Fair or not, Steven Spielberg is often associated with cloying sentimentality. Trailers for his latest film The Fabelmans are doing little to dispel that reputation, but as far back as the early ‘80s, when sci-fi filmmakers were slaughtering hapless humans in Alien, The Thing, and Scanners, Spielberg put his own spin on the space invader sub-genre with the treacly E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
