Steven Spielberg has always understood something adults tend to forget: childhood isn’t a clean emotion. It’s a pile-up. Awe and dread. Wonder and shame. Joy and vulnerability—often arriving at the same time, with no instructions for how to sort them out.
That messy intensity is a big reason Spielberg’s movies can feel like memory itself. As a kid in the early 1950s, he was small in a world that felt enormous—and not always friendly. He was bullied, singled out, and made to feel hyperaware of how he looked and where he belonged.
The BFG (Blu-ray)
Steven Spielberg’s 2016 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story, starring Mark Rylance and Ruby Barnhill. A straightforward way to revisit the film’s blend of wonder and unease.
Check Price on AmazonThat sensitivity didn’t just make him more afraid—it made him more curious. Spielberg has described how he’d fixate on the things that scared him: a giant tree outside a bedroom window, clouds that became fists and faces, the sheer intimidation of bigness. He’d stare until fear turned into something else—fascination, maybe even control.
It’s a pattern that shows up again and again in his filmography. Spielberg loves tension and release. He doesn’t just want you to feel safe; he wants you to feel unsafe first, then relieved—like waking up from a bad dream and immediately wanting to fall back into it.
That’s why The BFG fits so neatly into his lifelong obsession with childhood, even though it arrived after a stretch of more stoic, “adult” historical dramas. The film centers on Sophie, an orphan who spots a giant during the witching hour and gets snatched from her bed—an image that taps straight into the universal childhood fear of the nighttime house.
And then Spielberg does the thing he does best: he flips the terror into tenderness. The giant isn’t a monster. He’s a strange protector—awkward, lonely, and gentle in a world where other giants are brutal. It’s the same emotional logic Spielberg has used for decades: the threatening silhouette turns into a guardian once you dare to look up.
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Blu-ray)
Spielberg’s classic about childhood loneliness and an unlikely friendship—often viewed as the emotional ancestor to later “gentle giant” stories.
Check Price on AmazonBehind the scenes, The BFG was also a technical balancing act: making a 24-foot character feel real without turning the child actor into a tennis-ball-on-a-stick performer. The production leaned on motion capture and careful staging to keep the actors in genuine eye contact—because for Spielberg, the whole point is emotional truth first, visual effects second.
In the end, The BFG isn’t just a fantasy about giants. It’s Spielberg returning to the emotional terrain he’s mapped his whole career: the confusion of being small, the shock of fear, and the rare moment when something enormous feels safe.