Whether you love it or hate it (or both), Ready Player One is a hit, proving Steven Spielberg still has it when it comes to making action-adventure blockbusters. The director who almost singlehandedly invented the "blockbuster" as we know it today no longer dominates the media landscape as he once did. His interests in recent decades have leaned more towards serious historical dramas rather than the fantasy popcorn fare that defined his early career. Yet Spielberg's fanboy nature hasn't gone away, and so he returns to reflect on the genre that made him famous with the extremely fanboy-ish Ready Player One.

So how does the movie magic happen? This list reveals behind the scenes secrets from 16 films directed by Steven Spielberg, in chronological order from 1975's Jaws to 2018's Ready Player One. The focus is on the half of his professional filmography dedicated to sci-fi, fantasy and adventure; you'll have to search elsewhere on the web if you want to read about the making of Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. These facts range from screenwriting struggles to on-set antics to special effects innovations. These are the stories of how America's most famous director made some of his best (and worst) films!

16 JAWS WENT THREE TIMES OVER SCHEDULE

Everyone knows the story of how the mechanical shark in Jaws kept breaking, and how keeping it mostly off-screen made the movie much scarier. What you might not know is that pretty much everything else also went wrong during the production of Spielberg's breakout blockbuster. It's common wisdom in Hollywood that shooting films on the water is a recipe for disasters. Naturally Jaws faced immense production difficulties.

The producers planned for a $4 million budget and a 55 day shoot. The budget ballooned to $9 million and the shoot to 159 days. Boats sank, cameras got soaked and actors got seasick. The crew jokingly referred to the film as "Flaws." Spielberg didn't even attend the shooting of the final scene, afraid the crew would try to drown him! This disastrous shoot would have destroyed Spielberg's career forever had Jaws not also been a critically-adored box office record smasher.

15 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS BORROWS FROM A HIGH SCHOOL PROJECT

close encounters of the third kind

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is notable as one of the only three times Spielberg wrote his own screenplay for one of his professional features (the others being 1974's The Sugarland Express and 2001's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence). It was a very personal project for him, the first of his three films about alien encounters and the first of many involving broken families. It's interesting to note, then, that it's essentially a much more expensive remake of a film he made in high school.

Firelight, made in 1964 when Spielberg was 17 years old, isn't generally counted as part of his official filmography. Only three minutes and 40 seconds of footage from the 135 minute film survives. It cost $500 to make and made $501 from its only theatrical showing. Close Encounters is the work of a much more polished filmmaker, but several scenes are taken directly, shot-for-shot, from Firelight.

14 HARRISON FORD'S SICKNESS CHANGED RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

One of the most iconic scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark is the one where a man prepares to fight Indiana Jones with a sword, only for Indy to draw his gun and shoot him. It's a fairly well-known piece of trivia that this scene wasn't in the script. Accounts vary, however, on who came up with the idea: Spielberg attributes it to Harrison Ford, while stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong credits AD Dave Tomblin.

What the accounts agree on is that most of the cast and crew, including Ford, was getting sick in the heat from Tunisia. Ford had a bad case of dysentery for weeks by the time the original sword vs. whip fight was supposed to film. Whoever came up with the idea to end it with a gunshot, it both saved time and was a totally in-character comedic beat.

13 E.T. WAS SHOT CHRONOLOGICALLY FOR BETTER PERFORMANCES

1_Steven_Spielberg_Fanboy_ET_2_Bike_CBR

Movies typically aren't filmed in chronological order. It generally doesn't make sense as a matter of scheduling. In some extreme cases like with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, different halves of the same scene can be shot years apart! With E.T. The Extra-Terrestial, however, Spielberg had the desire to try something different and the clout to pull it off.

Spielberg's often praised for his ability to get great performances from child actors, and E.T. is his film most singularly reliant on amazing kid performances to work. In order to get the most realistic acting possible from the young stars, Spielberg decided to shoot their scenes in as close to chronological order as possible. That way, the kids would feel like they were actually living through the story.

12 GEORGE LUCAS' DIVORCE INSPIRED TEMPLE OF DOOM

temple of doom

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is entertaining, for sure, but it's also a significantly darker and uglier film than its predecessor. It was so violent it almost singlehandedly broke the MPAA, inspiring the PG-13 rating. More uncomfortably, it's filled with ridiculous racist stereotypes and its female lead is a frustratingly annoying damsel in distress. What on Earth inspired this movie?

Well, obviously a lot of it is just a throwback to old movie serials, including their uglier sides, but the reason Temple of Doom went THAT far in this direction has to do with George Lucas' divorce. Marcia Lucas was George's editor and instrumental to the success of the original Star Wars. The divorce took a toll on George, and Spielberg's spirits were down as well seeing how it affected his friend. Both directors consider the film a purging of dark emotions and have even apologized for it.

11 INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE WAS A GHOST STORY

The Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

George Lucas always envisioned Indiana Jones as a trilogy. Even as Spielberg was moving on to more serious films like The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun in the late '80s, he still owed Lucas a third Indy film. He also felt he owed audiences one to apologize for Temple of DoomIndiana Jones and the Last Crusade took a while to get off the ground. Its story transformed dramatically between drafts.

If you think the alien in Kingdom of Crystal Skull is too out there, how would you feel about Indiana Jones fighting a ghost? That was in the plot of Lucas' initial pitch, which also involved the Fountain of Youth and the Monkey King from Chinese mythology. Chris Columbus' first two drafts worked off of this pitch, which Spielberg derided as too unrealistic. Ultimately, Spielberg and Lucas settled on the father-son Holy Grail quest we know today.

10 ROBIN WILLIAMS MOONED THE CAST OF HOOK

robin williams hook

Hook, Spielberg's 1991 "sequel" of sorts to Peter Pan, isn't one of the director's best-loved movies. It made money but reviews were not kind to it, and Spielberg himself has been outspoken about his disappointment with the film. Despite that, it's become something of a sentimental nostalgic favorite for many younger Gen Xers and older millennials. The nostalgia's only grown in the years since Robin Williams' unfortunate passing.

Thomas Tulak, who played one of the Lost Boys in the film, spoke highly of Williams in a 2017 Reddit AMA. He says the actor-comedian "was dedicated to making every one around him happy, and he did so in spectacular fashion." One of the most spectacular on-set stories Tulak recalls: "the time he jumped on the top of the pirate ship and mooned the entire cast and crew, while Steven Spielberg was trying to gain control of the crowd."

9 THE JURASSIC PARK T. REX ALMOST ATE SOMEONE FOR REAL

jurassic park robot t rex

Even 25 years later, the special effects in the original Jurassic Park still look absolutely incredible. The movie sold Hollywood on the potential of computer graphics, but maybe even more wonderous than its CGI were its practical effects. Stan Winston's team went above and beyond on the animatronics. Their robot T. Rex was terrifying even when they weren't filming!

The enormous robot was prone to glitches, and would sometimes move on its own. In the most dangerous behind the scenes incident, the robot almost ate effects artist Adam Scott! He was inside the robot gluing on the skin when suddenly the power went out. As the robot moved into its powered down position, Scott was trapped! Multiple workers had to pry the jaw open by hand to get Scott out.

8 SPIELBERG ONLY LIKED TWO IDEAS FROM THE LOST WORLD BOOK

the_lost_world_jurassic_park

With Jaws and Jurassic Park, Spielberg became the master of the loose adaptation. The films dramatically changed questionable source material into significantly more successful films (Ready Player One arguably pulled a similar but less dramatic attempt at the same trick). No adaptation's been looser, however, than Spielberg's take on The Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park.

While Spielberg and novelist Michael Crichton discussed sequel ideas together following the blockbuster success of the first movie, there was minimal collaboration after that. Spielberg only liked two parts of Crichton's sequel novel: the idea of a second dinosaur island and a scene where T. Rexes attack a trailer on a cliff. There was an understanding Spielberg would go his own direction. Executive producer Kathleen Kennedy said, "When Michael turned the book over to Steven, he knew his work was finished."

7 A.I.'S "SPIELBERGIAN" ENDING WAS ACTUALLY KUBRICK'S

ai artificial intelligence

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, an adaptation of an unmade Stanley Kubrick project, remains one of Spielberg's most controversial films. Most of the controversy centers around the ending, a flash-forward 2000 years into the future that manages to be at once sickeningly saccharine and nihilistically horrifying. When it was first released in 2001, the sweetness overpowered the scariness for most viewers, who assumed this was a sentimental Spielberg ending tacked onto Kubrick's vision.

Those viewers happen to be wrong. The ending was Kubrick's vision. Both Kubrick and Spielberg admired each other a lot, and A.I. was initially Kubrick's attempt to make something more "Spielbergian," sentimentality included. That's why he was willing to let Spielberg make the film. While the ending still doesn't totally work, it's absolutely respectful of Kubrick's wishes.

6 MINORITY REPORT INNOVATED DIGITAL PREVIZ

minority report previz

Today, every effects-heavy action film goes through heavy "previz." This process involves blocking scenes with rough CGI models to allow better coordination between the filmmakers and effects artists. Minority Report, Spielberg's 2002 Philip K. Dick adaptation, was the first film to use previz for its entire production design.

Production designer Alex McDowell, known for such films as Fight Club, Watchmen and Bee Movie (insert meme here), used Photoshop and Maya to build the world of Minority Report. Setting up the visual language of this world early on was important. All the advanced technology in the film was based on the actual predictions of experts, some of which have come true since the film's release. Setting it all up in previz gave not only the effects artists but also the tie-in video game designers a clearer vision how the film was supposed to look.

5 CONFLICT IN GAZA INSPIRED WAR OF THE WORLDS

Scene from War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds is the darkest of Spielberg's alien movies. With its focus on people struggling amidst seemingly inexplicable mass destruction, many viewed the 2005 film as a 9/11 allegory. There's definitely substance to that reading, and Spielberg himself has made comparisons in terms of the threat presented. When writing the screenplay, however, David Koepp tried to avoid explicit references to recent history, with one scene standing as a notable exception.

It's not a reference to 9/11 or America's War on Terror, but to the conflict in the Gaza Strip. Koepp told Empire that in regard to the scene where Robbie runs off with the Marines to fight the aliens, "I was thinking of teenagers in Gaza throwing bottles and rocks at tanks." Given Spielberg was making Munich at the same time, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was clearly on their minds.

4 LUCAS CONVINCED SPIELBERG TO NUKE CRYSTAL SKULL'S FRIDGE

indiana-jones-and-the-kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull

"Nuke the fridge" didn't quite catch on in the pop culture lexicon like "jump the shark" did, but to many it meant the same thing. The Indiana Jones movies were never realistic, but Indy surviving a nuclear bomb test by hiding inside a refrigerator in the opening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull seriously tested audiences' suspension of disbelief. It also tested the director's.

It feels almost mean to rag on George Lucas for having questionable ideas at this point, but the fridge nuking scene, along with many of the other more controversial touches in the maligned sequel, was his idea. Spielberg was initially unconvinced, until Lucas came to him with a folder of math equations supposedly proving there is really a 50-50 chance of surviving such a blast in that manner. Fans still frequently question that math.

3 TINTIN WAS ALMOST A LIVE-ACTION FILM IN THE '80S

While Spielberg has produced cartoons from An American Tale to Animaniacs, 2011's The Adventures of Tintin was the first time Spielberg directed an animated film himself. Spielberg wanted to make this movie long before its motion capture technology was even invented! He fell in love with Hergé's Tintin comics in 1981, after a critic compared them to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hergé was primed to hand over the movie rights himself in 1983 but died a week before the scheduled meeting; his widow subsequently finished the deal.

Back then, the plan was to do a live-action film. E.T. screenwriter Melissa Mathison got onboard, while Jack Nicholson was Spielberg's top choice to play Captain Haddock. The script didn't come together and the project languished until the 2000s, when Spielberg began to consider an animated version and Peter Jackson sold him on doing it with motion capture.

2 SPIELBERG WAS A REPLACEMENT DIRECTOR ON THE BFG

bfg

The BFG from 2016 ended up being one of Spielberg's least commercially successful films. Ask most critics, and it's among his least artistically successful as well. While not totally bereft of the charms of Roald Dahl's classic children's book, the talky, relatively plotless material just doesn't cohere into a satisfying Disney blockbuster. Perhaps some of this film's struggles have to do with the fact it got its director rather late in the game.

Plenty of Spielberg's regular collaborators were involved in this project from the beginning, notably writer Melissa Mathison and producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy. Spielberg, however, wasn't initially attached to direct. That job went to John Madden, director of Shakespeare in Love and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Spielberg didn't take over until April 2014, just two years before the film's release. Even then, it was a secondary priority for him after Bridge of Spies.

1 READY PLAYER ONE'S LICENSING CONFLICTS

Getting the rights for Ready Player One's massive crossover of pop culture references must have been a licensing nightmare. While Spielberg pulled a lot off, naturally some cameos from the book are missing in the movie. Some of this was a conscious choice, with Spielberg limiting references to his own directorial works to just a T. Rex from Jurassic Park and a Raiders poster. Some can be inferred as a result of corporate rivalries, notably that, while Disney did allow some Star Wars references, we see no Marvel cameos in this Warner Bros. production.

Two specific licenses, however, are confirmed to have been impossible to pull off. Blade Runner, despite being a WB property, wasn't allowed due to the production of Blade Runner 2049 at the same time. Licensing negotions for the Japanese superhero Ultraman, meanwhile, proved impossible. Ultraman's big role in the climactic battle was replaced with a Gundam.