Customer Reviews

Are We Alone in the Universe - Zecharia Sitchin

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The good points about this DVD include the fact that it provides a tidy overview of some of Zecharia Sitchin's theories about the origins of man on earth. The premise explored here is that there is a tenth planet in the solar system whose orbit is so huge that it comes into the rest of the solar system only once in a very great while. Sitchin bases this on ancient Sumerian tablets that clearly show the other nine planets accurately (which is in itself quite extraordinary) in addition to this tenth planet.

The Sumerians tell the tale of how the earth was originally formed due to an interplanetary collision millions of years ago. The earth's moon, Sitchin says, was actually the moon of the other planet and was captured when the collision occurred.

Sitchin further claims that beings on the tenth planet were responsible for the creation of the human race on earth, via genetics. We were originally bred as workers who would mine the planet for precious metals that were needed on the home planet. Mars has been a base for these other beings as they have travelled to the earth, although it is not their original home. There are indications of monuments on Mars that are very similar to the ancient monuments on earth, including the pyramids in Egypt. There is some evidence that these bases might still be active. Why, for instance, did the Russian Mars probe Phobos 2 suddenly become disabled and stop sending pictures back -- right after it detected an unknown object approaching it?

The production includes interviews with Russian and American scientists as well as Sitchin himself. There is also video of the mysterious Mars structures as well as the Sumerian materials that play such an important role, and brief bits of animation that depict the planetary collisions and the orbit of the speculative tenth planet.

The ideas are interesting and, in some cases, compelling. The main problem is that the video itself, despite the DVD release date of January 2003, is actually from 1992 and looks older than that -- about 10 to 15 years older. (I confirmed the 1992 date by reading the final credits.) It is reminiscent of the reel-to-reel movies you'd watch in public school classrooms in the 1970's. That is to say, the video quality is murky and the sound is flat and tubby. In all it is not a quality transfer to DVD. It's so substandard, in fact, that I will not be selling this DVD on eBay like I do many other of the others that I purchase and watch -- I wouldn't feel comfortable putting my feedback rating at risk.

A couple of other details -- there are no extras on the DVD other than scene selection, and the total time is a few minutes less than the advertised 60 minutes.

This makes for a nice overview of Sitchin and could lead a viewer to explore his writings in more detail, but if you're looking for good production values then you should look elsewhere. I also have to believe that in the last 10+ years more information has come to light that might make Sitchin's case even more compelling. It's too bad we have no way of exploring that here.

Me being an avid ufo buff and reading others comments, which convinced me to purchased the DVD I was disappointed with the film . It seems to be a little misleading in the effect that I thought there would be more time spent covering ancient text and ruins, instead of poor video production of the cosmos. The beginning of the film made it really hard to stay focused in hopes of waiting for something really good to be reviled. Out of an hour long DVD only 15minutes of interesting information really intrigued me and this is coming from a fan of Zecharia Sitchin. I wish he had a better since of presenting information when it comes to putting it in video form., i'm glad that i purchased it used.

Zecharian Sitchin reigns supreme among historians. This DVD is a competent introduction to his epoch-making work.

While modern academics are letting us believe they are the first to learn this or that, Sitchin has proven conclusively that much of what we tell ourselves we discovered, was known millennia ago by the ancients. Sitchin's books explain all this carefully and patiently, with no aura of UFO hysteria, just plain scholarship, though written in the popular style of putting the footnotes in with the text. His first several books have ample multilingual bibliographies; and many of these books he discusses in his texts. After awhile he stopped putting the bibliographies in every book.

In ancient Babylon, every New Year's Day, the Babylonia prayer called Enumma Elish, that the beginning of Genesis was cribbed from (no, God didn't write the Bible; a priest stole it from a Babylonian), gave the account of the creation of Earth from a cosmic collision between one of the moons of a giant planet seen only every 3600 years, and the planet which then occupied the orbit in which the Asteroid Belt now exists. The resulting planet, Earth, took its present orbit as a result of this event.

Our modern scientists now confirm that the Earth is one billion years younger than the rest of the solar system - the Babylonian account explains why. Sitchin tells the story of this fact, and many others, in an unendingly fascinating story across over a dozen volumes.

This DVD has footage of Robert S. Harrington, of the U.S. Naval Observatory, in an interview on August 30, 1990, expressing what is essentially his agreement with Sitchin's recounting of the Babylonian version of the creation of Pluto. Harrington says a number of facts about the solar system, such as the position of Pluto, the likelihood it had been a satellite of Neptune, how it came to leave Neptune's orbit, and many other deviations of Neptune's moons could all explained by one simple theory, according to which a celestial body he just calls an "intruder" into the Solar System drew off or dislodged Neptune's moons (perhaps by hitting Neptune). He says that "the mass of the planet would be between 3-5 times that of Earth," but if it had a 3600 year orbit its mass would be "correspondingly larger." He then shows his own graphic projections of the path for his "intruder planet;" this resembles the one Sitchin published in his book THE TWELFTH PLANET. Harrington says the U.S. Naval Observatory was looking for the Twelfth Planet in the area of Centaurus. The ancients, however, knew all about how Pluto had been struck by a passing celestial body. They were not as ignorant as we are told they were.

Sitchin goes ploddingly into the astonishing events surrounding the quite evident attack on the Russian/International "Phobos II" satellite mission to Mars. Some of the footage of a vast "shadow" over the surface of Mars has been published, and you will get to see it in the DVD; it is the image photographed just before something the Russians said "is not supposed to be there" came up from the planet's surface and struck Phobos II. The Russians have remarked on the photo of "what's not supposed to be there," but they have refused to publish it. In his books Sitchin points out that Reagan's famous "What if we were defending ourselves from another species from another planet" speech of September 21, 1987 was given at about the same time Gorbachev was saying similar things in the Soviet Union and the Phobos II events were happening.

Sitchin is the only one who is succeeding in stringing together the best theories from many sciences into a coherent and agreeably plodding, though very well-written and fascinating narrative. If you read his books, you will leave academia behind.

I loved this film and it was very well produced. I was extremely impressed with the quality of the documentary and the research. Zecharia Sitchen's research creates a vital link to our ancient past. The information in this DVD rates it, bar none, as one of the most important DVDs to see about archeological evidence of an extraterrestrial connection to our ancient past and human origins on earth.

In 2003 a tenth planet of our solar system has been discovered, named UB313. She has a moon and nowadays an official name. She has an enormous orbit around our sun. So maybe this is Nibiru.

When making a documentary, and asking people to pay for it, one has a certain obligation to potential customers. There need not be an entertainment quotient; but there most certainly should be quality control. The things missing from this documentary are clarity, continuity and conciseness. The viewer should be able to sit down and watch it without any prior knowledge of its content and still come away with at least a minimal understanding of what's being presented. Fortunately, I had done some research on Zecharia Sitchin prior to watching "Are We Alone In The Universe"; otherwise, I'm afraid I would have written him off as something of a crack-pot.

There does seem to be considerable controversy, however, as to Sitchin's competence as well as his expertise. In a separate DVD focusing on Sitchin's work - "The Gods From Planet X" - Jason Martell refers to him as one of the most accomplished linguists in the world - and one of the few who can translate virtually every piece of Sumarian writing - in fact, you learn almost more about Sitchin in Martell's documentary than in "Are We Alone In The Universe." His critics, on the other hand (per Wikipedia), dismiss his translations as incomplete and misleading. His field of academic specialty was economic history; he was not a trained linguist. As far as I can tell, he was mostly self-trained as a Sumarian linguist; this in itself doesn't disqualify him as an expert in the field. But since so many trained linguists have criticized him for having incorrectly deciphered the texts, I have to dismiss Martell's depiction of him as one of the world's foremost linguists as somewhat fanciful.

The thrust of Sitchin's hypothesis, based on various ancient texts but in particular the Sumarian, is that a planet with a greatly elongated orbit around the sun has, in the past, created catastrophic damage to the inner solar system - and perhaps the outer solar system as well. This planet, according to Sitchin, was and perhaps still is the home world of beings called Anunnaki in the Sumarian texts. The Anunnaki, according to Sitchin, visited Earth and seeded the native humanoid population to create what has become the human race. He derives the term Nibiru from ancient Sumarian texts as the name of this planet; the Planet X depiction comes from the few astronomers who, like Sitchin, believe there to be a tenth planet. The thrust of this particular DVD, though, is simply to claim for each of perhaps a dozen textual artifacts seeming to verify Sitchin's hyopthesis that there exists hundreds, perhaps thousands, more such artifacts. But no attempt is made to put the artifacts in the larger context of Sumarian culture; so basically the viewer must take Sitchin's word that what he sees in the artifacts is not subjective on his part but an objective interpretation of the symbology. Presumably, this rogue planet idea is dealt with in much greater detail in Sitchin's books. So, while it's true that one should read his books before making a judgement of his competence, it's equally true that one should do a bit more research before making a documentary of the man.

Shipping was great considering I'm in Iraq no complaints there.

The movie was very disappointing, it was very very poorly made, low budget. Back ground music that seemed to override the vocal narative. I can't say it enough very poorly made would never recommend this to anyone thinking about purchasing it.

Diagrams from the book were used to explain portions, other animation such as space shuttle was used. It looked as though it may have been a Middle School Project for extra points. DON'T BUY!!! BUY THE BOOK!!!

I wish Sitchin and the narrators had shown the old sources(Sumarian and Egyptian)supporting the belief that earth has been visited with technology during antiquity.

Not a complete disappoint but the quality leaves something to be desired. It covers a lot of ground but depth of topic suffers from the short duration. The soundtrack has an annoying "ticking" noise throughout and the narration is indeed muffled. Lots of interesting facts to listen to and mull over. A lot of ground has been covered since this was made but it nevertheless serves as a good primer to Sitchin's work.

I have read all of Zecharia Sitchins books. You kind of have to skim over a lot of the material. It gets drawn out but it sure makes sense out of a lot you read in the bible. I wish he had them on videos.