Steven Spielberg’s latest cinematic offering, Disclosure Day, now available on VOD platforms like Prime Video, defies the typical alien invasion narrative. Unlike his 2005 film, War of the Worlds, Disclosure Day pivots away from worldwide destruction. Echoing elements of Spielberg’s 1977 classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this new film invites speculation, yet stands apart as neither a direct sequel nor part of Spielberg’s imagined alien saga. As it coincidentally hits screens near the 30th anniversary of Independence Day, Disclosure Day weaves a compelling story of human intrigue rather than cataclysmic invasions. Central to its plot are the people profoundly affected by alien interactions, who are now on a mission to release once-secret information about these otherworldly beings to the global public.
In a twist that leans more towards the realm of journalism than alien fantasy, the film’s climax is strikingly reminiscent of Spielberg’s The Post, sparking varied reactions. Some call it a touch naive, reflecting a Boomer mindset, while others find it deeply touching. Even younger audiences, like my 10-year-old daughter, expressed mixed feelings, viewing the ending as a bit of a narrative shortcut. So, what message is Spielberg communicating through his famously unpredictable and quintessentially Spielbergian conclusion? Let’s delve into the movie’s entirety, spoilers and all, to uncover its true essence.
**Spoilers for Disclosure Day follow**
The film thrusts viewers into the action with an opening scene of high tension: Daniel Kellner, played by Josh O’Connor, is engaged in a tense negotiation. He trades a hardware device packed with classified material to secure the release of his girlfriend, Jane, portrayed by Eve Hewson. Yet, the pair subvert expectations by brandishing a mysterious weapon, subduing her captors, and escaping with the vital files intact. The narrative follows a private contractor determined to reclaim the evidence, which showcases undeniable proof of Earthly visits by extraterrestrial life.
Running parallel to Daniel’s saga is the story of Margaret, played by Emily Blunt, a TV weather presenter who inadvertently acquires the ability to speak multiple languages and employ sense-bending powers. Her newfound skills draw her into Daniel’s orbit, culminating in the revelation that both she and Daniel interacted with aliens during their childhoods—each bestowed with unique abilities. Daniel intuitively comprehends the mathematical language of the aliens, while Margaret has been granted the gift of universal communication. This shared revelation is dramatically explored through a reenactment of Margaret’s childhood home, a poignant setting that helps unlock their buried memories.
Ultimately, Margaret decides to join Daniel’s quest to liberate this information and broadcast “full disclosure” of the alien contact to the whole world. Jane, who once trained to become a nun before deciding she couldn’t go through with it, has worried that this revelation will destroy or irrevocably alter the faith of many religious believers, because they’ll be faced with a different form of “higher power” than they’ve been trained to expect. Similarly (albeit less humanistically), the company in pursuit of Daniel and the files argues that it is too dangerous for humanity at large to be made aware of otherworldly life. There’s also the matter of the footage itself, some of which features abject cruelty and experimentation visited upon these creatures by the U.S. government and others.
Disclosure Day Ending Explained: What Happens When Aliens Go Public?
The climax of Disclosure Day involves Margaret using her broadcasting experience to deliver proof of 70 years’ worth of alien encounters to the world. Spielberg depicts this as an epochal breaking news event, cutting to viewers around the world stopped dead in their tracks to watch these revelations unfold, whether on televisions or smartphones — though notably, the broadcast itself is from an old-fashioned network affiliate in Margaret’s Kansas City home. That particular medium, the composite nature of the movie’s UFO lore (the aliens look like stereotypical aliens, grayish and slim with big, dark eyes), and the shots of people staring wide-eyed at this footage (rather than shrugging it off as an A.I. deepfake, or muttering that the aliens had it coming for not coming onto this planet the right way) have prompted some to describe Spielberg’s depiction of this whole section as hopelessly corny and out-of-touch.
There’s even an escalating global conflict in the background of the movie, serious enough for characters to be doing apocalyptic-style supply runs even before hearing anything about aliens, that seems to freeze in its tracks as the world watchtes the alien footage. After the events of the past quarter-century, how can this filmmaker’s view of humanity be anything but a Baby Boomer delusion that should have been expired years ago? Or was maybe even actively murdered by a quorum of Boomers themselves?
With that in mind, the actual closing moments of the movie are arguably even more enervating. An actual alien is wheeled out (from where? Chaperoned by who?) into the TV studio, and whispers something to Margaret, who, remember, has the gift of communication and understanding. She turns to the camera to impart what the alien has said to the world at large — which is now, we’ve seen, watching intently. She says, to the TV camera and to Spielberg’s: “Listen.” And then the movie cuts to black. Roll credits.
This is intentionally open-ended, with two obvious (and potentially overlapping) meanings: “Listen” as in, “Listen up, here are the details of what the alien just whispered to me,” or the simple, single-word command, or possibly plea: listen to each other, rather than reacting with violence or hostility. Even if the latter isn’t literally all that Margaret is going to say, that’s all we hear, and so it’s more than fair to interpret it that way. It’s the ultimate confirmation of Spielberg’s soggy, centrist, milquetoast, inane, quasi-apolitical intentions.
Or is it? I’m not so sure that’s exactly what Spielberg is up to here. Disclosure Day is a much more optimistic film than his War of the Worlds, an alien invasion movie that itself felt like an answer to the cosmic mysteries of Close Encounters, the gung-ho-but-hands-clean warfare of Independence Day, and the real-life horrors of 9/11 all at once. Yet there’s a clear sense, based on War of the Worlds and other Spielberg movies of the past 20 years, that Disclosure Day isn’t so much his vision of how the world is, but what he hopes it could still be.
Even that hope is relatively open-ended. The people gathered around their screens aren’t necessarily experiencing newfound togetherness. We don’t see what pundits and talking heads start blabbing about as soon as the news breaks, or what statements governments (including our own) issue in response. We don’t see more than a few minutes’ worth of reactions from anyone, really; we only see the pause. We instinctively hope that it doesn’t precede a storm. Margaret asks us to listen, maybe we learn forward in our seats, and the movie ends, leaving the ultimate fate of this information in this world unknown. Spielberg isn’t asking for a lifetime’s worth of disbelief to be suspended indefinitely. He’s asking for a moment, and not even necessarily a moment of peace (though would that be so bad?) but a moment of quiet.
In this sense, it’s possible to read Disclosure Day as a reverse course from War of the Worlds, where aliens stood in for a terrorist attack, mankind quickly became stand-ins for insurgent responses to invasion, and, as in the original source material, Earth is saved mainly by a whim of nature, not our ability to band together and persevere — or to listen. Yet I don’t know that Spielberg is so much repenting for that movie, either; it’s more like he’s arguing with himself (both-sides-ing himself, even?) about where humanity is headed. Disclosure Day also feels like a conscious throwback to a lot of pre-9/11 alien material. There’s the aforementioned ID4, as well as more conspiracy-minded stories on The X-Files, both of which take government cover-ups of alien visitation as a given. Is Spielberg attempting to challenge the notion that the world was a simpler and more optimistic place in the 1990s, and reconcile those tropes with our fraught contemporary situation?
It’s not entirely clear, and for an entertainer sometimes criticized for coddling the audience or holding its hand, the optimistic yet open-ended nature of Disclosure Day‘s finale is too interesting (or, for some, too moving) to be ascribed to a cheap cop-out into hopecore territory. If anything, it’s a different sort of filmmaker’s fantasy: That images really do still have the power to stop us in our tracks, even if they won’t necessarily all suddenly transport us to the same page.
Spielberg may not know where humanity is headed, and may not be so starry-eyed as to believe in our innate goodness. But he certainly believes in cinema.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.