JJ Abrams’ mission to expose the truth about UFOs

I I wish I could say that UFO definitely proves that aliens are among us, but at least Showtime’s new four-part docuseries (produced by JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot) argue that this is a possibility, given that we now have strong evidence for it. unidentified flying objects. Use as a base The New York Times2017 article, “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious UFO Program,” this intriguing investigation into flying saucers and the possible aliens that control them is an attempt to legitimize an area of ​​study that has long been ridiculed by the general public, as well as mythologized by X files, Hollywood blockbusters and the countless conspiracy theorists who populate the web.

Based on its first two episodes (which were all that was available at the time of this review), UFO is only partially successful in this endeavor.

Shown on August 8, this mouth-watering non-fiction effort uses a familiar docusery format, mingling interviews with journalists and ‘experts’, stock photos, video clips, graphic diagrams, CGI recreations, TV reports, newspaper headlines and declassified document text. In doing so, the series aims to present its subject matter as being no different from any other historical event or real crime investigation – a tactic that is most compelling when it sticks to the above. New York Times briefing, which revealed to the public that the government recognizes that there have been genuine UFO sightings and has examined these events in the hope of uncovering the nature, origin and purpose of the entities in question .

Written by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, this explosive report explained that between 2007 and 2012, thanks in large part to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and billionaire Robert Bigelow, the U.S. government secretly spent $ 22 million on Advanced Aerospace. Threat Identification Program (AATIP), an operation whose sole purpose was to study UFOs. For the legions of Americans who believe in such things – whether they themselves have witnessed inexplicable contraptions themselves, or simply find the UFO claims credible – the article was first-rate validation, coming directly from the “reference paper”. Keane and Blumenthal both participate in UFO, and their reasoned comments on their own work, as well as on the larger subject under consideration, lend credence to the idea that the U.S. government is both aware of the UFOs in our skies and fascinated enough to devote time and considerable energy to understand them. .

This new perspective on UFOs stems, in large part, from declassified government documents, the most breathtaking of which is a video of a 2004 encounter between Navy F / A-18F fighter jets off the Nimitz aircraft carrier. (near the San Diego coast) and a bewildering white oval ticking craft. The footage from this run-in clearly shows that the object in question is not a weather phenomenon or a test rocket (two of the oldest and most popular official explanations for UFO sightings), and it’s difficult to tell. dismiss it as mere fiction created by crackpot science fiction enthusiasts. While UFOLas Vegas Talking Heads including George Knapp, longtime Las Vegas UFO reporter, admit that around 95% of reported UFOs can probably be explained in a rational way, it is the remaining 5% that present considerable interest, and it’s easy to see this Air Force video as falling into the latter category.

The Showtime series contextualizes AATIP as the latest in a long line of U.S. government UFO investigations, which began in 1947 and continued through the late 1960s through programs that included the project. Blue Book. Sadly, UFO somewhat undermines its persuasive force by jumping back and forth in time at random. There is no discernible structure for each of its episodes, which provide an assortment of history, current events, and old films of Americans recounting their close encounters with television reporters. The effect of this scrambled format is to keep things attractive and suspenseful at the expense of lucid and in-depth analysis. This suggests that not everything presented here can withstand close scrutiny, or even a simple point-by-point chronological recap.

Still, there is a lot to chew on UFO, such as the “Phoenix Lights” incident of March 13, 1997, in which thousands of Arizonans saw, from about 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., in various parts of the state, a geometric formation of hovering lights above ground . Much speculation ensued, spurred by video of the event on camcorder as well as then governor Fife Symington, who admitted he too had witnessed the lights and who, in a new interview , describes what he considered to be “from another world”. Symington’s possible joking Phoenix Lights press conference – filled with a colleague in an alien costume – was therefore viewed by many as an insult, and Phoenix City Councilor Frances Emma Barwood and her husband Michael Siavelis imply that Symington may have behaved in this manner. because of government pressure (and in return for leniency on the fraud charges he faced).

This notion invariably sounds like conspiratorial nonsense, and frustratingly, UFO don’t spend more time trying to genuinely analyze fact from fiction. Instead, it presents a collection of movies, photographs, and guesswork in the hopes that some of them will stick around. This is most notable when addressing his second episode of Skinwalker Ranch, a Utah outpost known for its paranormal activity. There’s a lot of talk about Bigelow’s interest in the property, and the series reinforces her creepy stories about the place through a conversation with one of her former security guards. However, there is no real effort to verify if the place is “a haunted house with UFOs” (as Knapp describes it) or if it is just the kind of scary run down place people like to imagine. be assailed by the supernatural.

It’s a shame UFO does not spend more energy in trying to get to the bottom of its greater mysteries, as much of its more recent evidence, aided by testimonies from Kevin Day and Gary Voorhis, who were radar operators on the ‘USS Princeton during the 2004 Nimitz sighting – is quite plausible. No matter where you fall on the spectrum of UFO believers, the latest version of Showtime confirms that the truth is out there, even though it doesn’t quite know what it is yet.