Steven Spielberg, the Oscar-winning director of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Disclosure Day and E.T., has said he believes in aliens.

With 'Disclosure Day,' the director returns to a longtime preoccupation. Two Times staffers explore his ongoing fascination with extraterrestrials.

For roughly the first three decades of his career, Spielberg tended to take a fairly sanguine view of aliens, refusing to succumb to the disaster-movie framework of aliens attacking terrified Earthlings. That changed in a big way after 9/11, when Spielberg made a couple of Tom Cruise -starring sci-fi blockbusters grappling with a changed world.

The 1977 sci-fi UFO epic is influential yet, thanks partly to Star Wars, it's also like nothing else

If you were to ask someone which was the seminal point as far as depiction of aliens in Hollywood is concerned, their answer would depend on which era they belonged to. A 90s kid would mention Independence Day,