The week before Friday, June 12, 2026, the news was deluged with stories of Steven Spielberg’s latest movie causing Christians to doubt their faith. I find this controversy strange, since that wasn’t what he said. The whole second-guessing component of his statement was in regard to whether or not God is the God of only humanity or for other intelligent beings in the universe as well.
Christians have taken both positions on this question, so there’s no second-guessing involved, only the elimination of one option or the other. Obviously, if there really was human-like life on other planets, God would be the God of them too. But of course, this statement begs the question of what could be considered human-like, and that is a conversation unto itself.
The idea that Spielberg was attempting to destroy Christians’ faith using aliens was overstated, and I suspect this was done to drum up controversy for the movie. Unfortunately, I was one of the poor souls who fell for the gimmick, so I decided to subject myself to the film. The movie is awful in a number of ways.
First off, the film is so devoted to tropes that it basically shoehorns a secret organization, a MacGuffin, a character who’s lost her faith, a whimsical, reluctant prophet, and a knowing, sage-like character all into the script while giving zero thought to the connective tissue leading from one scene to the next. None of it makes sense, but the audience is inundated with so many chase scenes and loud noises that it is almost impossible to follow, let alone analyze all the issues in one sitting.
Take, for example, Margaret. She is an unlucky weather girl, who gets visited by a cardinal—not a religious figure, but a bird—at exactly the wrong time. Is this ugly, computer-generated creature an alien, a symbol meant to awaken something inside her subconscious, a robot giving off some kind of signal? Don’t know! The movie never explains it.
The closest thing to an answer is a cardinal mobile shown in her room later in the movie. The film states that another character, Daniel, also sees a cardinal before his affliction begins, but this cardinal acting as a symbol for the both of them makes no sense because Daniel never had such a mobile in his room, so why would a cardinal mean anything to him?
Anyway, Margaret stares at the bird for an uncomfortable period of time, then she can read minds. On her way to work, she goes from person to person, telling them personal information for no obvious reason, then as she’s about to give her weather report, she starts speaking alien, a bizarre mixture of clicks and pops.
The audience later learns that Daniel is supposed to act as her translator, but what was the point behind having her speak alien in front of a live audience in the first place? From a plot perspective, it’s just so everyone can see the bizarre weather report at exactly the right time, but even this is redundant because Margaret is able to later find these characters using her psychic powers.
The movie is filled with contrivances like this. At one point, a character literally enters one of the cars from a government motorcade that had been filled with armed men searching for him and literally finds the keys to the car in the cupholder. This isn’t luck. This is pure laziness on the part of the writers.
As for the religious messaging in the film, it’s absolutely forced. After Daniel and his girlfriend escape a group of bad guys with guns, he explains to her what all the fuss is about. He then shows her a few videos to prove his case. Without giving any mention to the dangers they’re facing or asking any questions about how he intends to expose this truth to the world, his girlfriend exclaims that this will make people quit believing in God.
Now, this girl was a former nun, and Spielberg uses an older nun to “correct” the girlfriend later. So, he isn’t affirming the position. But if this girl were a nun, then she should know that people’s opinions about God’s relationship to aliens are varied, so the idea that this is going to cause some kind of crisis, at the least, needed more clarification.
This problem is just mentioned and then dropped until it’s time for the older nun to talk. And Spielberg doesn’t mince words. This older nun is supposed to be the moral voice of the film, and her opinion is that God is God of the aliens too. The whole point of this subplot is that God would be God of the aliens if they’re real. So, Spielberg, who I suspect is no fan of God given my recent review of AI: Artificial Intelligence, isn’t even trying to suggest that God might not be real if aliens are.
This whole controversy is the result of his quote, which was taken out of context, and I suspect this was done intentionally to drum up more sales. The only other line I found odd was when one girl, for some reason, bows to Margaret since she has psychic powers, and Margaret recoils, screaming that she will be no one’s religion.
Again, this was quickly shoehorned into the story, so there’s no real context around this event, and the only point I can take from it is that Spielberg was saying that neither Margaret nor the aliens are God, which is something I would agree with.
The other problem with the movie is that it feels like it should’ve been made twenty years ago. In the end, Margaret returns with Daniel to the local news station, and Daniel plays all the footage while Margaret acts as the anchor. The feed is picked up by CNN, and honestly, the scene felt more like a power fantasy for the corporate media rather than a disclosure day because the corporate media could only long to be so relevant again.
The only thing they really do to account for modern technology is to say that some computer or expert from somewhere has confirmed that the images being played aren’t AI, but even this is a throwaway line that’s easy to miss. There’s no mention of social media or videos being leaked to the internet, nothing. It’s as if the writers felt that the only way such information would be considered relevant is if CNN confirmed it was real. Like I said, a power fantasy.
I can say with confidence that you shouldn’t go see this movie, not because it says anything new or controversial but because it is genuinely bad. It would take numerous reviews to point out all the mistakes. This film feels rushed, to say the least. I will also say that, as much as I liked Spielberg as a kid, it felt very satisfying to see more empty theaters.
Through some confusion with our tickets, my wife and I had to enter two separate showings of the film. One theater had two people; that was us. The other had four; again, two of them were us. It seems films like Obsession and The Backrooms are still taking all the attention, despite the allegedly contrived controversy. Reviewers are saying it’s time to put Spielberg out to pasture. Personally, I’d say the statement applies to Hollywood in general.