written by: David Koepp
produced by: Kristie Macosko Krieger and Steven Spielberg
directed by: Steven Spielberg
rated: PG-13 (for action/violence, some bloody images, and strong language)
runtime: 145 min.
U.S. release date: June 12, 2025

The more conflicted I feel about “Disclosure Day”, the more disappointed I am in it. On the one hand, it’s wonderful to see and hear a Steven Spielberg and John Williams collaboration, possibly for the last time, once again. It’s easy to be reminded how synonymous Spielberg’s work is with the master maestro. It could also be Spielberg’s last science-fiction romp, so the anticipation and trepidation are understandable, but both should be measured. After all, the last encounter the director had with aliens was in 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, and we all know how that was received. On the other hand, “Disclosure Day” often feels derivative of Spielberg’s own previous endeavors, which makes sense considering the story came from the director, yet the screenplay comes from longtime collaborator David Koepp, someone who’s worked with Spielberg before, on “Jurassic Park” and “War of the Worlds”, to name a few. There’s a lot of information to process while watching “Disclosure Day”, and with it come so many questions, the confounded kind that surface once the cinematic Spielberg glow washes off.

So, it’s a struggle, because based on his resume, we should be in good hands when it comes to an alien movie helmed by Spielberg. However, much of the movie consists of the director and Koepp telling us how things are and what is transpiring, rather than showing us or allowing us to get there on our own.

The movie starts out by kicking us in the face, as cinematographer Janusz Kaminski gives us an uneasy ringside view of a sweaty wrestling match. There are two wrestlers: one in red and one in blue. The unintentional irony is thick, given what went down on the White House lawn recently.  This indoor wrestling match is where we meet one of the movie’s key characters, Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a cybersecurity expert who’s gone rogue from the Wardex Corporation, a secret branch of the U.S. government disguised as a security firm. He’s carrying a backpack full of hard drives that confirm a decades-long cover-up proving we’re not alone, along with a strange alien device that must be handled with care. We learn this later, but initially, what Daniel is doing is a mystery, as if someone had opened a book and started reading to us.

We learn he’s at the wrestling match to rendezvous with Wardex agents and the corporation’s head, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), to supposedly hand over the crucial information in exchange for the return of his girlfriend, Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), who’s been used as bait to lure Daniel. Scanlon and his goons back off when Daniel brandishes the alien device. While we’re just getting to know these characters, it won’t be the last time that Scanlon just lets Daniel get away. If he really wanted what Daniel had, he would’ve found a way.

Now on the run from federal authorities, Daniel must find a place where he and Jane can lay low and regroup. It’s kind of odd that Jane, who knew nothing of what Daniel did for work or why he was being pursued, would just go along with the situation. But theirs doesn’t seem like the closest relationship, since he didn’t know that the convent they are hiding out at, where Sister Maura (Elizabeth Marvel) resides, is where Jane used to be a novitiate. Later on, we’ll realize that Spielberg and Koepp include this element only to offer a surface-level religious take on extraterrestrial life. It will be posited that proof of such life, supposed superior life forms, will completely disrupt worldwide religions. Personally, that seems like a stretch, but more on that later.

When we meet meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt, outshining everyone around her), she is preparing to leave the Kansas City apartment that she shares with her boyfriend, Jackson (Wyatt Russell), to head to work to report the local weather. Their morning banter centers on whether or not they will stay in Kansas City. He’s a musician, finally getting steady gigs, and she’s apparently a restless soul, unsure what her calling in life is and wondering if there is a grander purpose for her. In flies a cardinal from an open window, and the couple naturally see it as a strange and amazing occurrence – stranger still is how Margaret nonchalantly starts speaking Russian as they continue their conversation. It gets weirder from there.

Upon arriving at work, Margaret becomes aware of latent psychic abilities that enable her to explore other people’s minds. She finds herself able to understand others’ thoughts, emotions, and languages. While it’s startling to her, she also finds herself organically assisting others with her new abilities, connecting to them with great empathy. Seconds into her live weather broadcast, she is seen speaking an indecipherable language consisting of chirps and clicks. When her broadcast catches the attention of Noah Scanlon, who identifies the strange language as extraterrestrial in origin.

Oddly, the only human who understands what she says is Daniel, who can understand it in plain old English. He shares this with Jane when he finally reveals that he used to work for Wardex and had to leave after learning they’d been experimenting on aliens for years and reverse-engineering their advanced technology for their own gain. There’s a whole faction of former Wardex employees who also know about this clandestine activity, led by Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), former Director of Biological Assets. Hugo and his underground group of former Wardex employees-turned-whistleblowers have been in touch with Daniel and plan to bring him and Margaret into the fold, with the goal of setting their own Disclosure Day, when the entire world will be told of the government’s history of contact with alien life.

“Disclosure Day” never shies away from the fact that alien life is part of the story, but it aptly saves its global reveal for the third act, when the titular event occurs. It’s sci-fi that eventually and inevitably becomes reality, with the whole thing giving off an “X-Files” vibe, featuring one fast-paced chase after another. Daniel’s whole goal is to get The Truth Out There. It doesn’t get more Mulder than that.

While “Disclosure Day” features some exciting action sequences, the movie is perhaps best described as a talkative socio-political sci-fi thriller. As Spielberg keeps most of the characters moving, Koepp has them explaining things to others, especially Daniel. Some of it feels organic, but most of the time, it feels like there was no other way to get key information and grand themes out than to spell them out. That decision doesn’t always give the feature a natural flow; rather, it introduces various pauses for explanations. The whole endeavor doesn’t have the gradual build that “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” had or the wonder of “E.T., making it lower-tier science fiction for Spielberg.

In fact, Firth’s Scanlon exists to squash out any chance of wonder. He plays a more adversarial role than the authorities in those aforementioned Spielberg sci-fi classics, yet his one-dimensional characterization makes Scanlon seem cartoonish at times. Withholding the history of Roswell and the years of American encounters with aliens from Earth’s citizens has given him a sense of duty, leading him to believe that democracies, religions, and societies, as we know them, would collapse.

Domingo’s Hugo is his opposite, believing that the world should know the truth. He sees what Scanlon and Wardex are doing (and have been doing for 7 decades) as an affront to our freedom of information and to humanity in general. He believes people want to believe, and even that they want to be believed.

A conversation unfolds between Scanlon and Hugo during the movie’s third act, within the massive house set that his underground crew has built. Scanlon appears in a sort of astral form thanks to the alien dohickey device he weilds, and the two debate their goals and roles. Scanlon aims to buy time during their discussion, using the device to see where people are while tracking them geographically. The conversation exists to convey some of Koepp’s metaphors and themes, many of which we, as an audience, have already gleaned.

Koepp’s writing often interrupts Spielberg’s pace with moments of expositional dialogue in “Disclosure Day” that reinforce obvious themes and positions on bringing proof of alien life into the world. There’s also a very surface-level inclusion of religion, specifically Christianity, that is clearly meant to cut deeper than it actually does. Jane, who has struggled with her faith, has an interesting albeit brief conversation with Sister Maura, but that’s about it. Much of human behavior and situations on display here is quite unbelievable, making it hard for us to get fully invested in the story when it is clearly setting out to portray what would happen in the real world if all of this played out.

Towards the end of “Disclosure Day”, Daniel and Margaret take over her Kansas City news station with the intention of broadcasting the truth worldwide. If that’s what they intended to do all along, why didn’t Daniel or Hugo just upload all these files to the internet or an alien conspiracy website? Or they could’ve even hacked into various worldwide government sites and broadcast it from there. Sure, we wouldn’t have an over 2-hour movie with exciting Spielberg moments, enhanced by Williams’ musical know-how, but it would at least be more realistic.

Now, some may say asking for realism in a science fiction story is, well, unrealistic, but “Disclosure Day” kind of prides itself in an understanding of how things would play out in the real world. It just doesn’t feel like our real world in 2026. Why doesn’t Wardex use drones to track down and apprehend Daniel? The world doesn’t rely on “breaking news” from newsrooms for its information, as we might have before the internet. Now, when we see news online (or any information, for that matter), our inclination is to brush it off as AI and carry on with our doom-scrolling. The Disclosure Day in “Disclosure Day” interrupts news coverage of nations on the verge of World War III. Would everyone really be that interested in what the U.S. government has done with aliens all these years (and now), as opposed to a possible war breaking out?

It’s not a matter of wonder versus cynicism, but more so an understanding of mankind in 2026. Right now, we’re more concerned about feeding our families, getting and maintaining a job, putting gas in our vehicles, and affording healthcare costs. If the aliens can solve any of that for us, great. But, I just don’t see humanity, in the current state that we know it, caring about the proof of extraterrestrial life. So, perhaps this movie would’ve been easier to digest if it were either set in the 90s or made back then. That was the decade that gave us the great “Contact”, a compelling science fiction thriller that leaned heavily on science while wrestling with faith and the government over the same ideas and subject matter. It’s a more convincing and engaging story, with an emotional sense of awe and wonder.

I’m not even going to give in to the eye-rolling ending, which feels derivative and insulting. “Disclosure Day” looks fantastic, with fully committed performances, but it’s missing the necessary sense of awe and wonder, largely because Koepp’s often stagnant screenplay doesn’t truly consider human concerns and behavior in 2026.

RATING: **