Jordan Peele's Nope in theatres: A brief history of UFO culture (yes, that includes Area 51)

With Academy award-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele's next big project Nope hitting theatres in India on August 18, here's a look at the evolution of UFO sightings through history, and how this year could be a turning point in the study of extraterrestrial life. 

Nope, a sci-fi horror film, follows two ranch-owning siblings who attempt to capture evidence of an Unidentified Flying Object or a ‘UFO’, and stars Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer and Steven Yeun. Here's the trailer of the film,

Since its conception, cinema has been obsessed with its depiction of the ‘Third Kind’, with audiences flocking to watch films revolving around space, flying saucers and of course, alien life. Be it Steven Spielberg's revolutionary Close Encounters With The Third Kind and ET, M Night Shyamalan's Signs, Denis Villeneuve's Arrival or even the most defining sci-fi conspiracy series ever, Fox's The X-Files; Alien flicks or UFO cinema has come to be a defining and irreplaceable part of sci-fi as a genre, and has historically sparked universal intrigue and love for the genre.

Here’s a closer look at the history behind UFO sightings and what the future holds, for a more scientific understanding of these phenomena. 

2020

In April 2020, the US Navy released three videos of UFO sightings from 2004 and 2015; the clips were nicknamed "FLIR," "GOFAST" and "GIMBAL", and they showed what appeared to be spacecraft traveling at hypersonic speeds with no visible means of propulsion, according to the Live Science.

2021

In 2021, there was an upsurge in sightings, owing to the increase in bored people with smartphones gazing up at the sky. But it was in early 2022 that things took an interesting turn...

The existence of 1,500 pages of UFO-related material from the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) — a secretive US Department of Defense program that ran from 2007 to 2012 was revealed to the public.

Following which, The Sun filed a Freedom of Information Act request to reveal the contents of these classified documents.

According to The Sun, the cache of documents includes reports on the biological effects of UFO sightings on humans, studies on advanced technologies such as invisibility cloaks, and plans for deep space exploration and colonisation. Some portions of the documents were "withheld in part" for privacy and confidentiality concerns.

The reported effects of UFO encounters include "unaccounted for pregnancy", "apparent abduction," paralysis, and experiences of perceived telepathy, teleportation and levitation.

The report concludes that there is sufficient evidence "to support a hypothesis that some advanced systems are already deployed, and opaque to full US understandings".

2022

Later in June 2022, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) was compelled to release an unclassified report on all that the US government has ever known about UFO sightings. Although the contents of the report were underwhelming, it included five possible explanations for UFOs,

• Airborne clutter
• Natural atmospheric phenomenon
• US-developed domestic tech
• Foreign or adversarial tech
• And most importantly ‘Other’, which basically means “Yeah, might as well be aliens”.

In July this year, the US DoD released a statement announcing the establishment of ‘All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office’ which aims to detect, identify and attribute anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects of interest. 

Or basically, the Pentagon was opening a new UFO office.

As early as yesterday, the “world’s clearest UFO photo”, taken 30 years ago by a couple of hikers in the Scottish Highlands, was released to the public after having been kept under wraps by the Scottish Ministry of Defense. 

The US Presidency weighs in

While the road ahead seems much more certain than it was 50 odd years ago for UFO studies and at the very least, those in power have moved on from a state of perpetual rebuttal or denial, there is still a way to go until we get some concrete answers regarding these unexplained phenomena.

But if one thing’s for certain and is continuously reaffirmed, most recently in Jordan Peele’s Nope, it's that the only place on Planet Earth that aliens seem to have taken a fancy to is

(We're not talking about Koi Mil Gaya; nope.)

Nope hits the theatres in India today, August 18.