For all the classic and iconic pieces of American cinema Steven Spielberg has given us, he’s also made a few duds better left forgotten. The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones the Kingdom of Crystal Skull are two Spielberg films that, let’s be honest, sucked. And those two movies also have one thing in common: they’re Spielberg sequels.

The filmmakers recognizes his sequels aren’t very good and recently sat down with the New York Times at the Cannes Film Festival to reflect on what went wrong. While discussing the challenges of his upcoming adaptation of the Roald Dahl book The BFG, which premiered out of competition at the festival, Spielberg opened up about letting his ego get in the way. “Confidence is my enemy and it always has been,” he said. “My sequels aren’t as good as my originals because I go onto every sequel I’ve made and I’m too confident. This movie made a ka-zillion dollars, which justifies the sequel, so I come in like it’s going to be a slam dunk and I wind up making an inferior movie to the one before.”

Though the director notes he was referring to The Lost World, I’m sure he was also winkingly alluding to Crystal Skull (and maybe perhaps The Temple of Doom). That over-confidence is poison to most movie sequels, when over zealous studios and filmmakers are too focused on the revenue of the original film and fail to consider the necessity of a sequel, or just how to make a good one. It’s refreshing to hear someone like Spielberg recognize his failures. He's also noted in the past that he'll never remake any of his movies, especially Jaws (thankfully). But let's not forget he's also working on the fifth installment of one of his biggest franchises. Hopefully Spielberg's confidence is lacking when production starts on the untitled Indiana Jones 5.

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