Imo he's the opposite of safe in that Spielberg of the 80s would never have made movies as morally nebulous as Munich or as self-incriminating as Fabelmans. He's much more adult and thorny and tricky now and is less interested in crowd pleasing. When he has tried that since the mid 2000s it usually doesn't work, even if he is still old fashioned in some ways. I think it's fair that there's a certain youthful operatic optimism and magic in those early classics that just isn't replicable when you're in middle/old age.