Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The following is taken from the Internet. It's all over the place in several different forms, but I copied the one below because it condemns the cruelty to animals involved.

"In a hypothetical experiment, behavioral scientists took five apes and placed them in a large enclosure.
Inside this enclosure was a set of stairs and at the top was a bundle of bananas. A few minutes pass and one of the apes notices the bananas and starts to climb the stairs. Immediately, all five apes are sprayed with freezing cold water for one minute and the ape is repelled from climbing the stairs. A few hours pass and a different ape makes an attempt to climb the stairs to get the bananas. He too is driven back and all five apes sprayed with the freezing cold water for one minute. The water is put away and never used again. (Note that this is actually very cruel and should never be done.)

The scientists replace one of the original apes in the enclosure with another ape that has never experienced the freezing cold water. Almost immediately the new ape starts to climb the stairs when the other four apes gang up on him and start to beat him up.

Understandably, the other four apes have associated climbing the stairs with the unpleasantly cold water and will not allow the group to get sprayed again. A while passes and the scientists replace one more ape with a new one. He too attempts to climb the stairs to get the bananas. All four apes pounce on him including the first new ape who has no idea why he is so enthusiastically beating this other ape up or even why he was pounced on in the first place.

The scientists continue replacing the original apes with new ones until finally there are five apes in the enclosure who have never experienced the freezing cold water sprayed on them. Never the less, not one of the apes ever attempted to climb the stairs again, and they always beat up every new ape introduced who tries to climb the stairs.

Why? Because that's the way things have always been done around here.

The Moral
Beyond not treating animals cruelly, always question why something is done a particular way. Humans are raised to be cooperative and function positively in society but sometimes we forget that there is always a reason for and a better way of doing things."

This was one of the major points of the movie "Contact" which the viewers are supposed to accept in place of being shown how the aliens looked like and how they would interact with the humans.
In other words: "It's their Prime Directive so resign yourselves to it."

It implies that when we do become part of the galactic society, we will have to adjust to new rules, rights, biases and tolerances, although not being top dog in the universe isn't something the religious faithful, ironically, are unfamiliar with.

"You are not under probation," they tell her in not so many words. "You don't have to be on your best behavior for us to accept you into the Interstellar Republic someday. But you have to follow the protocol, and that means we do nothing. Maybe you'll hear from us again in the future. Maybe you'll find another layer in our message or find other uses of the technology we gave you."

That gives the whole creative team the excuse to focus on the point of the movie, which is to vindicate what SETI has been doing for decades, tediously tuning in to all parts of the sky.

As a perfect counterpoint for the character of Ellie, who has for all of her life dismissed everyone's relationship with his/her God, in the end, she has to appeal to the people's belief for them not to throw out her journey as part of a hoax or a psychological need.

The movie also completely disregards the entire history of "close encounters" that is documented even from a scientific standpoint, maybe because of its connotation that the other denizens of the universe do not see us as peers, which is one of the convictions the novel's author wants to put across.

Other than that, what the movie does portray it portrays beautifully. Robert Zemeckis made amazing use of what he had to work with.