Asked about UFOs during an interview with Stephen Colbert, the alternately named Steve was ready with a theory, explaining that maybe, just maybe, what we’re seeing are far-future versions of humanity come back in time to check out a crucial point in our species’ history.
“There’s Something Out There” – Steven Spielberg on Alien Visitors, and an “E.T.” Sequel
Although Spielberg says he’s “never seen a UFO” or anything else he “can’t explain,” he adds that he thinks other people have, that “what has been coming out recently is fascinating,” and that “there is something going on that simply needs extraordinary due diligence.”
He goes on to explain that he thinks “it’s mathematically impossible that we’re the only intelligent species in the cosmos” but that “it almost seems impossible that anybody would visit us from 400 million light years from here” unless they’re using some kind of nifty wormhole traveling technology.
After chatting a bit more with Colbert, who suggests that there could be a wild, “paradigm-shattering” secret being hidden from the public, Spielberg continued by saying that “the most optimistic thing I feel about these things that we’re seeing in the skies” is that they could be humans visiting from the future.
“What if it’s us, 500,000 years into the future that is coming back to document the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century because they’re anthropologists?” he says. “And they know something that we don’t quite know yet that has occurred and they’re trying to track the last hundred years of our history.”
Returning to the possibility of aliens, Colbert then asks if non-human visitors would be more likely to come with motivations like those of E.T. or the ones expressed by the less cuddly invaders from War Of The Worlds. “E.T.,” Spielberg immediately answers. “I believe that if any extraterrestrial civilization has journeyed all the way here it’s because of curiosity and science and it’s not about aggression.”
Hopefully, Spielberg gets this right and doesn’t end up with egg on his face when the aliens show up to annihilate us all and, as in the case of the poor sharks defamed by his work, he’s made to issue another apology for getting it wrong.
