Steven Spielberg has helmed some of the most successful films of the last 40 years. Sometimes he invites us on a magical journey about a squishy little alien looking for a way home and finding the love of a little boy instead. Or sometimes he rivets us with the darkest hours in U.S. history, as Abraham Lincoln tries to hold a bitterly fractured nation together. But his movies always take us on a ride we rarely forget.
They also make us ask ourselves one very important question: Who does Steven Spielberg hate more, Nazis or dogs?
All we need to do is look at some of Spielberg’s most iconic films to know he hates Nazis. Tom Hanks and his band of brothers wipe out their fair share of Nazis in Saving Private Ryan. Schindler’s List shows us the true horrors of the Nazi regime. And Indiana Jones dispatches countless Nazi douchebags in both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Steven Spielberg hates Nazis, and we love him for it. But it seems like Spielberg is itching to drop a diss track on dogs too. Case in point: in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, while our little alien is home alone, Spielberg gets him and the family dog hammered on Coors. In The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2, Spielberg unleashes a T-Rex on San Diego (fun!), and then we promptly watch it devour a dog chained to his dog house (not fun!).
And early in Jaws, our killer shark snatches a dog named Pippet while he happily plays fetch in the Amity Island surf. I first saw Jaws when I was five. It scared the hell out of me. I actually thought the shark could travel from the ocean through the sewer pipe and pop out of the toilet. Which made my early bathroom experiences memorable, to say the least.
But is it the fear of a great white shark biting my five-year-old ass that scarred me the most? No, it was that damn shark eating that sweet black Labrador Retriever (RIP Pippet, June 29, 1975).
So sure, Spielberg hates Nazis. Who doesn’t? But what has he got against dogs? And don’t get me started on all the other animals who’ve been the target of Spielberg’s cinematic ire.
He wipes out whole herds of cows and sheep in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (I know it’s just a government-staged cover story so that Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon will believe there’s a dangerous disease outbreak going on and not little green men landing, but still!)
Also, you know some pets got vaporized while Tom Cruise was running from those tripod aliens in War of the Worlds. And what about that cute little monkey that died from eating poison dates in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Although now that I think about it, that was a Nazi monkey, so I guess he fits in both categories.
So who does Spielberg hate more, Nazis or dogs? The jury’s still out. I guess we’ll just have to wait for his next film, which I hear is called Catch Me If You Canine.