1:13:25
I saw Fire in the Sky (1993) as a teenager, during the summer on the Cape, and I remember it really sacred me. And it made me sad. 1975 in rural Arizona, when this story took place, was another world. No one knew what they were looking at. A fire, a sunset, “What is that thing?” Though there had long been UFO buffs, and those heavily interested in Area 51, people from remote logging towns like “sleepy Snowflake” Arizona (which still looked like it was stuck in the 1950s) had nothing to go by, nothing to compare it to. One only had one’s own naive eyes. No iPhones, no online forums, no social media, maybe not even a good library to do research. Spielberg’s Close Encounters and ET (Henry Thomas, who plays Elliot in ET, stars in Fire in the Sky. Robert Patrick starred in Fire in the Sky one year after playing the T-1000 villain in Terminator 2) had not come out yet.
The 5 loggers in Fire in the Sky, one of whom was a Vietnam vet, were working on a “government project,” clearing brush in the remote forest, where the “alien”abduction of Travis Walton occurs one night in Sitgreaves National Forest.
The film does nothing with this critical piece of information—”government project.” But it does mention this fact a few times at the start of the film.
After the incident happens, the 5 loggers lose their work contracts, and new hires are put on the job. That seems highly suspicious.
I do not believe aliens with advanced technology and intelligence would conduct cruel, barbaric, ritualistic experiments on human beings—the kind human beings inflict on human beings—for the fun of it. But I do believe the government would, and does, and has, using UFOs abduction stories as a narrative psyop/cover up. Anyone who says otherwise is labeled crazy, or accused of staging a hoax. It was the perfect alibi. How can you prove it? You can’t. Until now, no one could prove anything. And if you pressed too hard, and tried to prove it, the government locked you up. Or killed you.
Maybe Walton’s memories were erased, maybe they were implanted, maybe both. But what happens to Walton aboard the alien ship looks a lot like what happens to Alex in A Clockwork Orange, when he undergoes his Ludovico Mkultra programming (aversion therapy).