2026 has been a big year for fans of Steven Spielberg, particularly for those who are fond of his work in the sci-fi genre. Spielberg has been on a bit of a hiatus from sci-fi movies since 2018, when he directed the Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke-led blockbuster, Ready Player One. He has since worked on historical epics such as The Fabelmans and West Side Story, but through his production company, Amblin Entertainment, he has a producing hand in dozens of projects every year, even the ones he doesn’t direct. A few years ago, Spielberg worked with his long-time collaborator Tom Hanks on a project that’s still making strides on streaming after all this time — the duo famously worked together on one of the greatest war movies of all time, Saving Private Ryan.
Back in 2024, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks each served as producers on the Apple TV series, Masters of the Air. The series features some big names, including Dune: Part Two and Elvis star Austin Butler, as well as Callum Turner, who is being eyed as a potential favorite to play James Bond. For those who aren’t familiar with Masters of the Air, the best elevator pitch for the series is Top Gun: Maverick, but set during World War II, so there’s little to no surprise why it’s been such a fan-favorite. The series finale of Masters of the Air came out in March 2024, and although it’s been well over two years, the series is still in the Apple TV top 10 in a handful of countries around the world. This comes despite no renewal — the show is a limited series, so there was never a plan for Season 2.
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
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Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
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🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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What Is ‘Masters of the Air’ About?
An official synopsis for Masters of the Air, which holds scores of 85% from critics and 73% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, reads as follows:
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“Based on Donald L. Miller’s acclaimed book, Masters of the Air follows the men of the 100th Bomb Group — the ‘Bloody Hundredth’ — as they risk their lives high above Europe during World War II. Facing brutal odds, mechanical failure, enemy fire, and psychological strain, these American airmen forge unbreakable bonds while carrying out the Army Air Forces’ most dangerous bombing missions.”
Masters of the Air was written and created for TV by John Orloff, who is also known for his work as one of the lead writers on Band of Brothers. Orloff even penned the script for the 2011 conspiracy thriller, Anonymous, starring Rhys Ifans.
Check out all nine episodes of Masters of the Air on Apple TV and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of Hanks and Spielberg’s future projects.
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