2026 | PG-13 | starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, Wyatt Russell, Elizabeth Marvel | directed by Steven Spielberg | 2 hrs 25 mins | 3 out of 5 stars |
Mild Spoilers
Disclosure Day rolls into theaters as the long-awaited return to crowd-pleasing adventure filmmaking from the man that invented the summer blockbuster in the first place, Steven Spielberg. Spielberg has always had fun with aliens, this marking the fifth film about people discovering (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), befriending (E.T.), battling (War of the Worlds, wickedly underrated) and robbing (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) aliens. In some ways it’s a culmination of a career we fear may not be with us for much longer. In another ways, it’s a retread of the greatest hits. A legendary director taking a deserving victory lap. Spielberg knows how to make this kind of movie in his sleep. The result is Disclosure Day is a well-made and entertaining 2 and a half hours but not something with meat on the bone to stick with you for much longer.
On the eve of a global war with North Korean and mostly unnamed countries, a group of white-hat government agents lead by the mysterious Hugo (Colman Domingo) execute a heist of top secret documents proving the government’s 75-year involvement with aliens. In the procession of desk jockey Dr Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson, Bridge of Spies), the pair go on the run, just head of black hat government goon Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). Meanwhile, Kansas City meteorologist Margaret Fairchild, yes that’s her name (Emily Blunt), starts to develop a psychic connection with anyone she meets, drawing her closer to Kellner in the race to get the truth out.
The film opens in the middle of the coup, with Kellner stealing secret alien technology and evading Scanlon. The movie works best when it’s in motion. Not so much Spielberg’s use of that obnoxious gimble cam that swoops around everyone in a superficial way to show “disorientation” but when it’s leaning into the basics of a 90s era chase film. The movie isn’t nearly as sturdy when it awkwardly fumbles around with the social, psychological or, Holy God, theological ramifications about the existence of aliens. There is a theological debate about how religion might handle, adapt, or has explained the existence of life on other planets and this movie ignores that for a superficial “people may lose their faith and that would be catastrophic for society” message.
What this movie proposes, in an early scene, is that the U.S. has captured little green men from crash sites and imprisoned them in Area 51. Shocking, I know. Jane, representing the religious angle to the degree the movie allows it, claims people will view the alien as a superior species, which rings nonsensical after watching a video of a frail, little Grey being tortured by the government. But also not really the government, because the screenplay (co-written by Spielberg and longtime collaborator David Koepp) pawns that off on a fictional private sector contractor name Wardex. It’s fashionable to say a company is involved in a conspiracy; it is not fashionable for the government to be involved.
A long-time writer-for-hire, a David Koepp script is always exactly as good as the director’s interpretation of it. It’s always just generic enough to make an ink blot test for someone else with a vision to adapt into something. Spielberg has typically been that guy, but Disclosure Day is a conspiracy movie afraid of perpetuating a conspiracy (though I did love the Nixon/Fatty Arbuckle re-enactment). If this was a movie actually put together in the 80s and 90s it would not have been so hyper-vigilant about how it was perceived and would her put forward something creative, imaginative and even wacky for its final reveal, far less afraid of looking silly in the process. A big crazy twist to get people talking because it would understand that it’s a summer blockbuster and not a prestige film. Disclosure Day doesn’t get that.
Spielberg can make this kind of movie in his sleep, but with Disclosure Day it feels like he half was. The mechanics are all mostly there and more than that, the acting all around it terrific, particularly from Emily Blunt who becomes part alien and part Christ symbol. I was perfectly ok with how often Wardex gets within feet of our heroes and loses them so the story can happen when it was this in-the-moment entertaining. I’m also ok with charges of Boomerism, where our heroes use a live local TV station to get out the information instead of uploading it on the internet where everything now is AI and unbelievable. From the moment that Blunt’s meteorologist sent in an audition to be an anchor it’s clear her arc would end in the anchor chair.
In the run-up to the film (including a trailer with Spielberg himself tell us “it’s all true”), the internet started going abuzz with theories that it was either a) a psy op Spielberg is in on prepping us for real disclosure or b) some Kubrickian Eyes Wide Shut expose secretly blowing open the whole thing in code. I was expecting this movie to go in the now run-down Ancient Aliens route, but it doesn’t even go there. It doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t say anything. I wasn’t expecting actual disclosure, but I was expecting a story with some reason for its existence.