Disclosure Day

As the world teeters on the brink of World War III, a cybersecurity specialist and a TV News meteorologist steal classified evidence of extraterrestrial life, intending to reveal the truth to everyone.

Disclosure Day is the latest movie from the legend, Steven Spielberg.

It’s easy to dismiss Spielberg as schmaltzy or pedestrian, because he speaks in a clear cinematic language that reaches a wide demographic of moviegoers. But to say this is to deny that his films have given us no end of iconic moments, moments that have captured our imaginations, and become a part of our everyday language. Steven Spielberg is a myth-maker and a storyteller. He knows us as an audience, he knows what we think and want and hope for, and he then gives that to us, over and over again, and seemingly so easily too.

Except for Ready Player One, of course. That was garbage. So was A.I. Ugh...

But I digress…

My point is, like him or lump him, Spielberg is the King. I mean, the camera doesn’t lie, people. Again, go watch the opening to the episode of Columbo that he directed when he was 24 years old. It’s incredible. That's just pure talent. A pure and innate understanding of the craft. Okay, sure, he’s never been afraid of a little cheese now and then, to openly tug on the occasional heartstring, it's true, but all that is, my friends, is showmanship, and you can't make magic without jazz hands for that little bit of razzmatazz, y'know? This may bother some people, sure, I get that, but in the end, that's good storytelling. Now, some people will say: "No, it's manipulative! I hate being manipulated!" Wrong. Liar. What you hate is when the manipulations fail, when you can see the puppeteer's strings and the man behind the curtain, because when it works, when they got you and they're making you dance, you fucking love it, it makes you cry and laugh and cheer, and you watch it and rewatch it a million-billion times.

But I digress again...

My point is, I'll always turn out for the new Spielberg. We all do. And the reason why is because when he hits it out of the park, which he does more often than not, we remember that shit forever. We watch it a million-billion times.

Anyway, that's my Spielberg spiel.

So, according to the lore, Spielberg was inspired by the 2017 article "Glowing Auras and Black Money: The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program" published in The New York Times, about Nevada's long-serving Democratic Senator Harry Reid and his efforts to get the government to reveal its information on UFOs and alien contact. Spielberg says that it was this article that started him thinking about the subject of UFOs and alien beings and government conspiracies again, which eventually led to him writing this story.

Well, it was this article that inspired him. That, and also the urban legend of how Richard Nixon and Jackie Gleason once went to look at dead aliens.

Y'see, at one point in the movie, it's explained that the government no longer informs presidents about the U.S.'s history with aliens specifically because one of the previous Commander in Chiefs once took a well-known actor to see some dead aliens. This is a reference to the supposedly true story of the time that President Richard Nixon, after more than a few cocktails on the night of February 19, 1973, decided to show-off to his golf buddy, the famous Jackie Gleason, by driving them both over to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, where Nixon then ordered the soldiers that were stationed there to show them the embalmed bodies of four dead alien beings. While the nature of their death, or how we got the bodies, was never revealed, they were about two feet tall, with small bald heads and big ears, and afterwards, Jackie Gleason left Homestead AFB sworn to secrecy, and absolutely fucking shook. So much so, in fact, that Gleason's then wife, Beverly McKittrick Gleason, claimed that he came home so visibly shaken that she was worried, and that's about as far as Gleason's secrecy lasted, as he supposedly then spilled the beans to Bev. Although, to be fair, she promised not to tell anyone either.

But then they got divorced.

And Bev told anyone who would listen.

So now, in the film, the government learned its lesson and stopped looping in certain offices on certain secrets, especially the President, for fear of being able to maintain the classified nature. As a result, the people watching over those secrets began to enjoy more and more autonomy in their mission.

But is this a true story?

I mean, what are you even asking me here? Are you asking me if I believe that it's at all possible, even likely, that the President of the United States could turn out to be the kind of big dumb pathetic asshole who was willing to do absolutely anything if it might mean that someone "cool" will like them?

Yes. (gestures at Trump) Yes, I do believe that is possible.

Or are you asking me if I believe in aliens?

I guess I'd also say yes here, but at the same time, I acknowledge that I don't know what I don't know, and that I otherwise don't worry about it in the same way that I don't worry about the possibility of a plane crashing into my house, or a roaming black hole devouring the earth. Who cares, man, I've got a mortgage. I guess I'd say that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that that aliens exist, or that we have had contact with them, I'd be more surprised to learn that the governement really has managed to keep it a secret for this long, given the types of dipshits that end up in the various administrations over the years, especially recently. At the very least, I'd say that even if aliens really do exist, one things for sure, they definitely haven't told that dumb asshole Trump about it.

But whatever, I've wandered a bit far afield.

My point is... Steven Spielberg is a storyteller and a myth-maker, so here we are with his latest movie, Disclosure Day, a film that some have been referring to as the spiritual bookend to 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. While Jaws was the film that made Spielberg a household name, Close Encounters is the one that told audiences who he was. So maybe Disclosure Day is going to tell us who he has since become?

We shall see.

So...

In some unspecified modern time, maybe yesterday, maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow, but close enough to be today, as the planet is on the brink of a nuclear war, cybersecurity specialist Dr. Daniel Kellner has stolen material from his employer, a very secretive U.S. government contractor known as the Wardex Corporation, all of whom, including their CEO Noah Scanlon, look like a cross between SHIELD and a kool-aid drinking cult.

Wardex wants the stolen material back.

Because Daniel took a very dangerous piece of alien technology. He took something so dangerous, it must be handled with gloves, as direct contact with bare skin can literally destroy a person. It is a six inch long heptagonal metallic oblong rectangle, thicker in the middle than at the ends, and covered in a series of unusual symbols, that in the right hands–specific people who possess somekind of unclear innate trait that allows them to be able to hold the device somewhat safely without gloves–can apparently be used to communicate over great distances, cloud minds, and also interact with technology, all while feeling like humans are as of yet incapable of understanding its actual use. Either way, it is so dangerous, that just the simple act of holding it out at Noah Scanlon and his various Wardex agents, is more than enough to cause them all to recoil, and back off.

But that's not all that Daniel stole.

He also took a cache of doucments and hard drives known as The Archive. The Archive contains the truth about the history of the United States Government with extraterrestrial beings, including actual footage of extraterrestrial encounters that dates all the way back to the Roswell incident.

Basically, the truth is no longer out there, it's in Daniel's backpack.

In order to get all of this back, they kidnap Daniel's girlfriend, Jane Blankenship, which is weird, because that was the name of my 1st grade teacher. However, that said, I don't think this was on purpose, nor is it relevant to the story.

Moving on...

Daniel uses the alien device to get Jane back, and the two of them then do a really aggrivatingly terrible job of escaping pursuit, while displaying a frustrating lack of understanding that an organization with a seemingly limitless amount of resources is after them, all while they also live in the facist surveillance state that is America–I mean, ever heard of a fucking Ring Camera, Steven? This is just one example of the weirdly obvious and also near-constant feeling of naivete that permeates this entire film.

Eventually, the pair find shelter at Jane's former convent, because apparently Jane was once almost a nun, but now isn't, not completely due to all the premarital sex she now has with Daniel, but that's probably a large portion of the reason why. Also, she lost her faith, which is something Spielberg loves to muse about.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City, a vaguely dissatisfied NBC meteorologist by the name of Margaret Fairchild is preparing for work, when a cardinal flies into the cool loft apartment that she shares with her obvious drip of a boyfriend, and stares right at her in a very creepy way, and not just because birds have soulless eyes either.

It's like it's specifically looking right at her.

This moment unlocks something within Margaret, and she is suddenly hearing people's thoughts and speaking in foreign languages she doesn't know, and all while seemingly being unaware that she is doing it. Later that day, during a live weather broadcast, Margaret begins speaking in an unknown language that sounds like she might be working on a hairball. Footage of the broadcast goes viral, and it draws the attention of Noah Scanlon and Wardex, who immediately identify the language as extraterrestrial.

Margaret is taken to the hospital to be examined, which makes sense as she most likely just had a stroke on camera, and when Wardex agents show up posing as FBI agents, Margaret's new abilities warn her of their ruse. She and her now very confused and annoyingly unhelpful boyfriend flee the hospital.

Meanwhile... Daniel explains to Jane that Wardex has been experimenting on extraterrestrial captives and reverse engineering their technology, and that he is part of a plot to reveal the truth to the world using the Archive.

Daniel then gets a call from his contact, a man named Hugo Wakefield, and he leaves Jane alone to take the call. Hugo shows him the clip of Margaret speaking the extraterrestrial language, and Daniel understands what she said as if she was speaking English. Hugo tells Daniel that he must find Margaret.

Unbeknowst to Daniel, Margaret is already on her way to him, having ditched her drip of a boyfriend, who also turned out to be a narc. She is following her gut, like something is drawing her to him.

Unfortunately, during all of this, Noah Scanlon uses an alien device similar to the one that Daniel stole in order to dive into Jane's mind and telepathically force her to reveal the location of the isolated farmhouse she and Daniel are now hiding at.

Wardex agents quickly converge.

Luckily, Margaret reaches Daniel soon after, and we then enter the point of the film where it is an extended period of wild running about, punctuated by a few car chases, a couple of close-call escapes, and a deus ex machina-like display of hidden power or two, before everyone is finally in place to... disclose... (eh? eh? See what I did there?) these secrets, and the "profound" message they hold, to the enrapt populace of Earth, who are watching on screens all over the globe...

Simply put, Disclosure Day is Spielberg at his most Spielbergian.

It is chalk-full of his usual brand of peppy derring-do and wide-eyed wonder, as well as his usual band of unlikely, but very brave, heroes that defy the system. It's straightforward and sincere, and the score is always very clear on how you should be feeling while watching the film. Depending on who you are, it’s everything you love about him as a storyteller, or it's everything you hate about him. Me, I really enjoyed this film while I was watching it, but then the ending just didn't work for me at all, and now, the farther I get from it, the less I like it. At this point, I think I have to admit it... I didn't like this movie. I'll probably never watch it again.

And yes, it's mostly because of the ending.

Sure, there are some rough plot moments here, and some of the relationships between the characters are a bit too assumed, and while I liked the in medias res opening, in the end, this does maybe kill the personal stakes too much, as, besides the whole "we have to reveal the big secret" overarching motivations, most of those smaller stakes can often feel a bit unclear at times. On top of that, I found some of the dialogue to be unweildly, perfunctory, and maybe most shockingly, I also felt the same about some of the action... I mean, look, I hate to say that some of it was occasionally a little too "unbelievable" when we're talking about a movie like this, but I really struggled with parts, especially the car stunts. The train sequence in particular seemed to go on way too long. It couldn't help but think of how tight and tense the "bus dangling over the cliff" sequence in Jurassic Park 2 was compared to this. And then there's the big "alien" moments, many of them featured in the film's trailers... the crop circles, the weird animal behavior. It was cool-looking sure, but seeing it in the context of the film, I have a hard time saying that those moments provided anything more substantial to the story than that, being cool-looking.

But...

Those are nitpicks. Honestly, I'm basically fine with all that stuff.

But the ending?

Much like Close Encounters, the ending to Disclosure Day is ambiguous. In Close Encounters, we never learn where the aliens come from, what they want, or where they go with Richard Dreyfuss, but that ambiguity is very hopeful, like it's the Neil Armstrong quote, it's the first step into a larger galaxy. Yes, it's a very ambiguous ending, but from that moment in the film, you can't deny the feeling. It's clear that from there, we–humanity–could go anywhere.

Disclosure Day tries something similar. It ends on a very earnest message of hope, set in a very dark time, a time that is as close to now as to be now, but is also very specifically not now. It's vaguely timeless, as it's clearly meant to be a message not just for our time now, but for all of humanity at all times. But we, the audience, we live in the modern world, and unfortunately, there is no way to view this ending through any other context than our modern eyes, and when that happens...

It just seems so naive.

Worse, it seems condescending coming from a man at the very height of privilege, from a very wealthy man living in a very wealthy bubble. Worse than naive, it feels more than a little bombastic. Just a bunch of hot air. Especially now, in the era of Trump, a time where there are people who drink raw milk, and they don’t have to, and they do it despite the fact that every time some dumb asshole does some idiot stunt online where they performatively drink raw milk, specifically to prove how healthy it is, they then end up shitting their brains out uncontrollably mere moments later, and often end up with a tapeworm. This is on film. It's online. Anyone can see it. And yet, these stupid motherfuckers still drink raw milk.

So, this film wants to look me in the eye and say that, in order to prove aliens exist to the whole world, they just showed some on the news and everyone believed it? I mean, Spielberg has seen those shitty AI videos, right? How long ago did he write this script? Because it feels like 1988. The attitude reminds me of the people who thought body cams would curb police violence, and now here we are, living in the modern world where we are inundated with videos of cops murdering citizens.

My point is, you can’t tell these dumb assholes nothing.

They don‘t want to hear it.

So, that's the big issue. The ending, no matter how hopeful and sincere and well-intentioned (and to be clear, I find the naive well-intended aspect in particular to be very aggrivating) is just too hard to swallow.

Disclosure Day kind of reminds me of the comic book Watchmen. At least, in the way that it goes for a similar but not quite the same ending, where "proof" of the existence of aliens unites the world, forcing us to recognize that we are all one. Or at least, that is my assumpation, as we never see what results of the reveal, but I believe that is Spielberg's intent too. And I think that's the whole problem. I think that's the feeling that I couldn't shake while I was watching Disclosure Day... It feels like a movie made in the 80s, but not for any of the good reasons. There's less quibble with the ending of Watchmen because it's set in the 80s, and the naivete of that era, and how that era is ending, is a big part of the story.

For me at least, Disclosure Day often feels like it's set in that same era, the sunset of the 1980s, the part that was the last gasp of the "Leave It To Beaver" Americana culture, but the tone of this film, to me, feels like isn't aware that this era is ending.

I don't know... it just feels like it was made in a bubble.

And maybe that's it.

Maybe this is a movie where everyone decided to "not to talk about politics." Because that's what it feels like. It feels like everyone is deliberately going out of their way to avoid mentioning the rabies-infected elephant ramapaging about the room. Like, no one wants to mention that at least half the people who would have seen that broadcast, especially in America, would immediately want to curb-stomp that alien son-of-a-bitch and take his shit, and would think the torture videos were just fine, because that's reality. So as a result, here's Disclosure Day, trying to do this very family-friendly tone of adventure and discovery and wonder, and yes, it's coming directly from the man who created the mold, with similar themes as films like The Sheep Detective and Project Hail Mary, with similar messages about being brave and selfless and caring, about the value of communication, and of the strength that comes from empathy and community, but still, the film is missing something vital. It doesn't earn the weight that its ending demands, it doesn't earn the emotion that the score tells you that you are supposed to be feeling.

The truth is... The Sheep Detectives and Project Hail Mary did it better.

And apparently I'm not alone in this feeling either...

Reactions to the film have definitely been pretty devisive. It has its stalwart Explainer/Defenders, and it has venom-spitting haters. As of August 14th, 2026, this film has grossed $117 million domestically and $241 million internationally, give or take. And while this is apparently the highest-opening for a Spielberg film that is not based on known IP, it's not exactly setting the world on fire. But to be fair, this is a world where Spider-Man: Brand New Day is going to make $2 billion dollars by it's 3rd weekend, so sure, a part of that is a reflection of what this world wants, not the quality of Spielberg's art. But then, on the other hand, perhaps a little truth about Spielberg also lies therein as well.

After all, if Close Encounters of the Third Kind was Spielberg stepping out into a new world, all those years ago, ready for all the wonderous possibilities to come, all while also unknowingly examining the world that he came from, is Disclosure Day, all these many years later, just him trying to recapture that wonder by retreading familiar ground, all while unknowingly announcing that he has lost touch with the people that he once knew exactly how to communicate with? Is his final message in this film, that single word "listen" not actually saying what he intended to, to be a plea to a world forever at odds, but is instead him revealing exactly what it is that he himself is no longer capable of doing?

A sincere, but failed effort nonetheless, I ultimately found Disclosure Day to be trite and disappointing.

Thumbs down.