The ending would have been stronger if Dreyfuss had to watch as the spaceship disappears into the sky while he stayed behind.

That's just my opinion, right? No, it isn't. After I noticed this problem with the film, I heard Spielberg himself say that he would have chosen a different ending now.

When he wrote the script, he didn't have a family and now he does. He said that he would make a different decision now.

Spielberg was making the mistake I see a lot of writers make. He was having the character do what he himself would have done in a given situation without really looking at what needed to happen for the story.

You are the slave of your story, not its master. You don't make decisions, you make discoveries.

Let's use another Spielberg film that I love, Raiders of the Lost Ark. What could possibly be wrong with that?

A good friend and I have an ongoing argument about this film, but ultimately I think we agree. He doesn't understand how Indiana knows to close his eyes when the Ark of the Covenant is opened.

My argument is that he's been set up as an expert on the Ark, so it's no surprise that he knows what to do at the end.

First, let's look at something that could be seen as deus ex machina—the literal appearance of God from a box to save the day. The storytellers did a very clever thing: they planted God throughout the film, so it is not out of the blue when God shows up at the end.

When Marion first produces the headpiece to the Staff of Ra, the wind begins to blow. She is inside when this happens; yet the wind blows.

Later, when the old Egyptian man translates the markings on the headpiece, the wind blows even harder than before. Again we are inside, so wind is a little unusual.

Then it comes time to dig up the Ark. Storm clouds boil with thunder and lightning. This is real Old Testament God behavior. (By the way, there is no other use of weather in the film.)

God gets more blatant later when the Nazi's swastika is burned off the crate where the Ark is being kept. By this time, we have been