Pretty much a done deal.

Final Result:
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (71%) vs The Dark Knight (29%)

Third Place:
1. Aliens (56%) vs 2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (44%)

Final Standings:
1. Spielberg - 120
2. Nolan - 70
3. Kubrick - 65
4. Cameron - 45

And your winner, with the best movie and the highest overall score by far, is Steven Spielberg.



Hard to argue with the result. He has more great movies than many directors have movies, period, let alone great ones.

Thanks all for your participation.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Funny enough, this probably could've been predicted after the first showdown, when Spielberg wiped the floor with Tarantino.

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Funny enough...... if you asked Spielberg, Nolan, Scott, Scorsese, Cameron, Fincher, etc. they would tell you it is Kubrick.

In fact they have many many times. I'll sleep well knowing that - and I do love all of these directors maybe I love them because they were impacted and influenced by Kubrick.

I get why Spielberg would win this and even why Kubrick wasn't runner-up. He never made "accessible" fun films. Dr. Strangelove was a comedy but a black comedy. He never made a fun summer blockbuster type movie. I get it. But to me best director is about the mastery of filmmaking itself and the impacts in terms of style, cinematography, technique and even technological innovations.


I'll just include these as my final commentary:

Steven Spielberg called "2001" the Big Bang of his filmmaking generation.

Spielberg's "AI: Artificial Intelligence" was based on a short story by Kubrick and they collaborated on it with Kubrick as producer. During that time Spielberg referred to Kubrick as "the greatest master I ever served".

Consider that nearly every film we talk about here and really every director in this poll came after 2001 (the movie not the year, so after 1968) and after Dr. Strangelove and even after Barry Lyndon and The Shining for the most part. I think his impact is felt and sometimes directly identifiable in most of the movies of all of those directors.

Alas it is what it is.


I have one regret with Kubrick although I understand it. I wish we had seen his treatment of WWII/Holocaust. He was working on a film to be titled Aryan Papers based on a semi-autobiographical novel called Wartime Lies about the Nazi occupation in Poland's ghettos. But the subject matter so depressed him and he also felt Spielberg had covered most of the same subject/themes with Schindler's List and he abandoned the project.