We may have winged them somewhat back in 1996, but we certainly didn’t defeat them. Now they’ve come back for revenge in Independence Day: Resurgence. But, little did they know, we have a secret weapon – Jeff Goldblum, who, flanked by Liam Hemsworth, manages hold onto whatever strains of hope remain intact, in an attempt to save mankind from certain death.
That is the quintessential Hollywood-equse approach to UFOs and interactions with extraterrestrial beings, but how does that portrayal compare to stories of the thousands of reported UFO sightings and encounters each year?
To coincide with the release of Independence Day: Resurgence on Blu-Ray/DVD, Crave spoke to Mary Rodwell, one of Australia’s foremost Ufologists, and an internationally known voice on the topic.
Essentially our very own Jeff Goldblum, Mary has been an expert in the field of UFOs for multiple decades and is very much the person who’s help we will all be seeking should E.Ts ever come knocking.
Throughout the years, Mary has gone on to found the Australian Close Encounter Resource Network while furthering her research on areas including close encounters, Ufology and the composition of human DNA. She has also worked with over 3,000 individuals who claim to have had encounters and has found common threads in their experiences.
She also found herself quite enjoying the film, and we spoke further about how it correlates with her two-decades of research in the field.
Crave Online: Did you enjoy ‘Independence Day’ as a piece of art or as a piece of science?
Mary Rodwell: It had a combination of things for me. One of them is purely the enjoyment of an action-type movie. It’s sci-fi fantasy, there’s a bit of a love story, there’s the different levels of story to it – which I quite like. There’s the human interest side, the Earth is under attack again, what are we doing to do about it? Human enguiniety.
We seem to have this special thing about us, Homo sapiens, don’t we? We seem to transcend dire disasters and what have you. So the human interest right until the end was what I really enjoyed. I’m also hard to please. I was looking for information that would fit in with what I know is going on. There’s another level for me, as a researcher.
CO: How does pop-culture’s portrayal of encounters with UFOs and aliens match up with your research?
MR: What I’ve discovered is, the conspiracy theorist will have a great day with this, but what I believe is that Hollywood is drip-fed what the Shadow Government actually knows. What I was looking for was how much fact was within the whole story, and there were a number of things.
Like Area 51, which everybody knows is where it’s alleged there are crashed space craft, reverse-engineered craft, dead aliens, possibly even some live ons as well. Certainly, that’s what the whistle-blowers from these bases have said. So, the Area 51 thing came up really well.
The other thing that was interesting for me in terms of the whole human psyche is ‘What do we do when we get a positive craft coming in through a wormhole?’ – which is accepted now as another way they can enter inter-dimensionally. The first thing we do is, we aren’t sure so we shoot. In my research, there are a lot of very positive, benevolent-types of extraterrestrial that are actually helping with technology. That actually marries very much with my research.
CO: Humans don’t have a great track record for reacting logically when confronted with a new race or species. In the film, that reaction almost costs us everything. Do you think if we were approached by friendly aliens, we’d blow them out of the sky all the same?
MR: Everybody says ‘Why don’t UFOs ever land on The White House lawn?’ Well, that’s probably because we’d shoot them, and that’s the bottom line. But the truth is, in my research of over 20 years now, they’ve been right here from the beginning anyway and we saw them as gods – with a little ‘g’ by the way. For us, anything that was technologically advanced, or that looked any different to us would have been seen as gods until recently we started seeing them in a different light.
It isn’t as though this is a new thing. They’ve been here living with us, visiting us and I believe, interfering with our genetic make-up through millennia.
CO: So let’s expand on that a bit, do you believe the aliens inhabited Earth previously, then created humans and left? Or were we created and relocated to Earth?
MR: Well, if you believe Dr [Francis] Crick who was the co-founder of the DNA molecule, he believes the seeds of life came in a space craft. Everything in our DNA is suggesting that we are, if you like, DNA-designed, or orchestrated. In other words intelligently designed. There are things in our DNA that they can’t explain, particularly with Homo sapien sapien [Ed: A Homo Sapien subspecies, A.K.A Anatomically Modern Human, A.K.A Us] that we’re discovering and we know are true – That we have inserts in our DNA that are all to do with higher-psychological functioning.
There in itself is one particular bit of information. No other species on the planet has these 223 genes that Homo sapiens have.
CO: You mentioned earlier that you believe the “Shadow Government” drip-feeds information to Hollywood, but it sounds as though there’s so much on the line should all the information get out. What does the “Shadow Government” gain from leaking its own secrets?
MR: They’ve been hiding the big elephant in the room ever since they knew that we were being visited and who some of these intelligences are. Roswell is the favourite, of course. Initially I think it was to stop the public from panicking but what they didn’t want the public to know was what they were finding out in terms of advanced technologies. As one example, if you can imagine what would happen to this planet if fossil fuels were made defunct…we could give people technology that could power their homes for millennia.
That’s without all the other technology that whistle-blowers material is telling us many is years advanced from what we have [available to the public] now. Things like the digital chip, fibre optics, teflon night-vision, all came from reverse engineering from the craft – Roswell and others. There have been many crashes in Russia, South Africa, Germany…even around the time of World War II.
CO: It seems like with modern day UFO sightings there’s two schools of thought – one is that they’re occurring at an increasing rate, the other is that they’re being captured more because there are more cameras around, suggesting there’s always been this many UFOs around. Which school do you subscribe to?
MR: I think it’s a bit of both. Every 6 minutes, around the globe someone is taking a photo of a UFO. That’s just the tip of the ice-berg by the way, there are a lot of people who won’t ever talk about what they see or what they’ve experienced. I think they’ve been there but we’re more aware of it now, but yes I also believe there is a lot more going on now because of the fact that we’re getting so technologically advanced and also very close to destroying ourselves if we aren’t careful.
With Independence Day, the interesting thing is they’re making the aliens the evil ones that are coming to destroy the planet…I think we need to watch the Homo sapiens too, because we’re pretty good at mucking up our planet, so we want to watch our own species as well.
CO: Do you think there’s a chance that we could be the evil alien species in our universe? And the only reason an Independent Day-style attack hasn’t happened, is because we haven’t invaded anyone else yet?
MR: I think we have a lot of growing up to do. Many different species that have visited this planet, we don’t even know how many now, but I believe they’re working very hard to get us to grow up, and realise that we have to treat our planet with respect and when we go out and join the inter-galactic community, we treat other planets with respect as well.
Independence Day is really highlighting what we shouldn’t do by perhaps the possibility of an evil species wanting to do to us what we might do to them.
CO: In the time since the first Independence Day invasion, mankind managed to reverse-engineer an orbital defence system that, well, may have been a bit of a letdown. Do you there’s any point in building UFO defence systems?
MR: I think it’s the last thing we should be doing. We have to remember some of these intelligences out there are maybe not only hundreds of years ahead of us, but thousands of years ahead of us. If they wanted to take us over, they’ve had plenty of time when we were less technologically advanced to do so, and they haven’t. So why is that? That’s the first question I would ask.
The bottom line is, in our DNA there is a lot of possible evidence that we are a combination of many of these species anyway, maybe as many as 12. So, we’re part of them. The understanding from my research – this is from people taken up onto crafts, or telepathic communications as well as conscious interaction who are told that what the aliens are trying to do is get us to evolve into a more aware, spiritually orientated species.
I’ve worked with over 3,000 cases now, globally and the [subjects] change. They become more ecologically aware, more caring of the environment and people. They are literally transformed. That is what I think is the real reason we’re being interacted with now.
Unfortunately, the media and fiction focus on the sensational or the scary, when, in fact, the truth is something quite different.
CO: How likely do you think it is that our first interaction, or even confirmation, of E.T life will come from a huge ship breaking through our atmosphere like in the film?
MR: In terms of the craft actually coming in the way that’s suggested, I’m not so sure that’s the way it will be. I think it would be more desensitised.
CO: How many sightings and encounters are there, I guess, per annum in Australia?
MR: It’s very hard to guestimate that because there are a lot of people who don’t tell anyone. Regularly, I’m getting phone calls – at least two or three times a week if they find me, though they may be ringing other groups as well. But this is really a minimal amount compared to around the world. Although, not all the craft are extraterrestrial. Some of them are our own, by the way, which have been reversed engineered.
CO: What about the Australian Government, do you know if they have any plans to release information in the near future?
MR: There’s about 12 counties that have released UFO files with lots of stuff blacked out. But the truth is, they’ve covered up along with most other countries. Westall ’66 is a famous sighting outside Melbourne in 1966, where a school of 200 children actually saw a craft with a number of teachers. Afterwards they were never allowed to talk about it, apparently the Head Master told the kids they were never to talk about it again. The interviews afterwards with the kids, all of that film archive, went missing.
That in itself is a very well known cover-up story but there have been many, many others in various parts of the country. People have seen craft and then there’s been military around. It’s happened near Townsville, Tully’s Nest was a very famous case as well.
CO: Have you ever had an encounter yourself?
MR: I’ve seen plenty of UFOs. I haven’t had any that I’m conscious of, remember a lot of the time you don’t remember if something’s happened anyway. I have a questionnaire if any of the readers want to find if it’s relevant for them but not everyone gets taken up by the bright light and taken onto the craft. For many people it’s a lot more subtle.
CO: And so what does your research say about full disclosure? Are we close? Will it be in years or decades?
MR: I think we’re very close. There’s a lot coming out now, in terms of astronomers saying that there’s more stars than there are gains of sand on each, and with each star at least two or three planets. So what we’re talking about is maybe many millions of civilisations. Some of them have certainly been visiting us and the evidence is there.
So for anyone who’s interested – just start looking.
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Independence Day Resurgence is available now on Blu-ray
