The Classic Spielberg Everyman
For fifty years, the quintessential Spielberg protagonist has been a relatable stand-in for the audience. He’s the Everyman, an ordinary person thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Think of Richard Dreyfuss’s Roy Neary in *Close Encounters of the Third
Kind*, a lineman whose mundane life is upended by a transcendent obsession. Or Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant in *Jurassic Park*, a grounded paleontologist who just wants to dig for bones but must survive a dinosaur rampage. Even Spielberg’s more stoic heroes, like Tom Hanks’ Captain Miller in *Saving Private Ryan*, are defined by a core of unshakable, accessible decency. These characters are vessels for awe, terror, and wonder. Their faces, upturned towards a spaceship or a Brachiosaurus, are our faces. We connect with them not because they are complex, but because they are fundamentally good and recognizable. They are driven by clear, noble goals: get home (*E.T.*), save the platoon (*Saving Private Ryan*), protect the children (*Jurassic Park*). They are sturdy, reliable, and almost always guided by a clear moral compass, even when flawed. They are, in short, the kind of person you’d want next to you when things go sideways.
Enter Josh O’Connor’s Prickly Charm
Josh O’Connor, on the other hand, does not build characters on a foundation of simple decency. He builds them on a bedrock of fascinating, often uncomfortable, complexity. His breakout role as Prince Charles in *The Crown* gave us a man suffocated by duty, whose entitlement curdled into a brittle, pitiable cruelty. He was sympathetic one moment and insufferable the next. More recently, in *Challengers*, his Patrick Zweig is a magnetic wrecking ball of insecurity and unearned swagger—a man-child whose talent is perpetually at war with his own pathetic choices. Even his acclaimed performance in *God’s Own Country* is built around a character who is emotionally repressed, gruff, and almost entirely closed-off. O'Connor specializes in playing men who are internally knotted. His characters aren’t looking up at the sky in wonder; they’re looking inward with a mixture of confusion, resentment, and longing. There’s a nervy, prickly energy to his performances. He excels at portraying weakness, ambition, and the messy friction of being a person who isn't sure they're a good one. He is not an Everyman; he is a very Specific, and often difficult, Man.
A Deliberate Departure
Placing an O’Connor-type character at the center of a Spielberg spectacle feels like a fascinatingly discordant act. Spielberg’s cinema is largely about external forces—aliens, sharks, Nazis—acting upon a stable individual. O’Connor’s gift is portraying internal chaos, the drama that happens inside a person’s own head. Can you picture his version of Prince Charles reacting to the arrival of E.T.? He’d likely see it as an inconvenience that pulls focus from his own existential angst. Could his *Challengers* character survive Jurassic Park? He’d probably try to hit on Dr. Sattler, get someone killed, and then blame the T-Rex. This is precisely what makes the casting so electrifying. It signals that Spielberg may be less interested in asking “What would an ordinary person do?” and more interested in asking, “What would *this* complicated, difficult person do?” It’s a move away from the universal and toward the specific. Instead of a hero who represents all of us, we may be getting a protagonist who barely represents himself coherently. For a director whose brand is clear, awe-inspiring storytelling, embracing a lead actor known for his mastery of ambiguity is a radical turn.
A Director's Late-Career Evolution
This shift doesn't come out of nowhere. It feels like the culmination of a subtle evolution in Spielberg's later work. *The Fabelmans* was his most overtly introspective film, a messy and unresolved look at his own family, where his mother is portrayed as a loving but deeply complicated and unheroic figure. His remake of *West Side Story* leaned into the grit and tragedy of its source material, refusing to sand down the sharp edges for a triumphant finale. It seems Spielberg, now in his late 70s, is increasingly drawn to the imperfections of human nature. Casting O’Connor, an actor who embodies that imperfection so brilliantly, feels like the next logical step. It suggests the reported UFO film may be less about the spectacle of what’s in the sky and more about the psychological turmoil of the person witnessing it. It’s a choice that prioritizes character psychology over audience identification, a gamble that promises a very different kind of Spielberg experience.
