I’m aware as of this posting that critics are panning this film for the most part, and are applying the worst epithets, such as “Boomer Movie” (gross). However I’m planning to dissect it differently and find it to be an interesting exploration of “intelligence” and what that even means.
Wardex is Urizen and the sense of security that gives us. The movie critic audience, which grew up on ET and Close Encounters, complains bitterly they don’t feel sufficiently secure, seeing as how said DoD daddy Darth Vader is so incompetent, echoing their disappointment with the whole ET story.
The nerdy two, or two point five (there’s both a girlfriend and a fellow abductee) keep eluding Urizen, but then we realize: it’s Urizen (CIA) subverting itself, as the employees inside include Snowden types who want the world to know what they already know: that their government engages in torture not to mention domestic surveillance (we’re their enemy too).
Once Mickey (the military industrial complex) becomes schizo, it’s no wonder that it finally succumbs to the reality of reality television.
They know, as do the Snowdens, that once the new reality comes into frame like that, there’s no point fighting it. People will finally believe, even the Russians and North Koreans.
Again, movie critics think the intelligence community coulda shoulda gone berserk at that moment and panic-protected its big secrets, maybe killing everyone in the TV studio. No lessons about empathy or animal intelligence really got through their thick skulls all these years.
But even from a practical standpoint, a big show of force would only backfire. You can’t be seen to be keeping secrets secret, or they’re not really secret anymore. The cat has left the bag at that point.
Where it gets interesting is when Catholicism comes into it and is characteristically catholic (open minded) about ETs. Genesis says hominids rule the roost here on Earth as a dominant intelligent life form (whales take a back seat) but other planets are out of scope. The Bible is Earth focused.
Once we’re outside the biblical context, the sky’s the limit as to what’s possible, given God’s track record for being highly imaginative.
Religion teaches us techniques for staying open minded, even into adulthood if that’s possible.
Disclosure Day (the day the truth is revealed, that ETs are real) is therefore really a kind of Rapture, to bring the Protestants into it, and their literal-mindedness. There’s gotta be this one day of reckoning, when nonbelievers repent.
The dream of ETs literally comes true in our literal universe, which means “on television” as TV is reality’s gatekeeper. The movie spends a lot of time looking at this TV network gatekeeping environment and how people do as they’re told once they accept you as their boss.
Our abductees have a knack for emanating persuasiveness (they’re basically mind readers, a lot like Lucy who also has a Morgan Freeman type on her side). They’re “est people” to use an outdated jargon (from even before the est Training). Shades of Olivia Butler right?
The same movie critics who wonder at the lack of violence (Wardex seems so nonviolently tame but for the aggressive mind control experiments) plus can’t imagine that their little ET friend from that first Spielberg movie, is now all grown up, just as are they. If there’s any alien intelligence in the pipeline, it must be inside us, because clearly the Rapture isn’t happening. We’re not getting to X-Day in time.
Catholicism and ETism both have a lot in common: they keep us waiting, in expectant anticipation, for that Judgement Day seems always just around the corner. A few maybe seem to get something from “the now” (mundane reality) but that’s too Zen. Mostly ETism is about the endless suspense, that state of waiting (so more like Quakers then?).
