The title of Disclosure Day tells you everything you need to know. In Steven Spielberg’s latest sci-fi blockbuster, there’s never any question of whether extraterrestrial life exists (it does) or whether we’ve made contact with it (we have). Instead, Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp wonder: What would happen if humanity was presented with irrefutable proof of alien life? Would it exacerbate existing global conflicts, or make them seem petty and pointless? Would we turn from religion en masse, and start worshipping the aliens instead?
The film’s finale brings us back to the newsroom at the (fictional) Kansas City TV station KCXE, where the truth — never doubted, but only briefly seen up to that point — is revealed to humanity en masse thanks to a local server and a global network of live 24-hour TV channels. And while the story ends without definitively answering its big existential questions, it does point in a direction that’s very Spielbergian.
