Perhaps the most famous (if not quite the best) living film director, Steven Spielberg has consistently delivered movies that have captured the zeitgeist. He’s responsible for three movies that became the highest-grossing movie ever made in their day. They’ve since been topped, but adjusted for inflation, they’re still among the biggest box office hits of all time.
A huge part of Spielberg’s success is his films’ staying power. The final shot of a movie is like the director g off. As a master of his craft, Spielberg has given some of his films excellent sign-offs that stick with you long after the end credits have rolled. So, here are Steven Spielberg’s 10 Best Closing Shots, Ranked.
Lincoln
Spielberg’s biopic of Abraham Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, primarily focuses on Honest Abe’s efforts to abolish slavery, but the film takes us up to his death. At the end, we see Lincoln’s death on April 15, 1865, the morning after he was shot in the theater.
The final scene takes us back to March 4, just over a month before Lincoln’s assassination, for his second inaugural address. Despite the fact that the end of the Civil War, and slavery in the U.S., was mere days away, Lincoln’s speech was more melancholic than joyous. It was a pretty perfect way to end this movie.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The first Raiders of the Lost Ark, ends on an ambiguous, mysterious note. After the Nazis opened the Ark of the Covenant and its godly forces melted their faces off, it’s been deemed a power too great for humankind to handle. Indy and Marcus are assured that the Ark is being guarded by “top men.”
For the final shot of the movie, Spielberg cuts to the warehouse where the Ark is being stored. John Williams’ spooky musical score suggests that this bureaucratic red tape will become someone’s undoing in a grave future. But Indy did his best to prevent that.
Bridge of Spies
At the end of Bridge of Spies, lawyer James Donovan returns to America and reunites with his family. The tense exchange of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel and CIA pilot Gary Powers is over and he can go back to his life, having been vilified in the press for offering to give Abel a fair trial.
While Donovan rides the train to work, he looks out the window with a smile on his face. That smile disappears when he sees a couple of neighborhood kids hopping a fence between two backyards and he’s reminded of the horrors he witnessed when he traveled down to the Berlin Wall to negotiate the exchange.
Minority Report
A prime example of a sci-fi movie with a juicy premise (a police unit that can predict future crimes) that actually does that premise justice in its execution, Minority Report ends with Tom Cruise’s character, John Anderton, pointing out the fatal flaw of the PreCrime department: once someone knows their future, they’re able to alter it.
So, PreCrime is shut down and everyone who was arrested based on their predictions is pardoned. The Precogs are released and allowed to live a peaceful existence in an island home. The final shot pulls up from this house to show its location in the middle of nowhere.
Jurassic Park
Yet to be topped by its persistent sequels, Jurassic Park has a beautiful ending. After Alan Grant jokingly decides not to endorse John Hammond’s dinosaur-infested amusement park, everyone who survived the debacle bundles onto a helicopter and they get the hell off the island. As the helicopter flies off onto the horizon, with the sun rising over the gorgeous oceanic vista, the credits roll.
John Williams’ sweeping score plays over the background as Alan looks out at some birds, a changed man. He began the story as a guy who hates kids, but now he’s come around and he’s a lot sweeter.
Munich
In the final moments of Munich, Avner’s handler Ephraim asks him to come back to Mossad. He had to resign in order to operate with no official ties to the Israeli government in the retaliation to the terrorist killings of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Disillusioned by a life of government-sanctioned killing, Avner refuses to return to his position at Mossad, but invites Ephraim to him and his family for dinner as a peace offering. Ephraim refuses and walks out of frame, leaving Avner alone. A few moments and Avner walks off in the other direction before the camera pans up to a cityscape.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
When he set out to make Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg wanted to tell a story about alien visitors who didn’t blow up New York or invade our planet. Instead, the alien visitors in Close Encounters operate a sort of exchange program. They leave one of their guys on Earth and take a human up on their mothership with them, as a means of sharing information and bridging interstellar societies.
In the film’s final moments, when the mothership lands and the two species communicate with musical tones, the aliens choose Roy — who has, until now, been treated like a maniac for claiming to have seen a U.F.O. — to come with them. The ship rises into space as we get a sense that anything’s possible.
Jaws
When we first meet Chief Brody at the beginning of Jaws, he’s terrified of the ocean. His fears were just validated when a 25-foot great white shark started picking off the residents of Amity Island. At the end of the movie, he blew that shark to kingdom come by jamming a pressurized scuba tank into the shark’s mouth and shooting it with a rifle.
Since the Orca had sunk, Brody and Matt Hooper had to grab onto the remaining scuba tanks and paddle back to shore. At the beginning of the movie, this was Brody’s worst nightmare. But now, he finds it refreshingly pleasant.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, in which the kids all say their farewells to their alien pal, at the end of production so that the kids would actually be sad because it was the last time they’d all be together.
The final shot of E.T. is a closeup of Elliott as he watches his only friend disappear into outer space following their emotional goodbye. It’s a shame that E.T. didn’t lead to a longer career for child actor Henry Thomas, because he really nailed his performance. He even brought Spielberg to tears during his audition.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
If Spielberg and Lucas hadn’t ruined their pulpy action-adventure saga with a CG-laden fourth movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade would’ve been a perfect ending to Indy’s on-screen journey. It ends with Indy letting go of the Holy Grail. For once, he didn’t get the artifact, but that didn’t matter because he got something more important: he reconnected with his estranged father.
In the film’s final moments, Indy, his dad, Marcus, and Sallah jump on horseback and ride off into the sunset, in true western fashion. John Williams’ iconic theme plays on the soundtrack as the end credits roll.
