I didn’t go see Disclosure Day.  Spielberg and I don’t have the best track record when it comes to aliens. Yeah, it’s that whole E.T. thing again. Instead, I sent the Horror-Hating Husband while I stayed home and played Subnautica 2 for three hours.  From his general review, I made the right decision.  In any case, today I’m going to talk to him about how one of the most legendary modern directors made one of the most illogical movies of the year. 

• Directed by: Steven Spielberg
• Written by: David Koepp. Steven Spielberg
• Starring: Emily Blunt. Josh O’Connor. Colin Firth

The Interview:

Ghoul: So. Not a fan of this one, huh?

H³: It was, hands-down, the best movie I saw in a theater that morning. I won’t say it was a terrible movie, per se, but I certainly don’t consider it a good one, either. It’s certainly not one of Spielberg’s best, by any stretch. The cinematography was average, there was a lot of noticeable CG, and parts just felt… cheap. And I didn’t even realize that John Williams, who’s 94 now, did the score for this until reading commentary online later. I honestly don’t remember what the score even sounded like. But I’ll give props to the cast. I think they, for the most part, did a really great job with what they were given, even if it didn’t make the most sense.

Ghoul: Without spoiling the plot. What was it about?

H³: I think the plot is kind of beyond spoiling at this point, with all of the hype and marketing that’s gone out for this film. Basically, to hearken back to The X-Files, “the truth is out there”… maybe? But also, what happens when that truth is found.

Reality in Sci-Fi

Ghoul: In our post movie breakdown, you expressed that it made some…wild logical leaps. Let’s talk about some of those and why they bothered you in this movie. 

H³: So, there will be some light spoilers here, otherwise I can’t really talk about some of these things. At different points in the beginning of the film, we can see what looks like a movie set being constructed in the background. It turns out that it’s a re-creation of one of the main character’s childhood home, and was needed to advance the “good guy’s” master plan… but they didn’t realize that this person was important to their cause until, like a good way into the film. So… why were they building it in the first place? And, how did they track down things like family photos to have framed, or have down-to-the-baseboards recreations of a house in the first place?

WTF

H³: Another one that stood out to me. Later, the “bad guys” have tracked down the “good guy’s” hideout, and through the power of Alien Space Magic Technology Thing, everything in the hideout (a giant warehouse, including the aforementioned house), is rendered invisible. This includes two fire trucks, because reasons. So, escape is made using said invisible fire trucks… which they turn the sirens on before driving out of the hideout, scattering bad guys in the process. I guess they wanted to alert people that they were escaping? And as a final “wtf”, Evil Lieutenant asks “which one should we follow?” Which invisible fire truck should you follow? Uh huh.

Then there’s the evidence itself. I won’t go into too much detail here, other than some of it looked no different than, if not worse than, what we’ve seen released by the US government over the past few years. I was frankly expecting something spectacular here. Instead, it was a Sci-Fi Original. CE3K had better effects.

There are several others, including a bit involving a car chase and a cliff that a certain coyote would find somewhat familiar, but… yeah.

Expectations

Ghoul: Do you have an expectation that people will behave “smarter” in sci-fi movies directed by Spielberg?

H³: I do, if for no other reason than it’s Spielberg. People want to associate a level of quality and authenticity with the films that he’s involved in, and if you have a strong scientific basis (although I’ll use those terms, um, loosely with this film), you’d similarly expect your “smart” people in the story to be, well, smart. It’s kind of like how people have been conditioned to expect every movie Tom Hanks is in to be an Oscar-contender.

Ghoul: At one point, you were describing a scene so stupid that I did ask you to stop talking about it.  This actually happened. I was so upset because I could not understand what you were describing that I had to stop the conversation. I have to ask again…did that scene really happen or are you just messing with me?

H³: That was the invisible fire truck scene, and yes, it did. There was more to it, but yeah.

Ghoul: You’re talking about it again. This is literally killing me. I’m sure there is some bigger metaphor that I’m missing but it sounds so terrible.

The Critics

Ghoul: One of the things I find interesting is that the critics’ aggregate score is higher than the audience on RT. What’s your take on that?

H³: I think that kind of goes back to what I was talking about earlier with the “Spielberg effect”. I get the feeling that some critics are just fans at heart and can’t bear to say anything bad about certain people, whether it’s actors, directors, and so on. While I do like Spielberg’s films in general, I’m not so devoted that I, knowingly or not, turn a blind eye to a crap effort. Not that this was a crap effort, but I think a smidge more effort, or frankly thought, could’ve been put into it.

Doing too Much

Ghoul: Was it maybe over –thought?

H³: Now that you mention it, probably. That would explain the mess of a plot that this thing had. Maybe too many attempts to make too many different points, too much of an effort to try to be clever about it. Yeah, maybe it was. One of your frequent comments is that movies/scripts/etc. needed one more review pass. In this case, maybe that would’ve caught the amount of overwrought-ness that was going on.Ghoul: What is your take on the theme of Disclosure Day? What is Spielberg trying to say about truth and the consequence of the truth at all cost?

H³: You got me. After talking with you about it immediately after the movie, and from additional commentary on Reddit afterwards, it seemed like maybe Speilberg was trying to go for something about how the concepts of religion and science could co-exist.  But for what you’re talking about, there’s a line later in the film that I think speaks to that. I’m paraphrasing, but it mentions how the truth is a virus for which the world has no cure, which is an interesting way of characterizing it. 

The Truth

There was a lot of catastrophizing about how the world would handle The Truth, including again, religious reactions. One character mused about (again paraphrasing), how people have been conditioned to believe in a supreme being, only to be actually shown one, and how they would react to that. Other reactions would relate to how we couldn’t consider ourselves to be “special” any longer, while still others said we’d no longer be alone.

Most of this comes down to fear of change to the established order, and the associated loss of our sense of self-identity; what would that mean to the world?  This has been debated for decades, so there’s nothing groundbreaking here. Would people think that aliens are God? Would people’s faith be destroyed somehow? From Spielberg’s own comments, he seemed to think they might. I personally think he’s a little full of himself, along with being more than a smidge naive about how it would play out, but anyway.

https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15885713/steven-spielberg-disclosure-day-christians.html

About Faith

Ghoul: So, there was some heavy religious theming thrown in. Was that in relation to the search for truth or was it just a counter point to the existence of aliens?

H³: There was definitely some heavy-handedness with that, yeah. Why though, that’s an interesting question. I think, in some ways, it could relate to the search for truth, at least for one of the characters. 

But back to your question. There’s always been a battle between science and religion. There’s a sequence where the villainous Colin Firth is having a bit of a psychic? battle with one of the supporting characters, Jane, who happens to have been a nun-in-training at one point in her life. There’s a matching cut between Firth gripping an Alien Space Magic Technology Thing and clearly in pain, while Jane is gripping her considerably large crucifix necklace so hard that blood is oozing out between her fingers.

Both are in self-inflicted pain for what they believe in… but then, she’s an ex-nun that lost her faith, so what does that tell us? She (kinda maybe representing faith) is trying to resist him (science via aliens) and his unwanted intrusion into her mind… so, government-esque, white male imposing his will on a woman? There are so many possible meanings here; I think it comes down to what the audience assigns to it.

The Wrap Up

There’s one small bit of dialog very late in the movie that I think, from how it’s framed and who it’s between, is intended to sum things up. There’s a brief mention of empathy, and how they (aliens) have it; we (humans) don’t (any longer), and it will cause our eventual extinction, which is somewhat meaningful given both the main conflict in the story, and the looming backdrop that is the world this takes place in. Is that the overall message he was trying to get across, in this nearly two-and-a-half-hour exercise? Again, I guess it’s up for debate. In the end, it’s muddy to me at best, but then I’ve never been stellar at discerning a theme, especially with this much stuff happening around it with varying levels of absurdity.

How Bad Could It Be?

Ghoul: Would you watch it again?

H³: I certainly wouldn’t actively seek out opportunities to watch it again. But I might, if just to watch your reactions to it, assuming I could convince you.

Ghoul: Did you have a favorite scene? Least favorite better be invisible fire truck.

H³: I didn’t have a favorite scene, per se. Wyatt Russell was tragically under-utilized in this movie. He was really, really good as the increasingly impatient, and very, very confused boyfriend to Emily Blunt’s Maggie. Whenever I chuckled at something, he was involved. Then he disappeared for most of the film. I don’t think I chuckled at anything after that point.

Back to the invisible fire truck bit. Honestly, it didn’t hit me as a “wtf” moment until I was reflecting on the movie while driving home. It wasn’t anything like that one line in the Independence Day sequel that caused me to utter things out loud and at volume while in the theater, but it made me pause on recollection and ask, “…what?”

Ghoul: Ok I don’t remember the ID sequel thing because as I recall, that was the one movie that actually broke me in the theater. 

Final Thoughts: 

Ok, I cheated by making H³ go see a movie that I knew was going to be bad. But come on, from the trailers you could tell this was easily one of Spielberg’s worst. Even without the Netflix-style cinematography, this is a movie about how some people are afraid of the truth. This isn’t a revolutionary concept, nor it shouldn’t be in 2026. The control of the truth is one of the greatest powers that exists. Something that horrifying probably deserves a better movie.