Disclosure Day

If people know just one thing about Steven Spielberg, it’s that he makes blockbusters. Spielberg has long been celebrated as the McDonald’s of the movie world and he’s been around nearly as long, with his first big hit (Jaws) arriving more than half a century ago. Lately, though, Spielberg hasn’t really lived up to this reputation of mainstream appeal.

In the 21st century, Spielberg has been drawn to history, be it of American politics (like Lincoln) or his own personal upbringing (The Fabelmans). Sure, his name appears on overtly commercial fare like the Transformers and Jurassic World franchises, but only as producer. And while he still on occasion swings big for general audiences with broadly-appealing works like Ready Player One (2018), The BFG (2016), and The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and some of those have indeed generated profits, the movies have decidedly set the world on fire the way his past triumphs like E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Jurassic Park did in decades past.

That brings us to Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s thirty-seventh and latest film as director. It’s a big summer movie coming from one of the big studios (Universal) and carrying a relatively big budget (though far from today’s higher end efforts). It is not expected to court prestige or compete for above-the-line Academy Awards. But, nonetheless, it is still a work from one of the greatest American filmmakers of all time, an undertaking that has attracted in-demand movie actors and esteemed longtime Spielberg collaborators like composer John Williams and cinematographer Janusz Kamiński.

Disclosure Day credits its screenplay entirely to David Koepp, a veteran whose big screen adaptations include Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, the first Tobey Maguire Spider-Man, and 2005’s War of the Worlds. Perhaps more notably, the story is attributed to Spielberg, something he has rarely taken credit for since the early days in his career. The subject is extraterrestrial life, a topic Spielberg is no stranger to, having Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial among the most popular and well-known of his early credits.

The scientific curiosity and wide-eyed wonder of Spielberg’s early films return here to an industry where otherworldly spectacle and grand visual effects are now consistently among the biggest draws. Spielberg’s impact on mainstream cinema of the past half-century cannot be overstated, but he personally seems to have tired of crafting big, ambitious four-quadrant adventures. And yet here he is, age 79, with an estimated net worth between seven and twelve billion dollars, revealing to us that he still wonders about our place in the universe.

Disclosure Day opens at a wrestling match where thirtysomething tech wizard Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) is being threatened and pursued by powerful parties who want the MacGuffins he’s been carrying around in a backpack. These are powerful MacGuffins that could shed light on buried scientific discoveries and confirm the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The hunt comes to also involve Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a Kansas City meteorologist with news anchor ambitions who suddenly, inexplicably finds herself disarming others and herself with newly-unlocked ability to speak in foreign tongues and know specific things about complete strangers.

Daniel and Margaret are on the radars of a powerful corporation who has historically suppressed extraordinary findings. The corporation is led by the exacting Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) and also employs a stealth defector Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), who is pushing for disclosure.

When Spielberg shot Close Encounters back in 1976, nobody was making speculative sci-fi movies like that and certainly not in a way that could be taken seriously. Nowadays, we have entire cinematic universes that are all about constructing elaborate myths and grounding them in something that resembles our reality. These are works of escapism that are more invested in managing brands and budgets and meeting shareholder expectation and moviegoer demand than in genuine galactic exploration. But people see them in great numbers, enjoying them in a way that makes them the present-day descendants of Spielberg’s yesteryear alien movies.

Disclosure Day will not be mistaken for today’s superhero fare, but, for better or worse, it still has a lot in common with them. Whereas those superhero movies strategically plot out long-term timelines, overlaps, and spin-offs, this one only concerns itself with the two and a half hours it requires of you now. Those hours are filled with another fine score from John Williams, now 94 years old, polished and appealing visuals courtesy of Kamiński, and a serviceable cast that brings respect for the director but still keeps things mostly sharp and spry.

To a degree, the movie’s success or failure will be determined by how much it resonates with the public, both the young moviegoers Hollywood primarily targets and the more cynical, discerning adults who grew up on Spielberg’s imaginative crowd-pleasers. These days, every new release of ambition seems to be treated as some grand assessment of the status and future of the moviegoing experience. This one has the added challenge of determining whether or not Spielberg still knows how to attract big crowds.

I wish I could declare this a rousing return to form for Spielberg, but honestly he doesn’t need a return to form given the high caliber of movies he’s been steadily making. And I’m not sure that cinema needs him to bring back the methods with which he dominated the box office for nearly the entire 1980s. The medium must evolve and Spielberg, impressively, still is. We’re all better off that he is continuing to explore new worlds and contribute to the medium in grand fashion.

#23 on Every Steven Spielberg-Directed Movie, Ranked 👽#5 on 2026 Movies, Ranked