During a chat with Stephen Colbert in 2023, Steven Spielberg offered his most optimistic forecast for the UFO phenomenon. “What if it’s us? Five hundred thousand years into the future, that is coming back to document the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st because they’re anthropologists?” he said. “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.”
Time-traveling homo sapiens would mean our species survived. Or at least a portion did. Whether or not Spielberg exploits that theme in his upcoming UFO film – reportedly titled “The Dish,” set for release next year – is anyone’s guess. But it’s safe to say that back in 1977, when “Close Encounters of The Third Kind” came out, the idea of UFOs embodying future-human technology wasn’t on the radar. Everybody knew UFOs came from other planets.
Since then, however, that certitude has collapsed. The possibility of time travelers, ultraterrestrials, cryptoterrestrials, interdimensionals, etc., has given us a new three-letter acronym to cover it all, NHI (nonhuman intelligence). And at least one culture vulture, Paul Meehan, is asking us to consider the impact of possible NHI on filmmakers, starting with Spielberg.
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