Is is my imagination or does Colin Firth’s character have more than a passing resemblance to J. Allen Hyneck?
I saw an article about the movie that pointed out that people today would probably doubt the recordings of the aliens, believing them to be faked. And would everyone stop everywhere to watch the coverage?
Was looking forward to this film. Didn’t enjoy it at all.
I found I didn’t really care about any of the characters, didn’t see the point of the chases and action scenes. This could have been a much more interesting movie, but it had none of the charm or wonder of Close Encounters or even Men in Black. A wasted opportunity, I’d say.
I have a question, which I’ll put in a spoiler:
We see archival footage that’s supposed to be President Nixon going to see the aliens at a military base in Florida. For no apparent reason, he’s met there by a “big TV star” who I’m guessing was meant to be Jackie Gleason. They both get to see the aliens. What’s this all about? Is this part of UFO lore in some way? Why Jackie Gleason, of all people?
Yes, it’s a well known story in UFO circles. And there’s not much more to it, either. The story goes that Nixon took his friend Gleason to see alien bodies one night.
Yeah I was surprised to find out that was a “real” thing in that it is told as fact in the UFO/UAP community (of which Stephen Spielberg is a part which I think was a reason this movie is lackluster. He is just too close to the source material).
Jackie Gleason was known to be interested in UFOs and Nixon supposedly wanted to impress him.
Huh. I had no idea what part was actually true! (Or rather a true rumor that existed before the film.) I thought that was one of the stupider parts of the film, like there is this whole govt conspiracy but then tv celebs are just being taken there and yet the story still doesn’t get out?
Do you suppose the producers didn’t name Gleason by name for legal reasons? Or because they figured younger audiences would have no idea who he was?
I’d never heard any of that rumor until this thread. I’m not saying it’s not out there; only that it’s new news to me.
My first thought upon reading of it here was that the rumor-starter picked Nixon as the offending president because he was Evil Politician personified.
My, how quaint.
Doubt it. In the credits, Bob Greenberg is credited as “Jackie Gleason”.
Supposedly (and this may have been said in the film, I don’t remember), the Nixon incident is what convinced the Powers that Be in the Secret Government/Industrial Cabal to no longer let Presidents in on the secret going forward.
Yes, Daniel explicitly said to Jane that the true Powers That Be decided after this incident to stop revealing the existence of extraterrestrials to future presidents. He notes that the reasoning was that presidents become civilians again after only eight years at most.
I found it to be okay but nothing too profound.
The only part I thought was really good was the performance by Courtney Grace who played the woman reporting live on the disclosure and was trying to remain calm, was left speechless, and still had to report. Great stuff.
The rest just never reached that emotional level.
Yes, this exactly! That was the only scene that actually moved me. I wasn’t that thrilled with the rest of the film, but I will admit I had tears during her scenes.
I wish that had been the beginning of the movie. That was the movie I was hoping for, I guess. It’s been explored before, but I could have been interested in Spielberg’s vision of what happens after we got the big news.
Kind of weird a character we never met before got to have the emotional climax of the movie. Could they not have introduced her earlier?
Inna and I saw this yesterday and I have thoughts…
- The climax involving two people trying to get to a TV station is definitely a choice. One that made more sense in 1986 than 2026, imho.
- Why would you make your main character a wanna-be news anchor… and then have the news-anchoring at the end of the movie be someone else?
- How the hell did Boyfriend just show up at the news station? And Jane, for that matter?
- The ending of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 novelization had the Star Child coming to Earth in the nick time to stop WW3. Spielberg was just on a podcast to discuss 2001: A Space Odyssey for over 2 hours. This 2+ hour movie ended with aliens coming in the nick of time to stop WW3. I don’t think these three sentences are unrelated.
I got the feeling the Boyfriend was just watching the broadcast from another location. But it was weirdly edited, I have to admit.
I have no idea if there’s any purposeful connection, but that final line/ word is the same as the final line/ word in the earliest written version of the Atra-Hasis flood story:
…
I shall sing of the Flood to all people:
Listen!
It comes at the very end, but it’s referring to the story that had just been told.
I’m late. I kinda didn’t want to see this film but I had some free tickets to spend that expire at the end of the week and I saw everything else worth seeing at the the theater.
So, this whole thing, the secret data, the superpowers, the whole using magic alien powers to find each other, the chases, the memory journey, and… they just have a 12 foot tall real live alien just hanging around? They had to make an elaborate plan to find the two main characters who were touched by the aliens, because… why, exactly? The footage, sure, but you know what’s even more impressive than footage? A real live 12 foot tall alien that you apparently keep in a fucking plastic bag for when the moment is right to pull him out. Must be a pretty boring ass life for him, waiting for years in his little plastic bag.
And there was just no reason, story wise, to have a live alien with the resistance group. It only undercuts everything else. They had the video. They had the altered people with special powers. Why in the world would you pull out a 12 foot tall alien out of a bag at the last minute and make the rest of the 2 hours we just saw irrelevant?
What purpose does Emily Blunt’s character even serve? They tried to make it a sort of a he (Kellner) translates the alien language to English, and she… repeats… what he tells her. Since he already translated alien to English. I mean… we see her speaking other languages and seeing into people’s past and thoughts, but… does that actually matter as far as the aliens talking to humans? Once we translate from alien to English, it’s trivially easy to translate it to the rest of the languages in the world. They tried to set it up like they were a two-piece translation team, but only his part was necessary at all. Her part is completely redundant. We see the alien speak to Kellner by whispering into his ear, and then Kellner whispering into Emily Blunt’s ear, and it has to be silent to the audience because 1) Spielberg has no real message here and 2) she’s just going to repeat what Kellner told her anyway, which makes a mockery of her role in the film if we actually saw and heard her doing that.
And what’s a little funny is that he was actually the key piece - he had the video evidence, he had the alien language->math->translation ability, but they recreated her childhood home and I guess he must’ve felt like second fiddle just sort of tagging along in her childhood memories.
Oh, and during that sequence in the home, when she’s seeing the memory of following the animals, Hugo has to spell out “you see, the aliens appear to us as animals to calm us” NO SHIT? Didn’t we just see Emily Blunt’s character appear to someone meaningful to every character at the military base? Where they clearly gave her the power of illusion specific to them. And we literally, 20 seconds later, see an animal become an alien as the illusion drops, but thanks Hugo for spelling it out for me, I wouldn’t want the movie to think I had 3 brain cells to rub together. I actually noticed that the scene stuck out a little bit, something was off with the lighting or something when he said that – I think the original scene didn’t include that line, and apparently audiences were too dumb to understand the aliens used the same illusion power to seem less threatening and they had to do reshoots to spell it out. Which means either Spielberg is treating the audience like idiots in a condescending way, or the audience actually are idiots.
Except, wait… the original scene where the cardinal enters through a window in her apartment and she’s transfixed… was that an alien crawling through the window, which her boyfriend then shooed away back out the window? How ridiculous would that scene look if you dropped the illusion?
The whole “brink of nuclear war” thing felt pretty out of place because it was set in the modern day and we’re not really told anything except maybe the Koreas were fighting. I get it, it’s sort of background and they don’t have to explain why necessarily, but it really felt like Spielberg was stuck in the 80s there, like he came up with this idea in 1983 and didn’t feel like updating 40 years later.
And for that matter, forcing your way into a TV station to get out the evidence also felt like it was stuck in the 1980s. Post that shit to tiktok from a secret location.
And then the security forces find them at the station, and surround them… and then… just peacefully leave? I didn’t get the impression she mind controlled or illusioned them. They just decided to leave, which is especially funny since hot headed 2nd in command guy just tried to kill them a few hours ago.
Didn’t love the religious angle. Did sort of enjoy the (unintentional?) comedy of the former nun girlfriend character saying basically like “shouldn’t we bury the truth to protect our faith?” – I don’t think Spielberg wanted that to be a subversive message but it is. At least the old nun was pretty cool.
If you shut off your brain it was well made enough to be entertaining. If you think about it, it immediately falls apart. It also has nothing new to say. It just retreats well worn territory. Mysterious men in black covering up the UFO mythology. Alien abduction, special powers, “should the world know or not”, and when they finally at the end had the chance to give some sort of alien message, it’s just “listen…” and we’re done. For what appears to be a sort of passion project for Spielberg it really doesn’t have much to say.
They cut out the rest of the sentence: “Listen, Earth is about to be destroyed to make room for a hyperspace bypass.”
I might be mis-remembering, but I thought in the novel the star-child comes to Earth but the story ends as the star-child is considering what to do. I also vaguely recall that Kubrick originally wanted the star-child to set off all the nuclear weapons but then decided the ending would be too much like Dr. Strangelove.
The movie 2010 had the aliens alter Jupiter into a mini-sun just in time to stop WW3. That’s what this movie reminded me of.