What’s With Spielberg’s Cute and Cuddly Alien Films?

Steven Spielberg’s new 2026 film, Disclosure Day, is about alien encounters and government cover-ups. It’s not Spielberg’s first foray into alien encounter films. There was the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, initially titled Watch the Skies.

The roots of Watch the Skies dated back to an indelible moment in Spielberg’s childhood, when he and his father stayed up late together to watch a meteor shower near their New Jersey home. Even in adulthood, it remained one of the most fondly recalled events of his life, a moment to hold and cherish with a father who would ultimately leave him and his mother on their own. It was his Rosebud.”[1]

The concept for E.T. “was based on an imaginary friend that Spielberg created after his parents’ divorce.” The film was initially called Night Skies but was later named E.T. and Me. Gary Arnold of The Washington Post described it as “essentially a spiritual autobiography, a portrait of the filmmaker as a typical suburban kid set apart by an uncommonly fervent, mystical imagination.”[2] Spielberg recalls:

My parents split up when I was 15 or 16 years old, and I needed a special friend, and had to use my imagination to take me to places that felt good—that helped me move beyond the problems my parents were having, and that ended our family as a whole. And thinking about that time, I thought, an extraterrestrial character would be the perfect springboard to purge the pain of your parents’ splitting up.[3]

Roger Ebert’s comments are crucial to understanding something about Spielberg’s fascination with extraterrestrials.

It’s that deeper impulse, that need, that operates under the surface of “E.T.,” making it more emotionally complex than the story itself might suggest. And in the third Indiana Jones movie, there’s that bond between Indy (Harrison Ford) and his father (Sean Connery). In “Close Encounters,” the hope that alien visitors might be benign, not fearsome as they always were in science-fiction movies. And in “The Color Purple,” again the impulse to heal a broken family.

Spielberg seems to be on a constant search for belonging. He hasn’t found it here, so he is “watching the skies” for a form of transcendent meaning greater than himself. Since he has abandoned “religion,” specifically the Christian religion, he’s hoping to find meaning among the stars. But who made the aliens? How far back does it all go?

Most alien encounter films portray visitors from other worlds as villains, hell-bent on destruction—everything from War of the Worlds and The Blob to Independence Day and the Alien franchise, and so many more. Let’s not forget the Twilight Zone’s “To Serve Man.” Be careful what you wish for.

Even in the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, the alien protagonist, who goes by the name “Carpenter,” threatens to turn Earth into a “burned-out cinder” if Earthlings threaten peaceful alien cultures with their excursions into space with their weapons of war. Here are Klaatu’s departing words.

I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We of the other planets have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets—in spaceships like this one—and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us; this power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is that we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war—free to pursue more profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet. But if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer; the decision rests with you.

“Steven Spielberg, a member of the baby boomer generation who grew up with flying saucers, conceived his 1977 classic [Close Encounters] differently, with humanity eagerly anticipating the visit from outer space. The alien ship of Close Encounters descends in a blaze of light that suggests the second coming of Christ.”[4] Richard Dreyfuss’s character chooses to leave his chaotic family life to seek belonging among the welcoming aliens. Melinda Dillon’s character has her son taken from her. Like Dreyfuss, she does everything she can to be reunited with him.

Many Americans are experiencing a crisis in faith, and they are willing to reach toward the heavens to find it. “Many flying saucer buffs are believers precisely because aliens may offer hope, much like a deity…. Americans are desperately searching for hope in an increasingly cynical age.”[5] Carl Sagan made a similar point.

The interest in UFOs and ancient astronauts seems at least partly the result of unfulfilled religious needs. The extraterrestrials are often described as wise, powerful, benign, human in appearance, and sometimes they are attired in long white robes. They are very much like gods and angels, coming from other planets rather than from heaven, using spaceships rather than wings. There is a little pseudoscientific overlay, but the theological antecedents are clear.[6]

Alien encounter films are projections of evolutionary optimism and messianic hope. The rationalistic worldview of secularism does not meet the needs of the spiritually deprived. Science needed to be resuscitated and infused with special meaning. More than this, science needed a resurrection of monumental proportions. Hollywood gave science a way out of its materialistic and anti-supernatural dilemma by turning to the heavens. Superman made his first appearance in Action Comics #1 in 1938. He was the first intergalactic messianic figure: he was sent to Earth by his father, kept his identity secret, exhibited extraordinary powers, emerged into the public eye at about thirty years old, and went about doing good. In Superman: The Movie, released in 1978, “upon his arrival, [the infant] gives us one more less-than-subtle hint as he opens his arms wide [to his adoptive parents] to suggest a miniature Christ.”[7]

Dr. Albert Edward Millar wrote “E.T.—You’re More Than a Movie Star” after watching the film with his daughters. The pamphlet lists thirty-three parallels between E.T. and Jesus Christ.[8] After the four-and-a-half-page pamphlet was printed and published, MCA-Universal City Studios accused Dr. Millar of several violations of copyright law. I have a copy of the original “illegal” publication.

In response to the heavy-handed threats by lawyers from Universal to ban the pamphlet from publication that Millar was selling for $1, he wrote a short book titled The Flea’s Reprieve. Universal’s response “was like using an atomic bomb to kill a flea.” Millar’s book has recently been published by one of his daughters. Did Spielberg have a hand in crushing Millar’s pamphlet? Is he still trying to crush the Christian hope with Disclosure Day by subtly inferring that religious beliefs may be misdirected? Is this why Christians are portrayed in a positive light? Their hearts are in the right place, but maybe belief in God is really a belief in god-like aliens.

Flying saucers are just one more manifestation of the ever-present religion of humanism: evolutionary, self-salvational, and gnostic.[9]

The last word in Disclosure Day is “listen,” reminiscent of the end of the 1951 film The Thing From Another World: “Watch the skies.”

All these hopeful alien stories can’t help but borrow from the original story: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14). Spielberg was raised in a Jewish home. “[Jesus] came to His own [Jewish people], and His own people did not accept Him” (John 1:11). Accept no alien substitutes!

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[1] Chris Nashawaty, The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982 (New York: Flatiron Books, 2024). 13.

[2] Gary Arnold, “E.T. Steven Spielberg’s Joyful Excursion, Back to Childhood, Forward to the Unknown,” The Washington Post (June 6, 1982). Link here.

[3] Roger Ebert, “Steven Spielberg’s Legacy,” Robert Ebert.com (Dec. 12, 2012). Link here.

[4] Anton Karl Kozlovic, “Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still Part I: A Religious Film?,” KINEMA (Fall 2013):

[5] Quoted in Bill Hendrick, “UFOs and the Otherworldly: Do You Believe?,” Atlanta Journal/Constitution (June 25, 1997), B1.

[6] Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain (New York: Random House, 1979), 67.

[7] Robert Short, The Gospel from Outer Space: The Religious Implications of E.T., Star Wars, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1983), 42.

[8] Al Millar, “E.T. You’re More Than a Movie Star” (Newport News, VA: privately published, 1982), 4-5. See Donald R. Mott and Cheryl McAllister Saunders, Steven Spielberg (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1986), 126, 167, note 41.

[9] Gary North, Unholy Spirits: Occultism and New Age Humanism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), 327.

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