No even the most gullible conspiracy theorist could possibly believe ALL the assertations here about aliens visiting the ancient world, but this is still an awesome and cool "documentary". The imagery and the music are great and combined with the kooky concept it's a fun ride.
The idea is simple: when primitive tribes see airplanes they think they are gods and make airplane statuettes and so forth. So did alien astronauts visit the ancient world and influence various of the great works we know from it? We visit Iraq, Turkey, Egypt , Easter Island, Mayan ruins and other cool exotic places as some guy compares all the ancient painted and sculpted figures we see to modern astronauts or aliens. The music, available on soundtrack which I would love to get, is interstellar "thus spake zarathustra" type orchestra stuff, weird psychedelia and avant garde ish minimalist things. The photography is straightforward but also creative and beautiful in places.
Some of the ideas are very intiquing. How were the pyramids built? How did they manage to drag all those stones so far. AS far as I know they still haven't figured that one out or maybe they had, they hadn't when I was in college (most of the 90's). I could mumble something about a pulley system or somehting but really I don't have a better explanation than a spaceship or some higher life form helping them somehow, plus I like thinking aliens came to Earth.
Unfortunately about halfway through things get both repetitive the more ridiculous stuff starts to add up. Come on, Easter island is an alien homage? There is stuff from the bible like the destruction of sodom and Gomorah was some kind of nuclear accident and the ark of the covenent was a loudspeaker for aliens or something. You could do it yourself: Stonehenge is aliens playing dominoes, the Grand canyon is where a fat alien fell. and it's just the same thing again and again and again.
This was a best selling book and the author Erich von Däniken has sold a ton of books all with this same central thesis of alien astronauts visiting the ancient world. There is even some sort of theme park that he made. His latest book is called "History is Wrong"
I'd like to give this a 5 but it deserves at best 4.25/5 because it is like listening to a lunatic spin a tale and some people might find that less entertaining than I do.
