June 21, 2026

Disclosure Day (2026) - The Real Thing

Show Notes
Transcript

Spielberg has been asking the same question since he was seventeen years old. On June 12, 2026, it stopped being hypothetical. We watched Close Encounters, E.T., and War of the Worlds. Now we watch what happens when the filmmaker who invented our relationship with the unknown decides the world has waited long enough for an answer.

A.I. was used to help with narration and creative elements of our scripts.

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Calaruga Shark Media. We have spent three weeks in this

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series watching Steven Spielberg ask the same question. Episode one,

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what is out there? And what does it feel like

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when a man can't stop reaching toward it? Episode two?

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What if the thing out there isn't a threat but

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a friend? And what does it cost a child to

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lose one? Episode three? What if it comes to destroy everything?

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Three films three answers, and then on June twelfth, twenty

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twenty six, the question stopped being hypothetical. This is Spielberg

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reloaded episode four Disclosure Day, twenty twenty six. Steven Spielberg

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made his first film about alien life when he was

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seventeen years old, an amateur production called Firelight essentially Lost

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Now about Close Encounters. Before Close Encounters existed. He has

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been asking the same question for sixty years, what is

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out there? And what does it mean for us when

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we find out? Disclosure Day is not the first time

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he has answered that question, but it may be the

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first time he has answered it as a man who

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has run out of patience with the people standing between

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us and the answer. The film was released June twelfth,

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twenty twenty six. Written by David Koop, from a story

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Spielberg developed. Directed by Spielberg, it runs one hundred forty

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five minutes. It opens in the middle of a chase

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that has already been going on for seventy years. No setup,

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no orientation, no hand to hold. A cyber security expert

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named Daniel Kellner has stolen files from a private corporation

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called Wardex. A TV meteorologist in Kansas City named Margaret

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Fairchild has just discovered she can read minds and speak

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any language on Earth. The world outside is on the

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edge of nuclear catastrophe, and someone or something has been

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waiting for exactly this moment. Wardex is the film's central

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invention and its most contemporary idea. Not the government, not

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the military, a private corporation with government contracts that has

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been the sole steward of America's knowledge of alien life

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for over seventy years, keeping it from Congress, keeping it

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from the public, and eventually keeping it from the president too.

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After Nixon showed alien corpses to an actor friend he

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wanted to impress, and Wardex decided that elected officials were

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too much of a liability to be trusted. In interviews,

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Spielberg has said he no longer believes governments can keep

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secrets of this magnitude, but big tech companies can. Wardex

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is that belief given a name and a B directors.

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Colin Firth plays Noah Scanlon, the man who runs Wardex,

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and the performance is one of the film's quiet achievements.

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Scanlon is not a villain in the way that genre

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films usually construct them. He is a man who has

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spent decades making a choice he believes is correct that

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the public cannot handle the truth of alien contact, that

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disclosure would tear apart the fragile architecture of civilization, and

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has been telling himself that for so long that it

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no longer feels like a choice. Firth plays the certainty

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without playing the menace, which is the harder and more

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interesting interpretation. The most dangerous people in any Spielberg film

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are not the ones who want to destroy things. They

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are the ones who genuinely believe they are protecting them.

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Josh O'Connor plays Daniel with a wide eyed sincerity that

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keeps him from becoming just another whistleblower archetype, the idealist

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who has seen too much and can no longer stay quiet.

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There is something almost reckless about his certainty that the

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truth belongs to everyone, and O'Connor plays that recklessness as

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a form of courage rather than naivete Emily Blunts. Margaret

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is the film's most complex creation. Her abilities arrive without

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warning or explanation, and she plays the transformation in fear

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and bewilderment rather than wonder. A woman who did not

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ask to become the person the story needed, and who

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becomes her anyway. Coleman Domingo plays Hugo Wakefield, the wardex

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defector who has been quietly engineering this moment for years,

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with a warmth and patience that makes him the film's

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moral center. He is the one character who has always

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known this day was coming and has been making himself

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ready for it. Yanish Kaminsky shot it. John Williams scored it.

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The technical infrastructure of Spielberg's late period is fully operational,

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which means the craft dissi peers into the film, you

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feel it rather than see it. Here is where Disclosure

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Day sits in the arc of everything Spielberg has made

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about this subject. Close Encounters in nineteen seventy seven was

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made by a thirty year old who believed the institutions

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managing the encounter were fundamentally benevolent. The scientists in that

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film are driven by wonder. The government is keeping the

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secret because it doesn't quite know how to share it.

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Yet the encounter, when it comes is pure and overwhelming

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and offered freely. Nobody is punished for the truth. Et

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in nineteen eighty two narrowed the frame. No institutions, no government,

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conspiracy at the center, just a boy and a creature,

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and the specific cruelty of the men in hasmats suits,

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who represent everything bureaucratic and fearful about the adult world.

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The truth in e t is personal, the loss is personal.

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The government isn't malevolent so much as Blind. War of

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the Worlds in two thousand and five removed Wonder from

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the equation entirely. There is no communication, no benevolence, no

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question of what they want. They come to destroy. The

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only truth is survival. Disclosure Day puts all three of

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those films in conversation and asks what if the question

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was never what is out there? But who decided what

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we were allowed to know about it? And when? And why?

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That is a twenty twenty six question in a way

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it could not have been a question. In nineteen seventy seven,

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the Trump administration released a trove of UAP files in

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the weeks before the film opened. Former press as that,

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and Obama said publicly that he believed aliens were real,

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though he'd seen no evidence during his time in office.

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The line between Wardex and the real conversation happening in

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congressional hearings and government press releases had never been thinner.

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Spielberg did not make a film that arrived at a

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convenient cultural moment. He made a film that the culture

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had been slowly building toward for fifty years, and he

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made it at the moment the building was complete. The

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film's argument, delivered through Hugo and through the final broadcast

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Margaret makes to the world, is simple and Spielberg to

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the core. The decision of what humanity can handle does

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not belong to Scanlon. It does not belong to Wardex.

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It belongs to the eight billion people who live here.

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That is not a new Spielberg idea Roy Neary in

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Close Encounters, Elliott in e t Captain Miller in Saving

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Private Ryan. Ordinary people placed inside something larger than they

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were built for, trusted to manage it. What is new

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in Disclosure Day is the anger beneath the idea, the

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implication that the people who kept the secret did not

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keep it out of caution, but out of control, and

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that the cost of that control has been paid by

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everyone else. The film's final word is spoken by Margaret

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live on air, looking directly into the camera, one word listen.

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In Close Encounters, the scientists and the aliens find a

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way to talk to each other through music, through the

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willingness to play something and wait to hear if something

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plays back. In e t what saves Elliott is his

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ability to feel what another being feels. Disclosure Day compresses

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both of those ideas into a single syllable and delivers

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it as an instruction not just to the characters in

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the film, but to the audience watching it. Spielberg is

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always believed that cinema is an act of listening, that

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the screen shows you something and waits to see if

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you receive it. He has been making that argument since Firelight.

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Some critics found the film less transcendent than Close Encounters,

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less willing to be purely amazed, more caught up in

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mechanism and conspiracy than in the raw weight of wonder

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that is a fair observation. It is also arguably the

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point Spielberg at seventy nine is not the person who

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stood in nineteen seventy seven and pointed a camera at

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the light. He has made Shindler's list, he has made

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saving private Ryan Wonder is not enough anymore. You have

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to listen too. Disclosure Day is not a perfect film.

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The screenplay carries enormous structural weight and occasionally buckles under it.

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Some characters are thinner than the ideas they carry. But

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in its best moments, it does what Spielberg has always

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done at his best. It takes something enormous and finds

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the human skins of it, the face looking up, the

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hand reaching out, the single word that carries everything. Next time,

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we move from what might be out there to what

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we've already done to each other down here, Minority Report,

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the future that sees you coming before you see yourself.

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But for now, remember this Disclosure Day isn't a film

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about aliens. It's a film about the sixty year question

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Spielberg has been asking since before he was a filmmaker,

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and what it looks like when he finally decides he's

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waited long enough for an answer,