Steven Spielberg took a bit of a jab at Timothée Chalamet’S recent comments alluding to the cultural irrelevance of art forms like ballet and opera, during an appearance today at SXSW.

Asked about the future of the moviegoing experience, Spielberg said, “It’s an important topic to talk about, and I look out at this auditorium with everybody here, and I just think that we’re all together. We don’t know each other, and we probably agree with each other more than we disagree with each other. But the one thing I know is when we’re all watching something, it’s going to hit us all independently, individually, in different ways. But there is a collective impulse from a good story that hits all of us at the same time, in exactly the same way.”

There’s something in the theatrical experience, he says, “that is about community and communication and getting along with each other, and that happens in movie theaters, not sitting around living rooms watching on television something that is up there on the screen to watch.”

Spielberg clarified that he doesn’t “decry” films made for streaming.

“I mean, we make Netflix movies, and I like working with Netflix. They’re a great company to work with. But it’s just, for me, the real experience comes when we can influence a community to congregate in a strange, dark space,” he said. “ All of us are strangers, and at the end of a really good movie experience, we are all united, with a whole bunch of feelings that we walk into the daylight with, or into the nighttime with, and there is nothing like that. I mean, it happens in movies, it happens at concerts — and it happens in ballet and opera. And we want that to be sustained.”

Spielberg’s comments came during a Hilton Austin panel at SXSW, where he discussed his upcoming film Disclosure Day and highlights from his 60+ year career, in conversation with The Big Picture podcast’s Sean Fennessey.

Over the course of his hour, he also teased a Western he has in development that “kicks ass” — and his feelings on the existence of alien life, as someone who has dabbled frequently in the extraterrestrial sci-fi subgenre, including with his latest film.

“My feeling right now is this… I don’t know any more than any of you do, but I have a very strong sneaking suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now,” he said. “And I made a movie about that.”

Marking the filmmaker’s return to extraterrestrial sci-fi for the first time in more than two decades — on the heels of War of the Worlds, Close Encounters, and E.T. — Disclosure Day finds humanity confronting undeniable proof that extraterrestrial life exists, picking up on a real-world theme amid recent disclosures from U.S. government whistleblowers.

Coming off his Oscar-nominated semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, also for Univeral, Spielberg conceived of the original idea for Disclosure Day, which stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo and more, enlisting longtime collaborator David Koepp to pen the script. He and Kristie Macosko Krieger produced under their Amblin Entertainment banner. The film releases in theaters in June 12.

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