43) Disclosure Day (2026)

(2out of 5)

"Listen..."

Director

Steven Spielberg 

Cast

Emily Blunt - Margaret Fairchild
Josh O’Connor - Dr. Daniel Kellner
Colin Firth - Noah Scanlon
Eve Hewson - Jane Blankenship
Colman Domingo - Hugo Wakefield
Wyatt Russell - Jackson
Henry Lloyd-Hughes - Casper Boyd
Elizabeth Marvel - Sr. Maura
Hettienne Park - Serena
Tommy Martinez - Dave Santiago
Gabby Beans - Angela Childs

Potential Spoilers Ahead

Steven Spielberg's heavily touted sci-fi movie, "Disclosure Day," is an inflated, pretentious flick. That's the impression I was left with after sitting through it.

The movie is trying to make a point. And I can't write about that without bringing up some refutations of my own. 
In "Disclosure Day," the world is on the brink of nuclear war. A cybersecurity specialist, Dr. Daniel
Kellner (Josh O’Connor), has stolen classified evidence of extraterrestrial encounters from a super-duper top-secret government contractor.
Meanwhile, a Kansas City television meteorologist, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), suddenly develops really freaky psychic abilities after an encounter with a cardinal. She somehow acquires the
ability to speak an alien language, and this newfound knowledge of alien jibber-jabber comes spilling out while she's live on TV.
Thanks to her newfound psychic abilities, Margaret discovers that the Wardex Corporation, a government contractor headed by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), is pursuing her as well as Kellner. She meets up with Kellner, and the two attempt to outrun Scanlon. They eventually discover that their mysterious connection dates back to a childhood alien abduction. With the help of a group of whistleblowers, they attempt to broadcast the truth about extraterrestrial life to the entire world before Scanlon and his staff at Wardex can stop them. 

Of all Spielberg's alien movies, from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" to "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" to "War of the Worlds," and whatever other alien movies he's made, "Disclosure Day" is the one that focuses on the worldwide reaction to the existence of extraterrestrial life. Granted, "War of the Worlds" is about a hostile alien invasion of Earth. But the story ends with humanity confronting the reality of an alien attack. The consequences of such a disclosure would have made for a far more entertaining movie, and only entertaining. 

I'm not opposed to alien movies as a form of science fiction. In fact, Spielberg has given us some memorable ones. 

Nor am I opposed, generally speaking, to a story about how the world would react to the revelation we're not alone in the universe. With "Disclosure Day," that very premise is exactly where it belongs - in science fiction. 

Emily Blunt as Margaret in "Disclosure Day."

Somewhere on social media, someone suggested Spielberg stated the story would force “Christians and people of faith” to “second‑guess their own religion.” I had trouble finding where and when he supposedly said that. Maybe I just didn't look hard enough? But that's what I kept hearing before the film's release. 

In a June 7, 2026, interview with CBS News's "Sunday Morning," Spielberg said, "The movie takes the position of the believers, or the curious, the ones that have been deeply affected by this. The Emily Blunt character (Margaret Fairchild), you know, something has happened to her. She has no idea what it is. She has to try to understand why this has upended her life."
He then said, "And the movie also takes the position of the church. What does this do to the fundamental beliefs that many of us have? Is God our God only on this planet? Or is God a god for every system where there's civilization and intelligent life, and even developing life?"

Meanwhile, Christians including myself objected to the suggestion that discovering intelligent alien life could undermine Christianity. I still hold that position.

Between all the controversy around this movie along with its general premise, the whole thing suggests that the possibility of intelligent life on another planet—or even of aliens secretly living here on Earth—could fundamentally change an entire religion's understanding of God. Why alien existence would lead to that conclusion, though, isn't explained. But if such is the case, that premise reveals a rather shaky understanding of Christian belief. The existence of life elsewhere wouldn't invalidate the teachings of Jesus Christ any more than the discovery of a new species of fish deep in the ocean would do so.

All this alien speculation in "Disclosure Day" comes amidst, or perhaps at the tail end of, the recent release of classified reports and footage concerning Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Despite all the excitement, there's still no concrete proof that these flying objects are spacecraft from other planets, much less that extraterrestrial beings actually exist. The government is terrible at keeping secrets. So, where are these aliens? 
"Disclosure Day" includes some of the recently released footage as a part of the plot point that the government is keeping alien existence a secret. It also inserts its own fictional footage of alien bodies and such to fill in the missing pieces behind the U.S. government supposedly covering up proof of aliens.
The movie gives the fictional aliens too much credit, really. 

The absurdity lies in the assumption that if such beings really exist—and possess such impressive knowledge—why would they travel light-years across space to come here and do what, exactly? To look at us from the sky? 

The hype behind the movie, and its story line deals with a lot of what-ifs. However, between the initial hype and the movie's plot, the distinction between fact and speculation is too blurred.

The premise of "Disclosure Day" rests on the rather grandiose notion that the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life would fundamentally scramble everything we know about God, faith, and humanity's place in the universe. It's an extraordinarily pretentious position, presuming that the existence of intelligent life elsewhere would somehow invalidate or revolutionize humanity's understanding of the divine. 

Considering Spielberg's own controversial remarks about the film's relationship to faith, the whole thing threatens to confuse astronomical discoveries, real or theoretical, with theological revelation, as though the two were necessarily at odds. It's a mighty ambitious burden to place on a science-fiction film, particularly one that seems to assume the discovery of intelligent life on another planet would somehow force humanity to reconsider everything it believes about God as though Christian theology had never considered the question before.

You know, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), touched on the subject. He states in Question 47, Article 3, of his "Summa Theologica," "It is
said (Jn. 1:10): 'The world was made by Him,' where the world is named as one, as if only one existed."

Granted, that doesn't state anything about the possibility of intelligent life living on another planet. But speaking as a Roman Catholic, alien life doesn't change anything about Christ's incarnation, redemption and resurrection here on Earth. 

It doesn't change what Christ did for mankind. That still stands whether or not E.T. is out there somewhere flying around trying to avoid detection. To think otherwise because aliens must be super-duper intelligent (an assumption based on...what?) shows how ignorant Hollywood must be about the teachings of Jesus Christ. I keep referring back to Christianity as the film seems to target Christianity (Catholicism) specifically. The character Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson) is a devout Catholic who was once a novice in a convent. She still has a close relationship with her former abbess, Sr. Maura (Elizabeth Marvel), whom she talks to about what the existence of intelligent alien life would mean for belief in God.

Nature is not beyond God's control, despite what the film seems to suggest. Existence itself depends on God. He sustains all creation. Nor is the legitimacy of divine revelation teetering on whether or not we're alone in the universe. 

Aside from that, the storyline itself falls flat as entertainment. The movie is about the fictional day when the existence of aliens is finally revealed once and for all. The movie doesn't strike me as really being all about the aliens, nor does it offer a particularly compelling exploration of how mankind would react to their existence. In other words, "Disclosure Day" is a boring flick that misses the mark.
And to think this misguided movie comes from a director who previously gave us a generous handful of Hollywood's most popular alien movies. Well, I guess it's debatable if that resume of great alien movies includes, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (2008). 
To give "Disclosure Day" some credit, the film does a decent job building intrigue and maintaining the intensity of the chase. It does maintain intensity and thrills. And that's about all I enjoyed. But the one thing the audience is waiting for occurs briefly at the end before the end credits roll. My biggest problem overall is presentation. It inflates alien disclosure, or rather the possibility of it. "Disclosure Day" treats its premise as though the discovery of extraterrestrial life would be the most profound revelation in human history, when all it would really establish is that we aren't alone in the universe. That hasn't happened yet. 

Otherwise, the pretentiousness of "Disclosure Day" jumps right off the screen, even before the aliens do.