Disclosure Day was good in concept but was failed by its script. It’s a Steven Spielberg movie about extra-terrestrials! I’m a child of the ‘80s and E.T., so what could go wrong?! A lot as it turns out.
The screenplay (by Pewaukee’s David Koepp) was a muddled mess. It’s also boring. I found myself wondering when it would just end.
I went to see this movie on its opening night because I generally admire Spielberg movies (although he hasn’t made a great one for some time; he’s becoming akin to an ‘80s hair band that isn’t making hits like they used to anymore.) I’m also interested in aliens, especially with all of the documents they’ve been releasing (who isn’t?) I watched an interview Spielberg gave about the movie’s concept before I went; he’s a philosophical guy, and the general concept was: what right does government have to hide this discovery from mankind? Presuming they are, which Spielberg believes. He got the idea for the movie from the famous tic-tac UFO video. Google it. Very timely. Good question.
How would it change society if the government told us it has been communicating with aliens all along? That’s the premise, and there’s a lot to work with there.
But the maestro just wrote the story concept. Koepp destroyed it with a mess of a screenplay that missed the core concepts that make alien movies worth watching. Koepp writes Mission Impossible movies, and this chase movie faintly echoed those, but without Tom Cruise or the stunts (save for one scene with a train.)
3 Things Make Alien Movies Great
Let’s back up for a minute. Three things make alien movies great:
1. Interaction between the aliens and humans, which touches on a deeper theme about humanity and connection. These movies work when they reveal that we’re not really that different from the aliens after all. My favorite alien movie of all time is Starman with Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen (whatever happened to her?) That movie was about love and loss and set in Wisconsin! Obviously E.T. succeeded because of the bond between E.T. and Elliott. The movie was about childhood innocence and friendship. On television, the adorable Alf, who becomes part of the family. Similarly, I enjoyed Hail Mary Project in part because of the bond between Ryan Gosling and the rock. And Interstellar is one of my favorite movies. Although it’s more about space and family, not aliens, although the theme is there. These movies have heart. Independence Day was a patriotic movie about rising to the cause and even dying for it.
2. Terror. Some alien movies work because they’re terrifying. Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place trying to get her kids not to talk, Sigourney Weaver kicking as*s in Alien, and Tom Cruise running around saving the world in The War of the Worlds (another Spielberg movie) come to mind. What if aliens arrived, and they are bad? The TV series V, about reptilian aliens with human skin, terrified me growing up.
3. A sense of wonderment, mystery and curiosity mixed with scientific inquiry. Think Jodie Foster in Contact, and Amy Adams in Arrival. Aliens arrive, and it’s not clear at first whether they are good or bad, or even whether they’re making contact at all. So society wrestles with how to handle it. That’s interesting. Alien movies are interesting when we learn something about their societies and through this ourselves. We aren’t all that.
The problem with Disclosure Day is that it has none of these things. Spielberg is great when he plays off the wonderment of childhood cast against the mysteries of the universe (his dad took him to watch a meteor shower as a kid, sparking this lifelong interest), but, save for an interesting but out-of-place sequence in a reconstructed childhood home, this did little of that.
So what was Disclosure Day about?
Spielberg Forgot That We Want to See the Aliens
Spielberg forgot that alien movies work when you see the aliens for most of the movie. But you don’t really see the aliens until the end of this movie. And, as a result, the last five minutes were where it got good. They should have made the old alien in the wheelchair E.T., but this movie had no creative surprise like that.
Most of the movie was a chase film with laughably cartoonish villains in cliched black SUVS sneering and running around Kansas City trying to catch two wooden characters whom we never bonded enough with to care about. If an SNL skit created a cliched Hollywood villain, these guys zooming around in their SUVS would fit. The best villains are complex and found on streaming services; they are both the protagonist and antagonist (Walter White, Tony Soprano, Jax Teller.) The banality of evil. These villains were embarrassingly one-note, with a cheesy soundtrack to announce them.
E.T. kept you on the edge of your seats because the mean government was chasing E.T. to harm him… this was a vague shadowy group chasing two people we didn’t understand for no real reason. The television station in the movie was an ‘80s throwback to anchors with blow dried hair and shoulder pads reading a teleprompter but it was set in the present day.
There was no mystery in this movie; you get the “hook” right at the top, so there’s nothing to discover, no awe-inspiring reveal.
The religious theme was underdeveloped. It became a sidecar. It’s interesting to ponder whether an alien reveal would do more harm than good, but this movie only glanced over that question, posing it but never answering it. It had a weird take. I think discovering we’re not alone in the universe would make people more religious not less. I didn’t get the movie’s premise of aliens as deities.
Where Was the Government in ‘Disclosure Day’?
Spielberg is interested in government keeping alien secrets from society (or mistreating aliens like E.T.) and whether it has a right to keep such a secret, but government was bizarrely absent in this movie as the cartoon villains zipped around for a shadowy Blackrock type organization that felt like a poorly done James Bond rip off. Without Bond. Really the police, CIA, NSA and President wouldn’t be interested in what was happening here? Anyway, Trump is releasing alien documents. And it was never clear why the shadowy org cares so much.
Emily Blunt was her usual dazed self, but the plot holes were gaping. Why did the aliens choose her? What was the purpose? And what did the deer and fox have to do with it? Why did they need to bring her childhood home into it? Where were her parents? Why did the villains just suddenly give up and turn nice? Really, the New York control room would dump this all on TV without verification? When the producer back in Kansas City ran around mumbling, “why am I doing this?” he had a point. Why was he?
Every time they cut to Colin Firth (usually a great actor) trying his best to conjure up a Bond villain (all he was missing was a twirling mustache), I got bored. When they started throwing around weird devices and telepathy, I rolled my eyes. Was this Poltergeist? I know that was about ghosts.
There was a good movie in here somewhere. Spielberg should have ripped up this script and started over. This is the worst alien movie – scratch that, the worst movie, period – that he’s made. It’s D- material. Word of mouth is going to sink this film. It’s too bad because at his best, when he’s making alien movies (or World War II movies like the incredible Schindler’s List), Spielberg is a genius.
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