According to Prof Isaac Asimov, the celebrated writer considered the godfather of science fiction, the genre is not only an escape from real life – it’s actually essential.
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today,” he wrote in the foreword to the 1978 Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. “But the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all.”
He had watched Star Wars burgeon into a cult franchise and sci-fi become big business at a time – in the 70s and 80s – when cinemagoers were coming to terms with real-world events, from Watergate to the reign of the Khmer Rouge, that were every bit as disorienting as space operas. Settling down in a darkened room with an audience of like-minded people, provided a sense of comfort and community.
The big-screen experience also offered an escape into a fantasy world where epic stories, with starry casts and off-the-chart special effects, allowed our imaginations to run wild and our beliefs to be challenged with an impact that the small screen simply can’t match.
That’s still true today, in this era of bin-fire headlines and increasingly bewildering rolling news. There’s a reason that the “hope core” space-set Project Hail Mary did gangbusters at the box office and Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is the most anticipated film of the summer. Predicted to be a blockbuster, it will tap into our psyche, stir powerful emotions with its high-stakes action but also offer a relatability that is totally recognisable in our everyday lives.
After we’ve doomscrolled to disconsolate burnout, it should be no surprise when a movie that frames humanity within wondrous, awe-inspiring events and allows us to examine our ethics and morals through entertainment, packs out cinemas.
It was certainly the case with Spielberg’s 1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a seismic sci-fi drama, which asked audiences to consider that aliens were just as curious as we are. The film-maker continued to explore the idea with ET in 1982, featuring an alien who was as lost as any human, and desperate to phone home.
Less cute: Tom Cruise’s encounters in 2005’s War of the Worlds. This time the aliens weren’t just looking for Reese’s Pieces and friendship, but the heroism, comradeship and tenacity of humans was still celebrated. It’s a visceral thrill to imagine the unimaginable, allowing us to process our feelings, and to make some sense of our world through the experience.
Spielberg has always been cognisant of the therapeutic nature of big sci-fi stories, turning some of our darkest fears and greatest dreams into blockbuster cultural moments (even Indiana Jones had a run-in with aliens in 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).
The son of a computer engineer, the director recalls that his fascination with our wider galaxy began as a child, when Arnold Spielberg took young Steven outside to show him a meteor shower. The wonder of looking upward and watching lights dazzle in the darkness is something his movies have provided audiences for years.
And while he’s been the architect of many of our childhood imaginations with beloved speculative tales such as Jurassic Park and Minority Report, Spielberg has been asking pertinent questions with his art that he holds dear himself. “I have seven solid decades of a vast personal interest in what lies beyond our atmosphere, in the cosmos, and what is within our atmosphere right here on planet Earth,” he said in a recent interview. “The question has always remained for me: are we alone on our own planet? That question has not only haunted me, but it has inspired me. And it has now resolved itself to my satisfaction in Disclosure Day.”
The story of a young whistleblower (played by Josh O’Connor) who discovers proof of alien life and partners with a former government agency employee (Colman Domingo) to reveal the truth, Spielberg’s latest asks what the impact would be – globally, culturally, economically, politically – if we knew we were not alone. And who might try to stop that information from leaking?
Colin Firth plays a shadowy G-man who will stop at nothing to conceal the facts, with Emily Blunt as a TV weather reporter whose past makes her uniquely involved.
The film couldn’t be more timely in looking to the heavens. Our fascination with the recent moon trip of Nasa’s Artemis II has been a unifying and wholesome palate cleanser in a polarised world. The photographs of Earth that came back from space reminded us of how small the world is; how beautiful, how ingenious. Elements that sci-fi, done right, can also give us: a sense of togetherness, gratitude and wellbeing.
In a fast-moving world, where fears around AI, war and environmental fragility are very real, sci-fi also prepares us for a sometimes terrifying future by allowing us to try on alarming-yet-wondrous scenarios for two hours while we examine what being human should mean. Whether that’s how we move through a dystopia or how we feel about robots, flying cars, thought policing or technology turning on us.
After all, Spielberg has said: “Every science fiction movie I have ever seen … warns us about things that ultimately come true.” And maybe we’re better at understanding change by having experienced it on screen first.
Flip phones? Thanks, Star Trek, for the tutorial. Facial recognition? Cheers, Minority Report. The US air force’s surveillance system, Gorgon Stare? Take a bow, Enemy of the State. They say that sci-fi surges happen before peak scientific revolution so expect time-travelling DeLoreans any day.
Disclosure Day may or may not be a sort-of sequel to Close Encounters (fans have been theorising since its announcement), but it certainly has a conversation with that film in asking what it means if humans are not the only lifeforce in the galaxy. Often, fiction has more in common with reality than we might realise. Maybe the truth is out there. And it’s good for us to flirt with it on film.
Disclosure Day is in cinemas from Wednesday 10 June
