Experts on Extraterrestrial Life Say Steven Spielberg Understands “Core Concepts of What We Know”

It’s been a week since Disclosure Day’s release, and the nation’s biggest believers in extraterrestrial life are all abuzz. Steven Spielberg’s latest film—which stars Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor as determined activists and alien-abduction “experiencers”—has given that community its latest moment in the sun.

Nearly a decade ago, researchers studying what used to be called UFOs got a new burst of energy thanks to whistleblowers who helped coax out classified information about the government’s search for life off planet Earth. These days, those same thinkers describe their subject of study as unidentified aerial phenomena—and universities, governmental agencies, and independent groups are devoting serious resources to finally getting to the bottom of whether extraterrestrials really are out there. Though conspiracy theories about missing scientists with ties to the UFO community continue to capture the internet, serious—well, relatively serious—efforts to sniff out the “truth” are also making headway. Next week Capitol Hill will host the Disclosure Forum, where advocates will demand that the government make a “plan” to address UAP. In addition to fringe researchers and experts, senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Mike Rounds of South Dakota are both planning to speak.

For decades, Spielberg has been one of our foremost chroniclers of America’s fascination with aliens, touching on the topic in films like 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1982’s E.T. (He even snuck aliens into 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.) But Disclosure Day proves that he has been keeping up with the latest trends in extraterrestrial life. Some experts in the field agree that his movie is pushing the discipline forward; others disagree. But nearly all agree that Spielberg’s film is speaking to the current conversation.

To Jordan Flowers, the executive director of the Disclosure Foundation, the film ably dramatizes what his organization has been trying to tell the general public ever since those modern whistleblowers started coming forward some 10 years ago. “What Spielberg was able to do so impressively is take a very complex story and massage that into a plotline for a wonderful blockbuster film to convey the core concepts of what we know,” he tells Vanity Fair. “There appears to be a cover-up; there are whistleblowers pursuing transparency. The cover-up seems to be facilitated by having contractors and subcontractors to the US government.”

Spielberg has said he was inspired by the 2017 New York Times report that reopened the subject for a new generation. As Flowers points out, Spielberg’s devotion to this topic can be seen in the names of some of the film’s background characters. Actor Brandon Wilson is credited as playing Nathan Twining; the real Twining wrote a famous 1947 memo that gave credence to sightings of flying saucers. “That was a fun Easter egg,” Flowers says.

Above all else, Flowers appreciates how the film focuses on characters who try to blow the whistle on government knowledge. “I don’t know what the truth is, but I take the whistleblowers who have come forward to testify under oath in front of Congress seriously,” he says, adding that he hopes viewers take a message of hope and empathy from the film. “And the sense that the damage done from fear and secrecy is far worse than any short-term challenges we might face by having the courage to accept the truth.”

For Paul Gutjahr, a professor at Indiana University Bloomington who studies American popular religion, Disclosure Day leaves no question that Spielberg is a “believer” in extraterrestrial life. But he also thinks the character of Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), a former nun who left her convent after a crisis of faith, speaks to Spielberg’s ambitions beyond simply making the case for aliens. Gutjahr notes that the Catholic Church, in particular, has already made great strides in confronting how its theology might accommodate the possibility of extraterrestrial life. In 2014, Pope Francis said he would even baptize an alien—if the alien asked him to.

“The film puts different frameworks for understanding our place in the universe into dialogue, whether that be technology and science or religion or UFO community,” Gutjahr says. “Spielberg wants people to ask the question: What is your view on our place in the universe? Where does that view come from? What could unsettle that view? How committed are you to that view?”

Still, he also sees the movie as a bit of a missed opportunity. In his upcoming book, Faith in Space: American Religious Belief in Extraterrestrial Life, Gutjahr writes about the profound impact that belief in aliens has already had on religion and theology in the US. “There are religious traditions in the United States that are absolutely convinced there is extraterrestrial life, and those traditions probably give us clues about how people would respond,” he says.

The American fear of aliens—the ones from space—and UFO sightings date back at least to the beginning of the Cold War. For decades, the quest for real proof of extraterrestrial life seemed outdated and conspiratorial, a product of the tinfoil hat crowd rather than serious thinkers. This notion has shifted over the last decade as public figures like Joe Rogan have helped the UAP community make inroads with a younger generation of seekers. Along with more oddball speculation about alien influences on ancient technology, Rogan has frequently featured relatively mainstream experts on the subject on his show, The Joe Rogan Experience. Last year he helped in promoting the documentary The Age of Disclosure, which tells the story of a handful of whistleblowers who helped change the government’s approach to the public release of UAP information.

So far, Rogan hasn’t commented on Disclosure Day—but some of his former guests have, and their reaction to Disclosure Day has not been uniformly positive. Computer scientist Jacques Vallée, a past guest on Rogan’s podcast, tells Vanity Fair that he hasn’t seen the movie yet, but it has been a “big topic” in his three UAP research groups. He adds, “The reactions I’ve heard were all over the map, so I’m eager to see for myself!”

A few days later, he follows up with his response. “While confrontation with the aliens was the issue in [Close Encounters of the Third Kind], half a century later we don’t need a congressional caucus to tell us the phenomenon is real, here, and in our face,” Vallée said. “The movie ends abruptly, which bothers many reviewers, but I found it appropriate: Faced with the decades-old betrayal of science we’ve experienced, what can we expect?”

But Avi Loeb, head of the Galileo Project at Harvard University and another previous Rogan Experience guest, says that Spielberg’s portrayal just doesn’t live up to what it is actually like to see the real disclosure files. “I was fortunate to witness Disclosure Day on the movie screen merely a few hours after analyzing an actual UAP disclosure by the US government. My conclusion is that reality is far more exciting than Hollywood scripts,” Loeb writes in an email to Vanity Fair.

He adds that the crowd-pleasing nature of the film potentially distracts from the real national security threats that UAP would represent, at least if they were the result of human-made technology. “Our understanding of science is incomplete, but this does not give us the freedom to abandon what we already learned.”

The speculative aliens Spielberg invented in the ’70s and ’80s were clearly the product of his imagination. The experts agree, though, that Disclosure Day feels a little closer to reality—which might only be a sign that the facts are catching up to where Spielberg’s been all along.

This article has been updated.