As one of the leading practitioners of alien-related sci-fi movies, writer/director Steven Spielberg is someone you’d want to talk to if you’re seeking fresh perspectives on UFOs. That’s exactly what one late night host did recently, as Stephen Colbert spoke with the E.T and Close Encounters of the Third Kind icon to get his reaction on all of the UFO/UAP stories that have been going around over the past couple of years. The response that Spielberg provided was not only eye-opening, but incredibly optimistic.
Taking part in an extended interview for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the blockbuster master had a fun chat with the late night host interviewer, who has been known to be a genre fan himself. That inspired Colbert to ask Spielberg about his feelings on these very real accounts and videos that seem to be cropping up about unidentified phenomena showing up in our atmosphere.
For starters, The Fablemans director established a basis of faith in UAPs in a pretty succinct fashion. Here’s what Steven Spielberg said about whether or not he believes in intelligent life in the stars:
I think what has been coming up recently is fascinating, absolutely fascinating. And I think the secrecy that is shrouding all of these sightings and the lack of transparency… I think there is something going on that just needs extraordinary due diligence. I don’t believe we’re alone in the universe. I think it’s mathematically impossible that we are the only intelligent species in the cosmos. I think that’s totally impossible. At the same time, it also seems impossible that someone would visit us from 400 million lightyears from here — except in the movies, of course — unless it figures out some way of jumping the shark, so to speak, and getting here through wormholes.
It’s a pretty realistic outlook on the whole scenario, which only makes the fact that Spielberg almost directed Interstellar all the more intriguing. The belief that intelligent life would still be operating on hard science, rather than “jumping the shark” like in some of the best Steven Spielberg movies that he’s both directed and produced, makes for an interesting turn.
Shifting the subject back to UAPs rather than intelligent life from light-years away, Steven Spielberg had his own theory for what these sightings could be. Mashing up a little science fiction with some of the hard science that he’s talked about above, the Jurassic Park helmer presented this scenario that’s just as intriguing, if not more so, than aliens visiting our planet:
The most optimistic thing I feel about these things we see in the skies, that the Army and Navy and Air Force are recording on their gun cameras, is that what if they’re not from an advanced civilization 300 million lightyears from here? What if it’s us, 500,000 years in the future, that is coming back to document the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century because they’re anthropologists? And they know something we don’t quite know yet that has occurred, and they’re trying to track the last hundred years of our history.
Colbert was keen to remind the Hollywood legend that his work with extraterrestrial stories has covered both sides of the coin. Using 2005’s harrowing, 9/11-inspired War of the Worlds as an example, he asked Steven Spielberg whether he felt a potential extraterrestrial visitor would arrive with the aggressive attitude of the Tripods from that story, or the much more friendly demeanor of E.T.. Spielberg unequivocally sided with the friendlier side of things, and explained why with this rationale:
I believe that if any extraterrestrial civilization has journeyed all the way here, it’s because of curiosity and science, and it’s not about aggression. … And the fact that they’ve been this patient with us, and haven’t turned the earth into a burned out cinder, is extraordinary. If there’s anything happening, you have to applaud them for their patience.
In Steven Spielberg's opinion, UFOs/UAPs could be humanity’s descendants rather than extraterrestrial visitors. And if the truth was that E.T was coming to visit with his family, he doesn’t feel that they’d be traveling millions of light-years to start a fight; but a Men in Black franchise style intergalactic kegger isn’t out of the question. Either way, perhaps someone should get ahold of Will Smith while you watch the rest of this interview between Spielberg and Stephen Colbert:
This next week is bound to keep Steven Spielberg busy, as he and his film The Fablemans have scored multiple 2023 Oscar nominations. As the final stretch will conclude with the 95th Academy Awards this Sunday, perhaps the man known as “The Beard” will have a close encounter with some golden glory. It’s certainly not as out there as some of the stuff we've just discussed.
