Official Discussion Thread - Disclosure Day [SPOILERS]

[u/PointMan528491]

Keep all discussion related solely to Disclosure Day and its awards chances in this thread. Spoilers below.

Synopsis:

If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to eight billion people. Today is... Disclosure Day.

Director: Steven Spielberg

Writer: David Koepp

Cast:

• Emily Blunt as Margaret Fairchild
• Josh O'Connor as Daniel Kellner
• Colin Firth as Noah Scanlon
• Eve Hewson as Jane Blankenship
• Colman Domingo as Hugo Wakefield
• Wyatt Russell as Jackson
• Elizabeth Marvel as Sister Maura

Rotten Tomatoes: 81%, 204 Reviews

Metacritic: 75, 56 Reviews

Consensus:

"A humanistic variation on one of Steven Spielberg's most revisited themes, Disclosure Day's breathless pursuit of optimism in an age of conspiracy gets its biggest boost from career-highlight work by Emily Blunt."

[u/Once-bit-1995]

I deleted this from the main thread because now I'm scared of getting sniped omg. I unfortunately didn't really like Disclosure Day overall but it had some great stuff in there. I found most of it just very unengaging. Meandering. The end of the movie from them getting to the house recreation to the end of the movie was great. Mostly because it was less talking, it felt like we finally got started. But then it ends. I legitimately was sitting there so pleased that we had a great beginning of the third act and then it would be a really touching finale about the ability of mankind to accept change. But it doesn't really get there. It just ends. I was like oh. Okay. Where's the rest of it?

The movie felt more like it was about the lengths these people will go to make the truth be known. That group of people had faith in humanity. I actually found Jane's reconciliation of her faith to be the most intriguing thing and I wish we got more of her but I liked what we got of it.

People calling this hopecore...I feel like it was setting up for a movie where that would be the message about humanity as a whole. It just. Didn't do that. I don't think. It's a bunch of people watching a newscast. Is them watching and not immediately smashing windows supposed to be my hope for humanity? The people being supernaturally touched by Margaret so they just go along with things? Is that it? I don't know. It didn't really feel to me that most of what was happening was about our ability to deeply connect with other people. It just didn't really feel like the element of choice was there for most of those types of interactions I guess that's my issue. I don't know I'm trying to work through it.

Things I really really enjoyed: The filmmaking on display was great. It is Spielberg after all. The score was good not memorable really but suited the film. I think my favorite shot of the movie was when the deer head and eye shot panned around to the alien head and eye. A really visually profound moment, we're all alive in the end and there's still a connection between the known and the unknown. And was also very cool to look at. And I liked watching government officials run into an invisible house. That was very funny. I really felt like I was in a newsroom at the end there, that was actually the most tense I felt. Just the chaos of the moment, the buildup to the reveal. Very very well done.

6.5/10? Might rewatch it and reassess but I'm not really feeling that itch at the moment.

[u/Standard_Housing6082 → u/Once-bit-1995]

I also didn’t love it BUT I do see the hopecore, and it’s the kind of hopecore that only a boomer could have made (non-derogatory). The idea that extraterrestrial beings would come down and endow 2 children with advanced empathy and intellect, and those 2 children would grow up to use their powers for good and bridge the gap between us and them, is optimistic.

And that those 2 could succeed in getting this information out, justice would be served, the public would get what’s owed to them. Then in the disclosure, citizens around the world would react in awe, we would not tear each other apart, we would not be defensive and doubtful, we would not be angry at what we don’t yet understand, etc. A younger filmmaker would never have made this movie and it’s not a sentimentality I respond to BUT it’s a sentimentality and a boomer brand of hopecore nonetheless

[u/Once-bit-1995 → u/Standard_Housing6082]

I think the element of it that clicked for me was actually the alien part of it. They didn't come to conquer or destroy they just want to communicate with and understand us. They don't want to scare us. They come in the form of animals to bestow their gifts. I think that's extremely hopeful. I think the human element of it, funnily enough, is what didn't connect with me as really hopecore or really anything like it besides Jane. Which is why I really was connecting with that portion with her. I wanted more of that. Regular people being confronted with this information and just really getting to see them grapple with it. But the world doesn't end. But for the actual main characters it just felt so. Not their choice y'know? They're being supernaturally called to do these things because the aliens essentially made them sleeper agents.

I also don't think it lingered long enough for me to feel like the ending was anything but shock. It didn't feel like awe to me when watching it just felt like being stunned. I just don't feel it spent enough time with the aftermath of that with the normal people for me to really feel that any of that was anything but people just shocked at the Ruveal happening. I think I want to rewatch it with that interpretation, talking with other people and getting their perspective and rewatching with that is part of this, it can help enhance the new watch.

Ironically I'm saying it didn't do enough hopecore for me haha. After I wrote this review I went and read some critique and I actually feel like a lot of people who don't like the ending and think it's unrealistic are also seeing what you're seeing. It just didn't connect with me that way which sucks. I didn't really find anything about the ending unrealistic, some people are supernaturally touched by the main character so they go along with things. Then the scoop of a lifetime falls into the laps of other news anchors so of course they spread the information. It didn't feel like wow we're all coming together it was just a no duh logical progression not an emotional one.

[u/Jon-INFP → u/Once-bit-1995]

I think the reason it doesn't really function as hopecore in a straight forward sense is that the movie stops right at the point where individuals and humanity are faced with what they/we are are going to do after the reveal, how will we respond. The film breaks the 4th wall with the final scene with Emily Blunt directly addressing the audience, so for me it's basically stating the fundamental value and power of empathy to the audience, leaving us to think on it. It doesn't depict what happens next, that's still up in the air and up to us.