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