When Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Arrival‘ hits theaters this week you may wonder how exactly would mankind react if faced with aliens (especially now with the people we have put in charge), and if we actually do have a team in place ready to respond to such a situation. In the movies, of course, there are people like the Men in Black or other covert government agencies designed to deal with otherworldly threats, but it is something interesting to think about, whether or not our government has actually made a plan for the scenario of making contact with life beyond our planet. When speaking to ‘Arrival’ screenwriter Eric Heisserer about his research for the film, the man did discover a team that would actually deal with the situation should man-kind ever make contact with a team of extra-terrestrials:
“We had many interviews with some scientific personal, who I can’t name for confidentiality reasons, who are actually on a team. There is a binder for first contact scenarios, that a protocol gets activated, and a handful of people get called. … In real life, that exists. In part of the, it’s in the pentagon somewhere, they bring that binder out and they start by calling everybody together. So the nerd version of Avengers assemble in this situation, and there’s a good contingent of scientists, and we got to talk to two of them. And [we] got a sense of the amount of steps [that occur] between getting a crew together and making that first contact.”
All of which is fascinating to me, and kind of makes me want to go see ‘Arrival’ even more, especially after the stellar reviews it has been receiving. Do you think we as a civilization would be able to handle, in a reasonable manner, an encounter with alien life? Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions on the matter in the comments below!
Source: Cinema Blend
Nick is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, who belongs to the privileged few who enjoyed the ending to ‘Lost.’ For more of Nick’s thoughts and articles, follow him on Twitter.
