{"id":151364,"date":"2022-11-28T23:22:19","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T05:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/why-contact-still-resonates-after-25-years"},"modified":"2022-11-28T23:22:19","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T05:22:19","slug":"why-contact-still-resonates-after-25-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/why-contact-still-resonates-after-25-years","title":{"rendered":"Why \u2018Contact\u2019 still resonates after 25 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

25 years ago, the film Contact<\/em> made its theatrical debut starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey and told the story of Dr. Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster) who picked up a radio signal from the star Vega and how this discovery impacted not just herself, but humanity as a whole. Over time, she discovers the signal has embedded instructions sent by the aliens to build a device capable of sending one person into outer space, presumably to meet the Vegans.<\/p>\n

The device is built, and she is eventually hurled through a series of outer space tunnels where she meets an alien in the form of her long-deceased father. Right before she\u2019s sent back home, the alien informs her, \u201cThis was just a first step. In time you\u2019ll take another.\u201d When she awakens, her colleagues inform her the pod she sat in fell straight through the device and she never actually left. With no hard evidence of both her travels and meeting the aliens, Eleanor is left scrutinized by both the public and Congress. She is ultimately given a \u201chealthy grant\u201d to fund further research into finding more signals from ET, and the film ends with her pondering her journey to the stars.<\/p>\n

While some moviegoers were bummed that they didn\u2019t see the aliens\u2014who instead downloaded Jodie Foster\u2019s consciousness so they could talk to her easier\u2014the important message of the film, and the book that it\u2019s based on<\/a>, is to persevere, but also knowing there will be hardships and sacrifices along the way. In the case of Eleanor, she loses her father at a very young age who had gotten her hooked on astronomy. Later, she passes on love with Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) to remain in pursuit of her research, all while consistently being roadblocked by her former boss. And even after she reaches her goal of contacting the aliens who sent the message, she\u2019s still scrutinized and ridiculed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25 years ago, the film Contact made its theatrical debut starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey and told the story of Dr. Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster) who picked up a radio signal from the star Vega and how this discovery impacted not just herself, but humanity as a whole. Over time, she discovers the signal [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,1490],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}