Steven Spielberg appeared on Saturday Night Live this weekend. Was he promoting a new film? Basking in the glow of being one of the most successful and influential filmmakers of all time? Nope, he was helping Bill Hader and Andy Samberg sell their latest installation of Laser Cats; and he couldn’t have looked happier.

For the uninitiated, Laser Cats is a series of digital shorts that shows Hader and Samberg in an (extremely cheaply shot) post-apocalyptic future where cats shoot lasers out of their mouths; and also shows them trying to sell these short films to SNL creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels, who is always deeply unimpressed.

I guess the bits are both silly and a satire of big-budget sci-fi movies? In any event, there was no need for six of them.

But then Hader and Samberg stepped things up this Saturday night by announcing to a skeptical Michaels (and audience) that the latest Laser Cats film was directed by Spielberg. Then the man himself burst through the door in his high school AV club uniform to sing the praises of Laser Cats 7.

It didn’t end there: Laser Cats 7 seemed like mainly a joke about Spielberg allusions and “homages” to other filmmakers (“Hitchcockian!”). I counted references to ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, Jaws, Catch Me If You Can, Jurassic Park, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Did I miss any?

Spielberg deserves way better than Laser Cats, but he also doesn’t have to give a single fuck. Because he directed all of the movies above, not to mention Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List, has a few Oscars, and more money than God.

What do you think of Steven Spielberg in Laser Cats?

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