---
title: 'How Steven Spielberg Made Aliens His Ultimate Muse'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=1R-o_HWUXwA'
video_id: '1R-o_HWUXwA'
date: 2026-06-13
duration_sec: 1477
---

# How Steven Spielberg Made Aliens His Ultimate Muse

> Source: [How Steven Spielberg Made Aliens His Ultimate Muse](https://youtube.com/watch?v=1R-o_HWUXwA)

## Summary

Steven Spielberg's alien films, from his teenage project 'Firelight' to the upcoming 'Disclosure Day', reveal a deeply personal exploration of family, divorce, and spirituality. This video analyzes how his UFO movies—'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', 'E.T.', 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence', 'War of the Worlds', and 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'—use extraterrestrials as metaphors for his own life experiences, evolving from childhood anxieties to parental reflections.

### Key Points

- **Spielberg's First Alien Film: Firelight** [01:04] — At age 17, Spielberg made 'Firelight', a lost film about a man trying to convince the CIA of aliens. It combined Cold War paranoia with his parents' divorce, a theme that recurs in his later alien movies.
- **Close Encounters and Parental Projection** [03:18] — In 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', the protagonist leaves his family to pursue aliens, mirroring Spielberg's feelings about his father leaving. The film uses religious imagery and replaces God with aliens.
- **E.T. as a Childhood Wish Fulfillment** [08:06] — Spielberg created an imaginary alien friend after his parents' divorce, which became the basis for 'E.T.'. The film is about a child yearning for a father figure, with E.T. acting as a conduit for that longing.
- **A.I. and Parental Anxiety** [11:51] — 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence' explores a parent's fear of not being able to love a child (the robot David) due to his alien nature. The film reflects Spielberg's own experiences as a parent and his mother's abandonment.
- **War of the Worlds Post-9/11** [16:14] — Spielberg's 'War of the Worlds' uses alien invasion to depict post-9/11 fears, with imagery of dust-covered survivors and a helpless father. It marks a shift from wonder to cynicism.
- **Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull** [20:35] — Set in the 1950s, this film incorporates Cold War themes and alien B-movie aesthetics. It focuses on Indiana Jones confronting fatherhood and legacy, mirroring Spielberg's own life as his children became adults.

### Conclusion

Spielberg's alien films are a continuous thread in his career, using extraterrestrials to explore personal themes of family, divorce, and spirituality. His upcoming 'Disclosure Day' promises to revisit these ideas, showing how his muse has evolved over 60 years.

## Transcript

Alien films are a dime a dozen, but
there's something uniquely interesting
about Steven Spielberg returning to the
world of UFOs with Disclosure Day, his
36th feature film. The Beard is a born
entertainer, and he's left his mark on
Hollywood in more ways than we can
count. But several of his landmark
movies and even some of his less beloved
ones have circled back to the idea that
when it comes to the universe, we may
not be alone. The man has directed
everything from monster movies to
historical dramas. But why do
Spielberg's alien films in particular
make him such a fascinating filmmaker?
Maybe it's that his UFO pictures all
feel completely different. Or maybe it's
that they share similar themes despite
those big differences. Either way, we
have to ask, what does it mean for an
artist to return to the same well
repeatedly for over 60 years, even as
the world around him changes, and so
does he?
Spielberg's trrist with
extraterrestrials dates back to his very
first theatrical feature. No, Sugarland
Express doesn't secretly have aliens
watching the drama from offscreen. We're
talking about a movie you might not have
even heard of because very few people
have actually seen it or will ever see
it for that matter because it's
practically lost. In fact, Spielberg
himself calls it one of the worst films
ever made, but he can sort of be
forgiven. After all, he made it when he
was only 17. Firelight screened at a
single Phoenix movie theater and
allegedly made $1 in profit off its $500
budget, which not bad for a first try.
We can't really dissect it as a whole
because only three minutes of footage
still exist. But what we do know can
tell us a lot about Spielberg's
cinematic foundations as a kid who was
born around the time of the Roswell
incident and grew up during the
subsequent wellspring of conspiracies in
popular media. As far as we can tell,
Firelight feels inspired by both the
Twilight Zone and UFO B pictures from
the 1950s. It's steeped in their
specific flavor of cold war paranoia and
nuclear age skepticism against the US
government with a character trying
desperately to convince the CIA that
aliens represented by fire lights in the
sky are actually real. But what is
probably more revealing is that even at
17, Spielberg was already making movies
centering on couples with marital
problems. In this case, in the form of a
cheating husband. If you've seen his
2022 semi-autobiography, The Fableman's,
or pretty much anything he's ever made,
you'll know that unhappy marriages are a
huge part of Spielberg's movies. Because
by the time he made Firelight as a
teenager, his parents had already been
divorced for a couple of years. Even
before he had the budget to make a
splash, his stories tried to combine
epic spectacle with the intimate
domestic scenarios he knew best. Of
course, just throwing what you know at
what you imagine doesn't make a good
movie. But by the time Spielberg
returned to these ideas over a decade
later, he had figured out a strange,
melancholy, and surprising empathetic
way to refashion a tale of divorce into
one of fascination with the unknown.
Inspired by his father showing him a
meteor shower when he was a kid, Close
Encounters of the Third Kind saw
Spielberg returning to the story of
Firelight and even recreating certain
scenes shot for shot. According to the
biography by Joseph McBride, there's
also a bit of Stanley Kubri to be found
in the visual department. Since at the
time Spielberg was making Close
Encounters, the influence of 2001, A
Space Odyssey would have been hard to
ignore. While it began as a short story
called Experiences, about young couples
at a lover's lane seeing mysterious
lights in the sky, it would eventually
be combined with Spielberg's idea to
make a documentary or a low-budget
feature about people who strongly
believed in UFOs. Its original title was
Watch the Skies. borrowed from a line in
the 1951 sci-fi horror, The Thing from
Another World.
>> Tell the world. Tell this to everybody
wherever they are. Watch the skies.
>> But by the early 70s, under taxi driver
screenwriter Paul Schrader, it nearly
became a story about blowing the
supposed lid off Project Blue Book, a US
Air Force study in the 50s and 60s about
the protocol for observing UFOs, which
seems more in line with Disclosure Day.
And while Close Encounters eventually
used some of these ideas, like the heavy
government presence, the final movie
ended up pretty different from where it
began by focusing on the abduction of a
young boy and more importantly a father
who becomes so obsessed with the idea of
UFOs that he leaves his wife and kids to
hang out with legendary filmmaker Franu
Trufo. Oh, and to kiss another woman. As
a child, it was Spielberg's
understanding that his own father simply
walked out on his family. However, the
real truth of his mother's affair
wouldn't come out until he was a teen.
But even [music] in his late 20s, he was
using cinema as a way to channel
complicated feelings about his family
history. In Close Encounters, Roy Neri,
played by Richard Drifus, begins
experiencing psychic visions of a
mysterious mountain after his encounter
with the lights, which makes him
essentially leave his family behind to
help the abducted toddler's mother.
Coming from a director who resented his
father for leaving, it feels like a
fairy tale that projects a complicated
sympathy onto Neri, giving him a good
enough reason to leave, exploring the
mysteries of the universe. There's also
a bit of Spielberg himself in some of
Ner's obsessions, like the introduction
of a train set, which Neri later uses to
depict the images he couldn't get out of
his head. Much like Spielberg's
childhood experience of recreating the
train crash from Cesy Deill's The
Greatest Show on Earth, it feels in some
ways like Spielberg trying to understand
his own father based on his teenage
understanding of his parents' marriage
and in some ways even why his own mother
may have been compelled to leave in
search of happiness elsewhere. For
Spielberg, joy seems to lie in creating
fantastical images of the universe. So
having his characters chase those dreams
somewhere out there in space makes
perfect sense even though it also ends
up being the story of a man leaving his
family. It's bittersweet. Now how much
of [music] his parental projection is
intentional is anybody's guess. In fact,
when interviewed on Inside the Actor's
Studio, it was the first time that some
of these ideas even occurred to
Spielberg. like how communicating with
the aliens through computerized music is
a rich combination of his mother's work
as a pianist and his father's as a
computer engineer which eventually end
up played on a massive cinemaized
screen.
>> Your father was a computer scientist.
Your mother was a musician. When the
spaceship lands, how do they
communicate?
>> That's a very good question. I like
that. [laughter]
>> You've answered the question.
They make music on their computers and
they are able to speak to each other.
>> You see, I'd love to say, you know, I
intended that and I realized that was my
mother and father, but not until this
moment.
>> Regardless of intent, Close Encounters
is a deeply personal, deeply spiritual
film to the point of drawing on
religious imagery. but replacing heaven
and the afterlife with dazzling
spaceships as people walk toward the
light. Spielberg also seems to replace
God and angels with aliens as a way to
understand humanity's place in the grand
scheme of things. Some scenes directly
reference Spielberg's [music] influences
like Deill's the Ten Commandments which
seem to inspire the way he uses matte
paintings [music] of landscapes and
clouds converging overhead. Close
Encounters might even be the closest
thing Spielberg has made to a religious
epic. The first time we actually see the
aliens, the idea that they represent
some divine forgiveness or salvation is
extremely overt, as though Spielberg was
using the genre to find answers to the
mysteries in his own life by answering
the question of why someone would be so
spiritually compelled to abandon their
family. Surely, they must have a good
enough reason. But if using UFOs to
channel childhood anxieties wasn't clear
enough, Spielberg's next Alien story
made things pretty direct.
With his 1982 hit ET, the
extraterrestrial [music]
Spielberg practically created a new way
of depicting kids in American cinema as
little adventurers exploring the
vastness of suburbia. But of course, the
all ages tearjerker was about much more
than just kids on bicycles against
faceless government suits shot like the
adults in Tom and Jerry. [music] While
some believe ET was inspired by the
alien, an unproduced script by Indian
filmmaking legend Suchajit Ry, Spielberg
maintains he had never read the draft
that had circulated in Hollywood for
several years. Even though Ryy's
description of the alien as a cross
between a gnome and a malnourished
refugee matches what Spielberg would
eventually do with ET. Still, what ends
up on the screen is distinctly
Spielbergian no matter what. So, for
now, we'll take him at his word.
According to McBride's biography, a
young Spielberg dealt with his parents'
separation by turning to an imaginary
alien friend, which essentially makes
ET, a childhood dream, come to life.
>> I've been wishing for this since I was
10 years old.
>> Like Close Encounters, ET is a story of
suburban mundanity interrupted by the
arrival of UFOs. Only this time,
Spielberg tells it from the perspective
of a child whose father has already left
the family for another woman. It is, in
some ways, a thematic successor. This
tale of divorce from a kid's perspective
unfolds quietly in the background, but
it underscores the emotions that young
Elliot feels when he first meets the
titular alien, making ET a story about
yearning for a friend or protective
figure. In fact, Elliot even first meets
ET by throwing a baseball his way into
the empty space where his dad should be.
While ET himself may not be imposing or
traditionally masculine or paternal,
[music]
the kids dress him up in their father's
old clothes, and he becomes a conduit
for Elliot and for Spielberg himself to
channel the lingering sensations of
yearning for someone only to lose them
and feel abandoned by them. This film's
wish fulfillment is so powerful that it
not only takes the form of magical
flight but religious euphoria with a
resurrected ET designed in the vein of
the resurrected Christ robes and all
combining questions of science fiction
with questions of faith once again. The
aliens in Spielberg's films may be flesh
and blood and in ET's case about 26%
beer, but they exist to fill spiritual
holes in their characters' lives. While
Spielberg would eventually go on to wear
his faith on his sleeve, he spent his
early years turning away from religion
in his personal life, which makes his
overt use of religious imagery and
biblical epics on screen all the more
interesting. As if he were using
cinematic depictions of things he
doesn't fully believe to better
understand their utility or their place
in people's lives. The more he mapped
them on to significant personal
experiences similar to his own, the more
real they became. like accepting that
sometimes you have to say goodbye. As it
happens, making ET turned out to be a
significant personal experience, too,
since Spielberg cites it as the film
that finally made him want to have
children, a story he recreates in
Jurassic Park. Intentional or not,
Spielberg's alien stories are closely
tied to the journey of parenthood. After
all, how can you not think about your
future and what you leave behind when
you're forced to confront [music] your
place in the universe? It would be
nearly two decades until Spielberg
returned to anything resembling aliens
on the big screen, by which point he'd
had seven kids in the 80s and 90s. So,
it's safe to say that by the time the
new millennium arrived, The King of All
Ages cinema might have had a slightly
different or slightly more evolved view
on family ties. Which brings us to his
next big alien adventure steeped in
religious ideas.
>> But in the beginning, didn't God create
Adam to love him?
Despite the similarity of its title
structure to ET, the extraterrestrial AI
artificial intelligence doesn't actually
have any aliens in it. [music] At least
not the kind from outer space. Even
though some of you might remember the
final act featuring slender alien-like
creatures. Those were actually advanced
robots from 2,000 years in the future,
which had evolved from the ones we
created in the movie's present. However,
their similarity to aliens might not
have been an accident and may have been
suggested by Spielberg's visual language
much earlier when he first introduces
David, the artificial boy created for
parents whose son was in a coma. The
first time we see David, he's out of
focus and appears as a lanky silhouette,
not unlike the way Spielberg depicted
the aliens in Close Encounters. And
while Spielberg mapped a tale of
childhood yearning onto an alien in ET,
this is arguably when he flipped the
script through his tale of parents who
fear they may not be able to love their
child the way he deserves because of his
unfamiliar alien nature. David is
programmed with a single goal, to be
loved by his mother, Monica. But this
love is not something she's capable of
returning the same way. A parental
anxiety Spielberg channels through yet
another sci-fi story. only this time,
it's hard not to read the film as a
product of both a young parent and an
adult who, after his own parents'
divorce, learned that he was abandoned
by his mother. The story of AI long
predates Spielberg's involvement. In
fact, it's something that Stanley Kubri
had been trying to adapt since the 1970s
and probably would have if he hadn't
died in 1999. But what makes AI so
powerful as a specifically Spielbergian
film is the sincerity at its heart,
which comes from a personal and painful
place. For instance, listen closely to
the score when David returns to a
version of his home after 2,000 years.
It's the first time John Williams' music
is stripped down to its fundamentals
with the use of a single instrument.
Many people attribute AI's saccharine
final act to the melodrama maestro, but
David getting to experience one last day
with his mother was always a part of
Kubrick's script. This climax even bears
similarities to the invisible aliens in
Kubri's 2001, creating a room to observe
an astronaut named Dave. As it turns
out, it was some of the seedier elements
of AI, like the red light district city,
home to Jigalo Joe, that were
Spielberg's additions, as a world too
big and too complicated for the eyes of
a child. But the way Spielberg captures
David's innocent yearning to be a real
boy so he can be loved by his mother
fills the frame with beautiful
curiosity. As for the not aliens near
the end of the film, they're
foreshadowed early on as things we've
left behind. This explanation can't help
but read like the anxieties of a baby
boomer. Once the radical hippie
generation whose rapid expansion felt
like it would usher in a utopia, but who
ended up responsible for climate change
and other catastrophes. What are the
ethics of bringing a child, real or
otherwise, into a world you've already
killed? This is a key part of what makes
AI tick as a story steeped in fears
associated with having children,
especially losing them. The idea of
creations meant to outlive us is a
devastating expression of parenthood
itself. The notion that what we create
ends up saddled with our fears, our
flaws, and our projections of
encroaching morality in a dying world,
whether they like it or not. But once
you pull on that thread a little
further, it also becomes an expression
of artistry itself. The idea that what
we create will last long beyond us. And
in Spielberg's case, it's these sci-fi
toys and cinematic aliens that will
[music] carry on his legacy. Despite
setting the film in a world destroyed by
human hubris, there's a kind of utopian
beauty to the evolved robots in the
final act who communicate and share
images as a hive mind, practically
showing each other movies of David's
memories. backing up the idea that for
Spielberg, these robots and alien beings
are manifestations of his own creativity
and perhaps even his need to create
something that alienates him from other
people. There's a kind of purity to AI
that makes it one of Spielberg's most
touching modern works. But it also came
out at the last possible time when he
could have or would have made a movie of
its kind. By the time he directed his
next Alien feature just four years
later, the world would have irreversibly
changed.
[music]
War of the Worlds represents a full
circle moment for Spielberg. The story
written by HG Wells dates back to the
19th century, while the famous radio
play by Orson Wells was broadcast in
1938. But Spielberg's version pays
frequent homage to the 1953 film
adaptation by Byron Haskin, another 50s
sci-fi landmark steeped in Cold War
paranoia and the kind of movie that
inspired Spielberg's earlier works. It's
worth noting that when Spielberg and
George Lucas were writing the fourth
Indiana Jones in the mid90s, the success
of Roland Emmerick's Independence Day
made Spielberg turn away from the idea
of using aliens on screen. But this
didn't necessarily apply to his
adaptation of War of the Worlds. See,
Independence Day was probably the last
moment in time that widespread
destruction of an American metropolis
could be digested as turn your brain off
entertainment because after the events
of September 11th, 2001, this was
something that became all too real. Some
movies alluded to 9/11 in its aftermath.
But Spielberg's War of the Worlds was
the first Hollywood production to
approach imagery reminiscent of the
attacks in head-on fashion. It's a film
whose story opens with the New York
skyline about working people gathered on
the streets covered in dust and ash. And
it's about a country gone mad with fear
and desperation after being attacked.
Not to mention a film in which jet
engines and similar technology are the
source of unimaginable destruction. The
Spielberg face has come to refer to
people looking up in awe, but in War of
the Worlds, they look up in horror
instead. They capture horrifying images
on cell phones and video cameras, not
unlike the way the world experienced
9/11. And they search for their loved
ones amidst rubble. And just in case you
miss why the movie looks the way it
does, Spielberg pretty much comes right
out and tells you,
>> "GET OUT. GET OUT. GET OUT. GET DOWN.
>> IS THAT A TERRORIST?"
>> HEY, you can't accuse the guy of being
too subtle. Gone were the days of
Spielberg's aliens being friendly,
ethereal beings. Gone was the
fascination and wonder. And gone were
the religious and spiritual overtones
brought on by questions of who else
might be out there and what they might
have to say about us in return. War of
the Worlds is Spielberg at his most
cynical about humanity. At a time when
it seemed like the only things possible
were war and anger.
>> We get back at them.
>> But in true Steven Spielberg fashion,
War of the Worlds is also about children
of divorce. Only this time, this is a
default backdrop instead of the central
tension. And maybe the film is a little
worse for it. At times, it can be too
simple and straightforward with events
happening around Tom Cruz's Ray Frier in
ways he can't influence or affect. But
this also adds to the sense of
helplessness running throughout the
film, making it a story about a father
who, no matter how hard he tries, can't
protect his kids from the horrors of the
world.
So close your eyes,
wave goodbye.
>> In an intriguing change from previous
versions, these horrors have already
existed deep beneath the earth's
surface. As if this attack were an
inevitability, intentionally or not, it
hints at a geopolitical complexity that
many people weren't willing to accept in
the mid200s. the idea that the attacks
of September 11th were deeply rooted in
America's own foreign policy and its
actions abroad. This in turn gives parts
of the opening prologue a whole new
meaning. Even though the words are taken
directly from the book,
>> with infinite complacency, men went to
and fro about the globe.
confident of our empire over this world.
>> The aliens this time are far less human,
which doesn't bode well for the movie as
a political metaphor, but it does allow
Spielberg to make the country's fears a
little more abstract and therefore a
little more approachable at a time when
patriotism was used to fuel invasions
abroad. It allowed him to translate the
sense of cold war paranoia seen
throughout his beloved 50s sci-fi into a
more modern Gulf War paranoia in which
anger and grief are channeled in
important ways. It may not be one of
Spielberg's most polished works, but
it's one of the most honest about the
state of the world. And given its
similarities to some of his biggest
childhood influences, it may also have
opened the door to the next time he
depicted aliens on screen.
The fourth Indiana Jones is one of the
less admired ones in the series, but
it's also a film that, like many of
Spielberg's classics, hearkens back to
his childhood influences while drawing
from a specific place of adult
experience. Like War of the Worlds and
AI, it's about a parent looking back at
his legacy and the world he leaves
behind, which also makes it kind of a
legacy sequel before these things were
in vogue. Crystal Skull is set in the
1950s at a time when alien be movies
were on the rise and were steeped in
cold war themes like nuclear fears,
government mistrust, and red scare
anti-communist sentiment. All of which
Spielberg gets to incorporate here and
in some cases deconstruct.
>> I'm a capitalist
and I pay.
>> The central mcguffin is a psychic skull
belonging to an extraterrestrial being.
But deep down, the film is about the
quest for knowledge and power, or
knowledge as power, which proves to be
the villain's undoing yet again. It's
repetitive, sure, but there's a kind of
beauty to Kate Blanchett's Ireina being
defeated by what could be one or maybe
even a dozen powerful aliens who, like
the future androids in AI, are a kind of
hive mind, represented by the extremely
blunt symbolism of them combining to
form a single dude. like collectivism
triumphing over individual ambition and
hitting you over the head.
>> More powerful together than they can
ever be apart.
>> But of course, to project a coherent
ideology onto the series is a fool's
errand, no matter how far left its
screenwriter tends to lean, because at
the end of the day, its director is a
man of personal emotional vision first
and foremost. Crystal Skull is buoied by
its hero wrestling with the idea of
being a father when he finally reunites
with Mary and Crane, his love interest
from the first film. And when he learns
that his sidekick, Mut, is actually his
son. Whether or not the film succeeds at
centering these ideas emotionally,
they're a constant undercurrent, and
they occasionally touch on some of
Spielberg's more familiar themes. Even
some of the movies most lampuned scenes
are filled with meaning, like Indie
escaping through a facimile of modern
American life, filled with mannequins
representing the kind of simple domestic
life he's never had or allowed himself
to have. Something a filmmaker might
reckon with when he's away on lengthy
shoots for months or years on end. And
in a particular funny irony, these
images of nuclear families are all
destroyed by
Well, you get the idea. While War of the
Worlds allowed Spielberg to transpose
his childhood favorites onto the modern
world, Crystal Skull allowed him to play
in their specific sandbox, mirroring the
circumstances that led to their
creation. It was also the perfect venue
for Spielberg to go back to basics, for
better or worse, with extremely simple,
streamlined alien and flying saucer
designs, which may as well have been
plucked from the early days of UFO
paranoia when he was still a kid. It may
not be the best Indiana Jones movie, but
it's the only one set during Spielberg's
lifetime, and it was made at a time when
his own kids were entering their adult
years, forcing him to question his own
choices and his role in their
upbringing, much like the aging Indiana
Jones. But with Spielberg having handed
his back to basics adventure series to a
new director, this leaves the door open
for more original genre experiments and
explorations as he turns his attention
to Disclosure Day, a movie which
according to actor Josh Oconor follows
up the lingering questions introduced in
Close Encounters and returns to the
sci-fi inspirations that first allowed
Spielberg to put stories of aliens and
UFOs on the silver screen. The paranoia,
the awe and wonder, the religious
overtones, and the tales of childhood
filtered through grand sci-fi spectacle
are all threads he's woven throughout
his work. Which makes it incredibly
exciting that at nearly 80 years of age,
he's chosen to revisit the kind of story
he's been telling in new and evolving
ways ever since he was 17.