And if you’ve yet to watch that film, I strongly recommend it apart from this list discussion, as it’s among the most underappreciated yet high-quality sci-fi films of the previous decade.Īll of these same points apply to other films I considered for the list as well, to one extent or another. Both films spend the vast majority of their time in the post-contact phase, both rely a lot more on action, and both are less tales of first contact than separate stories about threats and fighting back to preserve not only our lives but our beliefs and our species (or of both species, as is the case in District 9).īut for the record, if I were going to include an alien invasion type film on the list, it would be 2013’s Oblivion. I wanted to include Oblivion and District 9, but I felt they both lacked certain key ingredients to sit comfortably on this list, even though both included significant elements of first contact, the experience and how people responded, and how it changed them forever. Nor am I including Mars Attacks!, which I do like but which is a satire of alien invasion movies and has depictions of “first contact” and subsequent human reactions that are farcical, contrary to the themes this list reflects. ![]() Plus, they don’t truly represent the “first contact” scenario with intelligent alien civilizations that my list is meant to represent. Other films, including The Andromeda Strain and Europa Report, fit the bill as “first contact” discovery of alien life, but are not about intelligent communicative aliens and are more focused on the horror/thriller aspects of surviving the alien encounters. Terror and conflict present in the themes and tone dominate the story and how it’s told, as well as the action itself of course. Those alien invasion tales focus on the invasion aspect and the way humanity fights back or tries to survive, and less on the “contact” portion or the way humanity reacts to the knowledge and experience of encountering an alien species. So certain films like Signs, War of the Worlds, and other alien invasion tales are not quite what I’m looking for in this list. ![]() The point isn’t to build a collection of movies offering cool looking VFX and alien fights, but rather to approach the question of what first contact would mean for humanity and how it would forever change us. I want to offer a list that gets at telling the story of what first contact might be like, how it would happen, and how we’d respond in the moment and afterward. The idea of first contact itself needs to dominate the concept and storytelling. The stories need to focus not merely on fighting and survival, or on various genre tropes, but specifically include the elements of first contact - the arrival of a message of spacecraft, humanity reacting to the first realization and confirmation that aliens exist, and the aftermath. ![]() This isn’t merely a list of movies about people or civilization encountering aliens. I’ll explain a few of my rules for my list selections. And while I think Loeb’s writings and studies on Oumuamua are interesting and make a good case that we might have already had first contact without realizing it, I’m not convinced yet and merely believe it’s one possible explanation but requires exceptional proof.īut all of this is still in a broad context of humanity edging ever closer to being able to detect alien civilizations on far-off planets, searching with greater capacity for extraterrestrial signs, signals, or messages, and a general feeling that we need to take the matter much more seriously and start preparing for the eventuality of first contact.Īnd that, dear readers, is why it’s worth looking at my picks for the top 10 best films about how humanity makes first contact with aliens, how we react to the news, and what we do to facilitate contact. None of this is to say I believe there is any government conspiracy to cover up alien contact, or that UAPs are a sign of alien arrival or invasion. ![]() And make no mistake, while there hasn’t been wide acceptance of Loeb’s theories about the object’s origins, there is currently a little-publicized effort underway called Project Lyra to send a fast spacecraft of our own to chase after Oumuamua and confirm what exactly it is and try to gather data from it.
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