Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter: Parallel Careers? |

Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter: Parallel Careers?

I’ve been thinking about this post for ages.

It’s no secret that I admire both directors, Carpenter in particular. In fact, a few years ago, I even placed him as having some of the greatest “trifectas” in film history, alongside directors James Cameron and John McTiernan. I also have a movie poster gallery in my basement rec-room dedicated to Carpenter:

As for Spielberg, his success is incontestable. He has created some of the greatest escapist entertainment in film history, some of the most commercially successful films, along with some of the most respected artistic efforts in the industry.

It occurred to me that both directors had very similar paths when they first started out. And then, at a certain point in their journeys, their careers diverged rather dramatically. What was that trigger, and why did they respond differently to it?

Recent Carpenter-Related Posts at Life After Gateway

The Fog, Forty-Five Years Old This Month

Escape From New York Revisited Part 1

Escape From New York Revisited Part 2

Videos from John Carpenter’s Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony)

First, let’s examine Spielberg and Carpenter’s beginnings. The similarities are remarkable:

Beginnings

Criteria	Spielberg	Carpenter
Birth year	1946	1948
Inspirations	Inspired by Sci-Fi films of the 50s and 60s	Inspired by Sci-Fi films of the 50s and 60s
Education	Applied to University of Southern California Film School (USC) but was turned down. Ended up at California State University	Attended University of Southern California Film School
	Dropped out to begin directing (for Universal TV)	Dropped out to make his first film
TV Movie Success	Duel (1971) attracted notice	Someone’s Watching Me (1978) attracted notice
First Motion Picture	The Sugarland Express (1974) did not achieve commercial success	Darkstar (1968) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) did not achieve commercial success

The birth year, film education, and TV successes are definite commonalities. Both even dropped out of university in order to begin their careers. (Spielberg later returned to his university to earn his BA Degree in Film and Electronic Media … he presented Schindler’s List as his final project.) But those TV works put them on the map, so to speak.

At this point in their careers, they were both hard at work and attracting some attention from studio executives and investors. And they both had a huge movie on the horizon; Spielberg and Carpenter were forces just waiting to unleash their creative furies.

And then they got their chance.

First Success

Criteria	Spielberg	Carpenter
First Hit	Jaws (1975) was a massive success	Halloween (1978) was a massive success

The effect of Jaws on Spielberg’s career is hard to effectively express. Audiences were lined up outside of theaters, stretching down the street and around corners, coining the term blockbuster in the popular lexicon. There were many repeat viewings as well.

And for Carpenter, Halloween was a mega-hit, especially for the teen audience. Made off a modest budget of just $300,000, it garnered 70 million dollars at the worldwide box office.

The pressure was now on. Both filmmakers had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. A great deal hinged on their next efforts, and they didn’t disappoint:

The Next Movies

Criteria	Spielberg	Carpenter
The Next Hits	Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) was a hit; Global Box Office was 300 million dollars off a 20 million dollar budget	The Fog (1980) was a modest success; Global Box Office 21 million dollars from a 1 million dollar budget. He then followed up with a bigger hit, Escape From New York (1981), which earned 50 million dollars off a 6 million dollar budget.

Close Encounters, while decidedly slower moving and more dramatic than Jaws, was still a huge hit and a pop culture moment. As for Carpenter, The Fog and Escape From New York were creative forces that everyone was talking about at the time. I was only ten years old, and I remember the older kids in school talking about both, especially the Snake Plissken character.

Both filmmakers were firing on all cylinders; they’d both now created back-to-back hits. The points of convergence are obvious, but the common pathway gets even clearer here …

… They each suddenly hit a failure:

First Failure

Criteria	Spielberg	Carpenter
First Failure	1941 (1979)	The Thing (1982)

The Thing and 1941 were failures in both box office and critical response. Spielberg’s film actually made a little money, but after the success of Jaws and Close Encounters, it just didn’t approach the same levels of success. And as for The Thing, there is no metric that could consider it a success at the time. But let’s look at them one at a time:

1941

Spielberg’s 1941 actually made 95 million on a 35 million dollar budget. It wasn’t really a failure, but it simply didn’t connect with audiences. Critics didn’t enjoy it. Roger Ebert said that it was “just not very funny” and reviewers wrote about being “pummeled” by noise, explosions, effects, and chaos but not having much to grab them. Spielberg himself laments, “I just think that it wasn’t funny enough.” It was a great idea with a wonderful cast of people behind the scenes — including Roger Zemeckis, Bob Gale, and John Milius — but the end result was not what people had hoped for.

The Thing

As for The Thing, despite its massive success in subsequent decades and its huge fan-following, audiences at the time weren’t prepared for the gore horror, the blood, the exploding bodies, and the intense violence. It was too “bleak,” according to some. Carpenter, in a scathing review, was called a “pornographer of violence.” The film’s budget was 15 million and it only brought in 19.6 million dollars that year. (Ennio Morricone’s score even received a Razzie nomination!)

Listen to me speak about The Thing, on the Re-Creative Podcast on YouTube, here.

Carpenter suffered enormously. The Thing, although now revered as one of the greatest sci-fi horror films of all time, destroyed his confidence and reputation for a spell. The failure devastated him, and he lost his next directing gig as a result: Firestarter, based on Stephen King’s book.

Moving Forward

Following 1941, Spielberg regrouped and his next film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, set the standard for action/adventure films and created a franchise. Spielberg has said that he felt so nervous about repeating the mistakes of 1941, that he storyboarded every scene in Raiders.

Carpenter eventually secured another movie that had modest success, and then another — and this one was a critical success as well.

Recovery

Spielberg	Carpenter
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)	Christine (1983)
	Starman (1984)

Following 1941, Spielberg’s fortunes were back on the rise. Raiders was simply massive, and moving forward, he experienced success after success. Carpenter, however, had only moderate success with Christine and Starman, but the latter actually garnered an Oscar nomination for Jeff Bridges.

Spielberg continued putting out crowd-pleasing fare with critical/Oscar works also in the mix. But Carpenter then hit another barrier — his second box office disaster, and this cemented his future. This is where the two filmmakers’ careers took different paths; their careers diverged dramatically.

A Second Failure for Carpenter — Big Trouble

Year	Spielberg	Carpenter
1982	ET
1983		Christine
1984	Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom	Starman
1985	The Color Purple
1986		Big Trouble in Little China
1987	Empire of the Sun
1988
1989	Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Always

After Starman, Carpenter went back to his roots and his love of old martial arts movies, and Big Trouble in Little China, although now also revered as a comedic masterpiece and a wonderful satire of the American hero, was another failure. It was a devastating turn of events for Carpenter, for he had seemed to recover from The Thing, but then he hit another major roadblock. Big Trouble in Little China, although eminently quotable and featuring hugely popular Kurt Russell, failed at the box office. Made on a budget of 20 million dollars, it only earned 11 million in the United States.

Following it, Carpenter retreated into low-budget filmmaking where he could retain total control of the script, casting, and score, and he never emerged. He said that Big Trouble in Little China “… was the reason I stopped making movies for the Hollywood studios. I won’t work for them again.” He felt that the studio just did not understand the movie. They didn’t realize that it was a satire and Jack Burton was not actually the “American Hero.” Wang was the hero, and Jack was the sidekick. The marketing failed, and with the film up against Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Karate Kid Part II just a few weeks earlier, and Aliens two weeks later, there was little hope.

During his “independent era”, he created some incredible films, but they were not commercial successes on the scale of Spielberg. Here are their next films until the year 2000:

Year	Spielberg	Carpenter
1987		Prince of Darkness
1988		They Live
1991	Hook
1992		Memoirs of an Invisible Man
1993	Jurassic Park Schindler’s List
1994		In the Mouth of Madness
1995		Village of the Damned
1996		Escape from LA
1997	The Lost World: Jurassic Park Amistad
1998	Saving Private Ryan	Vampires

Spielberg never looked back after Raiders of the Lost Ark. He continued making hit after hit, along with artistic dramatic successes. Carpenter, on the other hand, succeeded in developing a devout cult following, but his retreat to retain creative control also meant he could not access the massive budgets of Spielberg.

I idolize both filmmakers, but none with the fervor that I do Carpenter. He can do no wrong in my books. The Thing is my second favourite film (behind Planet of the Apes). They Live, The Fog, Escape from New York, and Halloween are near perfection for me. I consider Prince of Darkness one of, if not the, scariest movie I’ve ever seen.

What are your thoughts? Are there any other similarities between the two that I’ve missed? Or am I totally off base with my comparison? Let me know.

— Timothy S. Johnston, 17 June 2025

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A BLANKET OF STEEL is out now!

WATCH THE GRIPPING BOOK TRAILER HERE.

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A Blanket of Steel from Timothy S. Johnston and Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Ltd.

Book Cover & Jacket Copy:

AN UNSTOPPABLE THREAT!

A mysterious assassin has murdered Cliff Sim, Chief Security Officer of the underwater colony, Trieste. Cliff was a mountain of a man, highly trained, and impossible to defeat in combat. And yet …

Someone brutally beat him and left his broken body in a secret Chinese facility at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

And included a calling card for Truman McClusky, Mayor of Trieste.

Taunting him.

Mac has led the underwater colonies in their fight against the world’s superpowers. Climate change has devastated the surface; nations suffer famine, drought, rebellion, rising waters, and apocalyptic coastal flooding. But now, as Mac leads the underwater colonies to freedom and independence, he’s faced with the gravest threat of his life: a Russian assassin, hellbent on killing Mac and everyone he cares for. Now Mac must uncover the identity of the killer, face him in combat, and at the same time lead people in battle against the largest underwater force ever assembled. It’s Mac’s final test, and to win the war, he must use every tool at his disposal, including the most surprising and devastating underwater weapons ever invented.

If Mac fails, all hope is lost for the future of human colonization on the ocean floors.

But the assassin could be anyone …

Watch your back, Mac.

A Blanket of Steel is the most gripping thriller yet in The Rise of Oceania.

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The other books in The Rise of Oceania series by Timothy S Johnston:

The War Beneath 9781771484718
The Savage Deeps 9781771485067
Fatal Depth 9781554555574
An Island of Light 9781554555819
The Shadow of War 9781554556007