboard their ship, where he is later shown with his body parts dismembered and his disembodied head remaining animated. General Decker tries to convince President Dale to retaliate with nuclear warfare, but the President refuses. After a failed attempt to assassinate President Dale in which a disguised Martian is killed, the Martians invade Earth in droves, starting with Washington, D.C. and quickly spreading around the globe. As they attack the White House, the Secret Service evacuates the President, but the First Lady is crushed to death by the Nancy Reagan chandelier and Taffy is separated from them during the chaos. After the President of France is assassinated by the Martians and the Martians have defaced a variety of world landmarks, the U.S. government attempts a nuclear attack on the Martian mother ship that night, but that proves futile and the Martians continue destroying Earth and its inhabitants. Eventually, the Martian Leader and his bodyguards breach the bunker where Dale has been taken, and the former reduces Decker to the size of an insect before killing him. The Martians kill everyone else in the bunker except for Dale, who makes an impassioned speech in an attempt to plea for peace and his life. The Martian Leader appears to be moved by the speech and deceptively appears to agree to a truce with Dale, but then uses a gadget disguised as a hand to kill him. As the Martians ravage Las Vegas, Byron Williams, a former world champion boxer, leads a small group of survivors consisting of Barbara Land, Tom Jones, a waitress named Cindy, and a lawyer to an airfield in the hopes of flying a small jet procured by Land to safety. They barely make it, losing the lawyer in the process, but discover a large group of Martians stationed there as they are preparing to take off, the Ambassador among them. Byron creates a diversion by challenging them to a fistfight. While he succeeds in killing the Ambassador, he is outnumbered and overwhelmed, but Tom, Barbara, and Cindy escape. Billy-Glenn's brother Richie discovers that the Martians' heads explode when they hear Slim Whitman's "Indian Love Call" when he goes to rescue his grandmother, Florence. Richie and Florence then drive around town, using the song to kill Martians, and broadcast the song on a local radio station. Thereafter, armed forces broadcast the song around the globe, killing the Martian leader and most if not all of the other Martians. Nathalie and Kessler's disembodied heads kiss while the Martian spaceship they are on crashes into the ocean. In the aftermath, Richie and Florence are awarded the Medal of Honor by Taffy, presumably the only surviving member of the government. Byron, who survived the Martian brawl, arrives in D.C. to reunite with his former wife and their two sons as the devastation is being cleaned up. Barbara, Cindy, and Tom Jones emerge from a cave with some animals to see dozens of crashed Martian ships in Lake Tahoe.
