Do aliens walk among us? Has the government been covering up their existence for decades? In recent years the question of extraterrestrial life, and the fraught issue of government disclosure, has moved from science fiction to the news cycle. Aliens and UFOs — now called UAPs, or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena — aren’t just the subject of kooky podcasts and sci-fi films, but congressional hearings and White House document dumps.
And now Steven Spielberg, right on cue, is out with a big alien film, Disclosure Day, about these very questions. But unlike his other famous alien movies (ET, War of the Worlds, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) he’s talking about this one as if it were more documentary than sci-fi. In a recent interview, he said Disclosure Day will cause religious people to question their faith. Most alien films, including Spielberg’s past efforts, have focused on the question of whether aliens exist. This one, he says, will explore what the existence of aliens might mean for religious belief systems that have placed mankind at the center of God’s creation, and will “take the position of the Church.”
