Great Filmmaking, Lazy Philosophy: How ‘Disclosure Day’ Settles For Straw Men

Steven Spielberg has spent much of his career asking audiences to believe in the impossible. In “E.T.,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and “A.I.,” he treated the unknown with awe rather than fear. “Disclosure Day” continues that fascination with first contact, but this time Spielberg aims higher than simply telling another alien story. He wants to ask what happens when humanity learns, beyond all doubt, that we are not alone — and more provocatively, what happens to religion and civilization itself when that truth arrives.

It is an ambitious premise. In many respects, it is exactly the kind of grand, philosophical science fiction Hollywood rarely attempts anymore. Which is precisely why it’s so disappointing that Spielberg settles for arguments that are far less sophisticated than the filmmaking surrounding them. “Disclosure Day” is a pretty film, it is often an exciting film, it is occasionally a fascinating and mysterious film. However, it ultimately undermines itself by constructing a theological debate in which only one side is allowed to be intelligent.

Visually, “Disclosure Day” is a delight for the eyes. Shot on 35mm film, the movie finds Spielberg returning to the warm, glowing aesthetic that defined much of his earlier work. There is a softness to the image that digital cameras struggle to reproduce. Neighborhood streets, dark hotel rooms, laboratories, warehouses, forests — even scenes bathed in fluorescent lighting — carry the nostalgic warmth of “E.T.” and “Close Encounters.” Rather than chasing blockbuster sharpness, Spielberg embraces the old texture.

His camera remains as inventive as ever. Tight compositions from unusual angles constantly reveal information in fresh ways without calling attention to themselves. Nothing feels static. Even simple conversations possess an energy created entirely through visual language.

As with all of his outings, John Williams’ score is remarkable, and historic in this case, “Disclosure Day” is Spielberg’s and Williams’ 30th film together. The low brass themes accompanying the escalating confrontation between government factions possess genuine weight, while the recurring clarinet motif accompanying scenes of psychic manipulation gives the alien presence an eerie identity without resorting to horror clichés. At 94, Williams might have composed his final film score, and in the theater I relished it. 

All that is to say, technically, Spielberg has lost very little with age.

The performances are similarly strong across the board. Josh O’Connor gives Daniel Kellner enough humanity to remain engaging despite a screenplay that often treats him more as a passenger than an active protagonist. Emily Blunt delivers perhaps the film’s strongest emotional performance as Margaret Fairchild, whose gradual psychological collapse — and eventual rediscovery of purpose — anchors much of the movie’s emotional core.

Colman Domingo’s Hugo Wakefield is intriguing almost immediately because the audience senses they’ve arrived at the final chapter of a much longer story. Hugo carries himself like someone who’s spent decades fighting battles the audience never witnessed. Rather than feeling underdeveloped with his limited screen time, he feels mysterious, but lived-in.

The standout, however, is Colin Firth’s Noah Scanlan. Scanlan begins as what appears to be a conventional corporate villain but slowly reveals himself to be something considerably more interesting: a man convinced that secrecy is not merely necessary, but morally righteous. He isn’t protecting power for power’s sake, contrary to Hugo’s accusation. He’s protecting civilization itself — or at least he believes he is. That conviction gives the film its best dramatic tension.

Throughout “Disclosure Day,” the audience gradually realizes they’re watching the final moves of a years-long chess match between Scanlan and Hugo. The younger protagonists frequently feel less like central characters than pieces being maneuvered by two men who have spent their lives preparing for exactly this moment. Ironically, that dynamic also exposes one of the screenplay’s biggest weaknesses. Neither Kellner nor Margaret possesses much agency for large portions of the film. Events happen to them more often than they happen because of them. The word passenger gets used on more than a few occasions by Hugo to describe both Kellner and Fairchild.

Curiously, the characters with the most meaningful agency are actually their romantic partners. Kellner’s girlfriend — Jane, played by Eve Hewson — believes him, supports him, and willingly joins his increasingly dangerous mission. Margaret’s boyfriend — Jackson, played by Wyatt Russell — reacts in precisely the opposite way, attempting to stop her because he believes she’s losing her mind.

Their contrasting responses create one of the screenplay’s more subtle observations about faith, trust, and love. Unfortunately, subtlety becomes increasingly scarce once Spielberg begins engaging directly with religion.

This is where “Disclosure Day” begins sabotaging itself. Spielberg recently remarked that alien disclosure could fundamentally shake religious belief. That concern forms the central thesis of the film. The problem isn’t that Spielberg asks the question. The problem is that he refuses to let serious religious voices answer it.

Instead, nearly every explicitly religious character exists primarily to demonstrate how easily faith can be manipulated. Religious belief is repeatedly portrayed as fragile, irrational, emotionally driven, and ultimately incompatible with objective truth. It is an astonishingly simplistic treatment of a remarkably complex philosophical subject.

The film repeatedly frames the conflict as one between reason and religion, as though Christianity has spent two thousand years opposing truth itself. That simply isn’t true. Spielberg either doesn’t know this or chooses to ignore it. The result is a debate in which science argues against caricatures rather than genuine theological positions. This becomes particularly frustrating because the film repeatedly hints at far richer conversations.

One remarkable sequence involves Scanlan invading Jane’s mind and manipulating her through her own religious convictions. The conversation itself, however, collapses into another straw man. Rather than confronting sophisticated religious arguments, Scanlan manipulates simplistic ones that were designed to lose from the outset.

Spielberg clearly wants to champion objective truth and transparency, and while the audience may recognize that as a good thing to stand for, problems arise when he constructs the opposing side so poorly that victory becomes meaningless.

Oddly enough, Scanlan himself becomes the film’s most compelling victim of this weak writing. Everything about his characterization suggests tremendous intelligence and fortitude. He physically deteriorates throughout the film as repeated psychic intrusions into the minds of Jane and other protagonists gradually destroy his body. Every time he staggers, refuses assistance, and insists he’s fine, we see a man literally sacrificing himself for what he believes is the greater good.

By the film’s conclusion, when he quietly accepts defeat rather than continuing to resist, Spielberg perhaps accidentally grants him more dignity than intended. Scanlan’s final moments on screen suggest a man honestly wrestling with the collapse of his worldview rather than merely a cartoon authoritarian. 

Unfortunately for Spielberg, this isn’t the only stumbling block. For a film centered on exposing history’s greatest conspiracy, “Disclosure Day” develops an enormous plot problem that becomes impossible to ignore. The protagonists possess overwhelming evidence proving alien existence. Their chosen method of revealing it? Cable news.

Not social media, not WikiLeaks, not public document dumps. Cable news. What year does Spielberg think it is? 

The screenplay even acknowledges this problem early in the film. Kellner suggests uploading everything online. The antagonists marvel that there are no internet leaks as they hunt down Kellner and the files he possesses. Then everyone collectively decides the better option is commandeering a television broadcast.

The finale becomes increasingly absurd as virtually the entire planet appears to stop what it’s doing to watch one American cable broadcast simultaneously. Russian soldiers watch it. Civilians watch it. Military command centers watch it. The entire world apparently abandons the internet in favor of live television. It’s an extraordinarily out-of-date solution to a modern problem.

Ultimately, “Disclosure Day” is defined less by what it gets wrong than by how close it comes to greatness. The technical elements work. The music, perfectly, works. The performances work. Some of the story works. The central ideological conflict simply doesn’t.

Rather than trusting audiences to wrestle with competing visions of truth, Spielberg rigs the debate before it begins. His religious characters become foils rather than equals, reducing what should have been genuine philosophical inquiry into something much closer to a lecture.

Ironically, “Disclosure Day” spends two-and-a-half hours arguing for the importance of confronting uncomfortable truths. Yet whenever the screenplay encounters ideas that might genuinely challenge its own assumptions, it quietly looks away, as if afraid it may not hold up. The bones of a great film are here. What it needs is just a little more confidence in the audience’s ability to think through difficult questions.

A few changes might have elevated “Disclosure Day” into Spielberg’s best science fiction film since “Minority Report.” Instead, it settles for being a well-made movie that ultimately lacks the intellectual courage its premise demands.

Grade: B-

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