Spielberg’s Alien Quadrilogy
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn’t count
I’ve recently been working my way through a rewatch of The X-Files. For those of you too young to remember, The X-Files was an extremely popular show in the ‘90s featuring a pair of FBI agents (played by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson) who investigate strange and seemingly unexplainable cases. While plenty of the episodes were one-off “monster of the week” stories, there was also an overarching narrative that dealt specifically with a massive government conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life from the rest of the world. Suffice it to say, I’ve had alien conspiracy theories on my brain lately. What a lovely bit of serendipity that there is a new Steven Spielberg movie in theaters that is all about government coverups of extraterrestrial life on Earth! Considering this is Spielberg’s fourth film about aliens and third dealing with the government trying hide their existence from the rest of us, I think it’s safe to say that he frequently has this on his mind as well. This seems like the perfect time to take a look at how these four films approach the concept of intelligent alien life visiting our planet and what Spielberg thinks about it.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Spielberg’s first alien movie is also one of his very best. It’s also one of my personal favorites. Only Jurassic Park (1993) and Jaws (1975) rank above it in my opinion. It essentially has two different storylines running parallel with one another until they collide in the final act of the film. The first story follows the life of Roy Neary (played by Richard Dreyfuss). Roy is a fairly stereotypical suburban family man from a middle class household in Indiana. One night, Roy encounters a UFO that upends his life. The encounter alters his brain in some way, and he becomes obsessed with understanding what has happened to him to the detriment of his family life. The other storyline follows Claude Lacombe (played by French filmmaker Francois Truffaut). He’s a UFO expert from the French government who has come to the United States to assist the American government with investigating UFO activity. The United States Army also helps to suppress information about the project by providing cover stories to keep the public at bay.
This is damn near a perfect film as far as I’m concerned. Spielberg has an ability to juggle so many different tones throughout the film without them ever feeling disparate. He can invoke feelings of awe and wonder when seeing the extraterrestrial spacecraft. He can drum up fear and tension during the abduction scenes. He can also really play with feelings of paranoia and distrust as well. Ultimately, what he does so well is meld grand spectacle with intimacy. Things feel epic in scope, but they are always filtered through the prism of relatable characters who feel real. It’s a film that created the template for alien abduction and conspiracy stories that persist to this day.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Just five years after Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg would dip back into the alien well with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Despite carrying the same PG rating as Close Encounters, it is aimed at a very different audience. While Close Encounters is aimed at adults and filtered through the lens of a family man, E.T. is aimed squarely at children and is told from the point of view of a ten-year-old boy named Elliott (played by Henry Thomas) whose parents have recently split. Instead of ordinary adults dealing with the negative effects of encountering aliens, we have a young boy meeting and befriending a small alien that was left behind when his comrades fled the planet to avoid American government agents. The rest of the movie is spent helping and hiding the little guy as he tries to contact his fellow aliens so that they can come back and pick him up. All the while, government agents are searching for him so that they can capture him and perform experiments on him.
I find this film fascinating within the context of Close Encounters that came just five years earlier. While both films are optimistic and hopeful with regards to how aliens and ordinary humans might interact, the American government is viewed through a much more cynical lens in E.T. than it was in Close Encounters. Government agents are decidedly the villains of the film (save for one character). I would be curious to know what prompted that shift. There are coverup and conspiracy elements in Close Encounters, but we always get the sense that things are being done for the greater good. That is not the case here. The government is here to steal your alien friend, and they are the bad guys for doing so. Important lesson for kids to learn at a young age.
War of the Worlds (2005)
It would be over twenty years until Spielberg made another alien movie, and this one shares very little DNA with the previous two. For starters, it’s an adaptation of a famous novel by H.G. Wells. The basic story is already locked in and well known. If you’re somehow unfamiliar with it, it’s about a technologically superior alien race that invades Earth and begins destroying everything in their path with little resistance. That’s pretty much what happens in Spielberg’s version as well.
The primary protagonist is an extremely divorced dad named Ray Ferrier (played by Tom Cruise). It’s his weekend to see his kids (played by Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin), and it just so happens to coincide with the alien invasion. Not great timing. The movie then becomes about the three of them trying to survive the apocalyptic death and destruction being wrought by the alien invaders. There ain’t much wonder and whimsy in this one. It doesn’t take much expert analysis to realize that this film is a direct response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks from four years earlier. The tone is bleak and oppressive, and the violence is horrifying despite its PG-13 rating. Apparently vaporized bodies and the mass destruction of entire cities aren’t as traumatic for children to see as a nipple. Who knew? I digress.
What I wanted to get at is this is not the hopeful and optimistic Spielberg alien movie we’ve grown accustomed to with the previous two films. It’s a dark and depressing film with a muted color palette, but it’s still incredibly impressive from a visual and technical standpoint. It also features some excellent performances (including Cruise playing the biggest dick of his career). Really the only connective tissue between this and the other two films (besides the aliens) is that it features a fractured family unit. Starting to think Spielberg might have some unresolved feelings about his parents. He should make a movie about that one day.
Disclosure Day (2026)
That finally brings us to Spielberg’s most recent film. Disclosure Day is much more similar in tone and message to Close Encounters than any of his other alien movies, but the action and pacing is much different. The premise of this one is that aliens are real (duh), but their existence has been kept secret by the government. Actually, that’s not true. Their existence is being kept secret by a privately owned company that has been contracted by the government. It’s depressing how realistic that feels. Anyway, an employee of that company named Daniel Kellner (played by Josh O’Connor) has stolen valuable data from this company with the intention to make it public. Meanwhile, a meteorologist named Margaret Fairchild (played by Emily Blunt) develops strange abilities and begins seeking out Kellner. From there, it basically becomes a chase film as our protagonists flee this shadowy organization that wants to keep extraterrestrial life a secret.
I enjoyed this movie. It’s far from perfect, but it’s nice to see an old school Steven Spielberg movie again. The selling point of this film (for me at least) is the way Spielberg shoots the action set pieces. There are three that immediately come to mind for me, and all three feel completely different. The film is worth watching for that alone.
As for the tone and message of the movie in comparison to the previous three, it is extremely hopeful and optimistic. It could not be more different from War of the Worlds in that regard. In fact, I would argue that it is more optimistic than Close Encounters and E.T. as well. Those movies aren’t exactly downers, so that should give you an idea of what kind of tone this film has. Does it lay the “hopecore” on a little thick? No question. That said, it balances out the cynicism of War of the Worlds quite well.
Overall, I recommend all four of these films. I’ll always be a Spielberg fan, and that’s especially the case when he dips his toe into genre pictures. War of the Worlds certainly feels like the outlier of the group, but that one also feels like the only one of the four where the aliens themselves feel like a metaphor. One thing that’s been made very clear to me with the release of Disclosure Day is that Spielberg is a true believer that intelligent extraterrestrials have visited Earth, and they are benevolent in nature. He also seems to like the traditional portrayals of aliens as humanoid figures with big heads and big eyes. E.T. strays the furthest from this template, and it isn’t by much. It might play into his ideas about extraterrestrials being quasi religious deities that can inspire humanity to become a better version of itself. Is that an oversimplification? Possibly, but I genuinely think that he believes that this is the one thing that can unite and inspire us.