Ancient Aliens Debunked (2012) User Reviews

For the most part, a proper debunking.

[Yggdrasil · 7/10 · 10 April 2014]

Ancient Aliens Debunked is for the most part a proper step-by-step debunking. The 'Ancient Aliens' History Channel show makes many ridiculous claims which are carefully taken apart and refuted.

Although the film is rather long, at 3 hours, this is understandable as there is a lot of material to cover. It's clearly structured making it easy to watch the subject you're interested in.

Be warned though. The director, Chris White, is a fundamentalist Christian and this unfortunately colors his perception on subjects related to biblical events. I was quite surprised to hear him suddenly make leaps of logic that would not have looked out of place on the 'Ancient Aliens' show. It boggles my mind how someone can analyze and debunk that show so logically and lucidly, while apparently being unable to apply that skill to his own beliefs.

Still, I would say 90% of the material presented is worthwhile and interesting. Just don't take White too seriously when he deals with claims involving biblical events.

Great as a starting point for learning more about Ancient Aliens subjects, as a film on its own less so

[jakobjankamminga · 7/10 · 7 October 2015]

Watching Ancient Aliens Debunked, the 2012 response to the popular series about the "ancient astronaut theory", is like visiting a Wikipedia page for a paper. As actual scientific inquiry, it doesn't fully hold up, but the film does a really good job at supplying you with the proper resources and directions you need to do your own research, or entertain you if you just want to see some decent bashing of the popular series.

As the latter, it's not that spectacular for the full three hours. It's a long sit, and although some sections hold up fine as pieces of documentary, watching the whole thing in one go does get pretty boring. It seems unfair to judge it for this, however, because unlike Ancient Aliens itself, it is nobly devoted to the truth, boring as it may be.

What does seem fair to judge it on, is its bias towards some Christian beliefs, in the sections about ancient texts on great floods and the nephilim, and its making the same argumentative mistakes as Ancient Aliens itself. In these sections, producer and narrator Chris White spills a lot of the credibility he built up in the preceding hours. He compensates this well by encouraging viewers to do their own research and form their own opinions. As is stressed in the film, one should only accept authority if what the authority says is true can in principle be discovered to be true. This is what ultimately makes the project worthwhile, although showing from the continued existence (and popularity) of the Ancient Aliens series, much work remains to be done...

So sad

[intrepidami · 7/10 · 25 April 2015]

To so methodically research and debunk many, many claims by Ancient Aliens and accuse them constantly of bait and switch, and leaps of faith and then spoil it all by throwing in his own debunked tenant belief that ancient Hebrew texts were meticulously handed down perfectly replicated, by offering one example as concrete proof? Don't you realize what you did there? It's their own contention that many of their thoughts, and theories might be wrong, but they just have to be right once to prove their whole point.

You did the same thing! You need to go read Bart Ehrmans books on the MYTH that the Bible scrolls were handed down perfectly unaltered son. With over 10,000 known historic alterations/edits/changes before even being translated to paper! Nowadays practically every word has been substituted for another in somebodies translation, but those ancient scribes did plenty of edits themselves! I understand why you believe it, it's been a constant teaching in Christian fundamentalism that the Perfect Bible got handed down perfectly forever, but its just not true and been completely debunked.

Shattered glass house.

Well Done! Bravo!

[everettk · 10/10 · 8 December 2015]

The delivery of the audio speech is quite boring, honestly, but the data and debunking are on point, which is what matters in this age of countering so much B.S.

The diagrams and pictures of ancient manuscripts are very well thought-out and the author's writing in the script reads like a quality research paper.

Well done, Sir, I salute you!

Keep up the good debunking work, may we ever seek the truth, though it is most often shrouded.

~ Everett from Seattle, Washington, USA

Interesting and informative, but there's a problem.

[standsomething2 · 6/10 · 30 August 2020]

While it is a good documentary that counters many of the claims made by ancient aliens, with usually clear and concise arguments, I have a serious issue with some of it as well. Because he spends the entire run time arguing the idea of ancient aliens, saying how it's preposterous and not realistic, and yet, attributes all the points to what exactly? Like with ancient texts and the annunaki for example. If these ancient texts weren't speaking of aliens, but actual deities, and if the annunaki weren't extraterrestrials, but deities, then he is saying that the idea of aliens is ridiculous, but that the idea of actual gods is just totally believable and is what the ancient civilizations were referring to? haha. Which I'm sorry, but is even more absurd than if they were aliens. Aliens are much more plausible than actual gods and deities.

Well researched and presented

[jack-wilkin · 10/10 · 20 May 2020]

This documentary is well research and Chris White does a fantastic job debunking many of the popular claims make by ancient astronaut "theorists". I would recommend this to any one who is interested in archaeology. It is a shame that debunks of pseudoscience has to be uploaded as a YouTube video rather than released as a tv series. I wish Chris all the best and would love to see a sequel in the future after 8 years.

As thorough an Excellent Analysis of Distortions of Real Facts as Possible

[Maurieteddy-1 · 10/10 · 3 January 2016]

This is an incredibly thorough analysis of the History Channels productions about Ancient Aliens one might find.

The 190 minutes cover many of the "Ancient Aliens" claims, literally one after the other, explaining the scientific and technical faults and distortions, so much so that it appears that the "Ancient Aliens" claims are beyond lack of understanding, becoming so laughable than it appears that many claims are outright lies to support their presuppositions! This clearly makes the "Ancient Aliens" productions by the History Channel a laughable menagerie of silliness. A true embarrassment to the credibility of the History Channel!

Very interesting

[pvpeyton · 10/10 · 27 July 2019]

I agree with everything except the cutting of granite. The copper saws with sand still doesn't explain some of work done by our ancestors. We've forgotten skills.

Excellent

[tbolli · 10/10 · 29 March 2017]

Excellent i've been watching aliens for a number of years and often found their facts disturbingly easy to debunk with my own limited knowledge, what this documentary has done was to fill in a lot of the blanks left open by the series own so called experts. What an absolute sham This show is , and the "experts" nothing more then snake oil salesman!! The history channel does a disservice to its audience by promoting such farcical nonsense , TMBolli a former fan of the history channel,

Entertaining for sceptics, necessary for gullibles.

[papelindholm · 8/10 · 2 March 2021]

As quite many a reviewer here tries to bolster their credulity by pointing to claimed reasonably existing questionmarks within the subject at hand (spoiler: in the commonly shared reality there are none), this genre of documentary isn't really needed if produced for the unity of the scientifically honest and reasonable, since they already know all about of what this has got to offer.

Having said that, it's simultaneously pointless to be released among the plethora of the deeply indoctrinated, be it alien abductees, conspiracy theorists, scientologists, creationists, cryptozoologists or what have you individuals detached from the idea of proper use of their cognitive resources.

Either way, for honest people on the brink of stepping out of their delusions and actually willing to do it, this can come in quite handy.