I want to believe…that’s what Steven Spielberg wants from the audience when it comes to his latest movie, Disclosure Day, about the paranoia surrounding aliens. Are they real? Is the world ready to know the truth? Steven Spielberg, the once great and prominent filmmaker, takes recycled plot lines and philosophical questions from shows like The X-Files and his first sci-fi movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to give us a story about the disclosure of alien life on Earth. Is this beginning to sound a little ridiculous…yes, and somebody should have told Steven Spielberg before he started to make this movie. But I guess it’s hard to tell a legend that he’s way past his prime and should retire. Disclosure Day is not the worst movie he’s ever made. I still reserve that for The Fablemans, but this is pretty darn close to the worst movie he’s ever made. Don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of things I do like about this movie, and it is shot very well. Steven Spielberg knows how to make a movie from all the technical aspects to building intensity and the emotional weight among the characters. He can still draw us into his story, but is the story any good or worth watching? That’s the real question. For me, I don’t need to see the story because I already have in so many other films or TV shows. And if I’m being brutally honest, it’s like Steven Spielberg packed all the lore, conspiracy, and build-up within the X-Files TV show and tried to put it into a 2-hour movie. Sorry Steven, but I’ve been there and done that, and Chris Carter did it better! I still love the adventures of Agent Mulder and Agent Scully, and the X-Files are still great to go back and watch, but Disclosure Day is very forgettable considering there are too many great movies that he’s made that are worth revisiting time and time again.
Let’s get to what actually works in this movie. Technically, it’s shot very well, and from a filmmaking aspect, it’s brilliant. We’re easily drawn into this story, but by the end of the movie, it’s a huge letdown. Josh O’Connor and Emily Blunt give standout performances. Colin Firth plays a great villain, and Coleman Domingo is the emotional center of this movie. Also, Eve Hewson brings a lot of emotional weight to the story as it questions religious beliefs and faith regarding the existence of extraterrestrials. I have nothing but praise for the performances. Steven Spielberg still knows how to get the best out of his actors. And while I’ve always said that great performances can help save a movie and make it better, it does in a lot of ways make this movie better, but it doesn’t make it a great movie. The biggest issue is the story itself.
The story is boring. We’re not surprised by the existence of aliens anymore because there’s too much evidence suggesting we’re e being visited by extraterrestrials. There was a documentary that came out last year called The Age of Disclosure. That was more intense and told more truth. If an extraterrestrial walked up to us today and we had something similar to First Contact Day and Star Trek, I don’t think we’d be that surprised as a society. This movie would have been great 10 or 15 years ago. It would have been even better before the reboot of The X-Files, when they did shortened seasons 10 and 11. This film just doesn’t have the same excitement that it would have had in years past. Like the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it came out just at the right time when discovering the existence of extraterrestrials was more exciting. ET worked because it took those same themes and mixed them with childlike innocence. But just because a great filmmaker made some great science fiction movies back in the day doesn’t mean he can recapture the same magic in a day and age when there have been so many different alien stories. I have to wonder if Steven Spielberg got excited about aliens again and thought, despite telling similar stories that we’ve seen before, this kind of story is not as good unless he tells it. If that’s true, then he should take that narcissism right into retirement. Or maybe this is just his way of telling an alien story on the 30th anniversary of Independence Day, which is one of the greatest alien invasion stories of all time. The tragedy of this film is not that Steven Spielberg shot a terrible movie; it’s the hubris of a once great director to think he can tell a better alien story with similar themes than what has come before it or to make an audience think that this story is so unique that we would forget we’ve seen it before when he remade War of the Worlds. The same emotional themes of love, family, and survival in Disclosure Day are seen in his other extraterrestrial movies.
With Steven Spielberg, you know you’re going to get two things…a wonderfully shot film and great performances from the actors. That box was definitely checked in this movie. But can Steven Spielberg tell a great story again? Over the last decade, we’ve seen him remake West Side Story, make a grandiose, self-indulgent biography that only had one really great scene in it, and a fun gaming movie that, while entertaining, was never really up to Steven Spielberg’s standards. And now we have an alien story that has been told before and isn’t unique, while trying to make us believe that Steven Spielberg didn’t already make this kind of movie. There are so many parallels with this movie compared to Close Encounters of the Third Kind that I’m starting to believe he was just trying to remake one of his movies for a new generation. Then again, it does have wonderful performances, and Steven Spielberg has always been brilliant at slowly taking us into the story while building intensity and easily connecting the audience to his story. Having a John Williams score definitely makes the movie better than it really is, even if they subtly throw in music from ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, hoping we won’t notice. I still love Steven Spielberg as a filmmaker, but watching this movie and the last few movies he’s done, it’s like watching Muhammad Ali fight way beyond his prime or Mike Tyson fighting Jake Paul, if I can use a sports reference. It’s just embarrassing, and while I can praise certain things about this film because it is Steven Spielberg, I’m still calling him out for relying too much on nostalgia of previous films and recycling plot lines from other storytellers, while trying to con filmmakers into believing that this is some great extraterrestrial movie when it’s not. It’s a very average movie and definitely not on par with his previous work! Like athletes, even filmmakers can embarrassingly make movies way beyond their prime and not at all on the same level as their once great works of art. The truth is out there…Not even great performances by the actors or a John Williams score can stop the fact that Steven Spielberg is done and the maestro needs to retire! He should relish in his past glories, guide young filmmakers, and quit relying too much on the nostalgia of former movies to tell his story. Steven Spielberg, you’re better than that because that’s what JJ Abrams does…you shouldn’t have to! This movie is not worth seeing in the theaters; watch it free on a streaming service and enjoy it for what it is. Again, to be brutally honest, if you want to watch Fantastic alien stories with great philosophical discussions about disclosure, just binge-watch The X-Files!
