‘I don’t think we’re alone in the universe’: Spielberg praises aliens

They often came in Steven Spielberg’s ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, War of the Worlds or even Indiana Jones 4! But after all, are aliens a serious subject for a famous filmmaker?

As reports of UFO sightings have recently increased in the United States, Hosted by Stephen Colbert Recently asked the director about his opinion on this matter and whether he believes in the existence of extraterrestrial life:

“I don’t know if you could say I believe it in the sense that I’m someone who has to see it to believe it.”answered Steven Spielberg on CBS. “I can imagine things and make movies about things I’ve never seen or experienced, that’s fine with me. But as far as actually believing it, I think it would have to be me doing my third kind of encounter.”

After this small reference to one of his first feature films – in which Richard Dreyfuss’s character defended the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence against the entire world – Spielberg continued his reflection, specifying that this topic interested him.

“I’ve never seen aliens, I wish. I’ve never seen anything unexplained. But I believe in some people who have seen things they couldn’t explain. (…). I think what has come out recently is just fascinating. And what about the secrecy that shrouds all these observations, or the lack of transparency (…)I think what’s going on requires diligence.”

Curious, even fascinated by the question, the filmmaker also confirmed that, from his point of view, it was simply impossible for Earth to be the only inhabited planet in the universe:

“I don’t think we’re alone in the universe. I think it’s mathematically impossible for us to be the only intelligent species in the cosmos.”he said, specifying that the use of a wormhole would likely be necessary to cover the distance that would separate us from these hypothetical other civilizations.

“I’m not an astrophysicist, I can’t speak the language of the people who do this (…). But as a filmmaker, as someone who uses his imagination and who also has an insatiable curiosity about aliens, I know that something is going on that is not being revealed to us.

Ever the optimist, Steven Spielberg confided in any case that, in his imagination, the aliens were much closer to ET than the invaders from War of the Worlds. Always at Stephen Colbert’s microphone, the filmmaker also revealed an absolutely fascinating theory worthy of a Hollywood script:

What if they weren’t from an advanced civilization 300 million light years away? Because we would be anthropologists? They knew things that we don’t yet know happened, and so they would try to review the last 100 years of our history.”

Quite comparable to the script for Interstellar – which was almost directed by Steven Spielberg – could this pitch spark a new feature film idea for ET’s dad?

In the meantime, (re)discover the trailer for The Fablemen, his latest film currently in theaters…