Author: Frank Jacobs / Source: Big Think
- The first extra-terrestrial to make contact (in a movie) appeared in 1920s Germany
- ET set off a wave of ‘first contact’ movies in the 1980s
- Many recent alien-landing movies are set in China and India – the future of the genre may well be Asian
Until humanity makes contact with some genuine extra-terrestrials, the aliens we invent will say more about us than about them.
By extension, the same goes for where we first encounter these imaginary off-worlders.These maps show the locations of alien first contacts on Earth in almost a century of popular films: from Algol (1920), a Faust-from-outer-space parable made in Weimar Germany; to Annihilation (2018), a reflection on America’s loss of faith in the future of humankind.
The rules: each dot show the first appearance of (outer-space) aliens at specific locations in films. Excluded: inter-dimensional aliens and global alien invasions (hence no War of the Worlds).
Alien landings in the U.S.
If the maps are anything to go by, ET will flock to the U.S., and preferably to places with well-established movie industries: Los Angeles and New York, mainly. Don’t do it, guys – you’ll just end up waiting tables!
A few other locales seem to attract more than their average share of UFO landings: the Bay Area, certain parts of the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico), the Midwest (Chicagoland and Ohio), and the South (particularly Alabama and Florida). Unsurprisingly, California is the most ET-friendly state (14 landings), followed by New York (7) and Illinois (5).
Some parts of the U.S. remain curiously alien-free. The Pacific Northwest, for example. Well, who ever heard of an alien craft landing in rain? If it weren’t for two sightings in Montana and Wyoming each, that no-UFO zone would extend all the way to Minnesota. New England is also virtually extra-terrestrial-less, as is that row of states just west of the Mississippi.
The mapmaker has kindly provided dates for each movie, which tells us something about the peaks and troughs of alien-landing excitement in the U.S.
It all started so well in the 1950s, with six touchdowns – and then none in the 1960s. Things picked up slightly in the 1970s, with 5 first-contact films. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) inspired a lot of what came after.
The 1980s were the Golden Age of Alien First Contacts. The first and perhaps most influential one was Spielberg’s ET, the Extraterrestrial (1982). In all, the map shows no less than 19 first-contact films from this decade. After the long climax, a slow decline: 15 landings in the 1990s, 10 in the 2000s and 9 in the 2010s.
Alien landings in the rest of the world
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