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‘Disclosure Day’ and Spielberg’s Judeo-Christian Alien Myths
Between Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. (1982), War of the Worlds (2005), and now Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg, 79, has been making alien movies for half a century. His latest may not be as cinematically groundbreaking or narratively focused as some of his earlier alien movies, but it’s probably the timeliest.
The film’s release comes on the heels of the U.S. Department of War’s launch of a UFO website and declassification of (nothingburger) UFO files, as well as a bizarre stunt in which the White House teased a sci-fi-branded aliens.gov, only for it to be a website about tracking illegal immigrants. Politics and entertainment are blurrier than ever, and Disclosure Day’s “how would proof of aliens undermine religious belief” question is ripped from recent sensationalistic headlines.
Would the discovery of alien life really be faith-shattering? One character in Disclosure Day (a former novitiate nun played by Bono’s daughter Eve Hewson) argues, “People will see [aliens] as deities. They’ll stop believing in God.” Another nun character is less threatened by the idea: “Why would [God] make such a vast universe, yet save it only for us?”
The speculative theological questions are intriguing. But ultimately, the chief drama in Disclosure Day isn’t explicitly religious as much as epistemological. This is a movie about the battles over truth, information, and revelation. The antagonists want to keep the full truth hidden from the public. The whistleblower protagonists fight for full disclosure. Truth isn’t proprietary, the film’s thesis seems to be. It belongs to everyone and should never be blocked. Any act to disclose the truth, the film suggests, is an act of grace. Illumination is an act of love.
Spielberg’s Judeo-Christian Storytelling
Disclosure Day weaves the stories of two primary protagonists: a Kansas City weather personality, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), who suddenly starts to speak in different languages, and a rogue cybersecurity expert, Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who seeks to reveal a trove of top-secret government files. Both become vessels of an unknown power that ultimately drives them together. Along the way, they narrowly escape bad guys in a few well-executed action sequences.
Courtesy Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
But Disclosure Day (rated PG-13 for language and some violence) isn’t chiefly about the action or thrills. It’s rather about ideas and intriguing questions. Are all the ideas coherent? Not really. The movie introduces more ideas and questions than it answers—more mysteries than it has time to explain. But I’d rather have a film that underexplains rather than the opposite. A movie that evokes wonder is more valuable than one that feels perfect.
Spielberg’s Jewish identity has always deeply shaped his cinematic storytelling, and Disclosure Day is no different. In a way, his abiding thematic interest in aliens could be read as a sci-fi reimagining of Judeo-Christian beliefs: a supernatural deity who interacts with humanity in astonishing, sometimes fearsome ways. The film’s script—cowritten by Spielberg and his Jurassic Park collaborator David Koepp—is unwieldy but full of fascinating biblical parallels and allusions.
Spielberg’s Jewish identity has always deeply shaped his cinematic storytelling, and Disclosure Day is no different.
The movie alludes to the New Testament in its depiction of “spiritual gifts” of sorts, like speaking or interpreting tongues, and performing signs and wonders, in service of advancing a new message the world needs to hear. The film’s setting in an unraveling world full of “wars and rumors of war” evokes the apocalyptic scenes of Revelation.
Disclosed Truth as Exodus-Style Freedom
But mostly, Disclosure Day strikes me as a riff on Exodus. The world’s population is enslaved in the “bondage” of withheld truth. The villain, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), is a Pharaoh-like tyrant who heads a secretive corporation (Wardex) devoted to keeping the masses ignorant. He’s a hard-hearted man who often waffles between giving up control and reasserting it.
Courtesy Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
A seemingly supernatural force (aliens) intervenes, calling two chosen leaders—Margaret and Daniel—to be prophets, intermediaries, and deliverers in the vein of Moses and Aaron. They perform “signs and wonders” throughout the film, not from their own power but as vessels to display the supernatural power of the aliens. There’s a device that functions like Aaron’s rod in Exodus: a sort of talisman used to perform supernatural wonders. There’s even a scene of hail!
Most of Disclosure Day feels like an extended chase sequence that builds to the “Red Sea” moment of the actual Disclosure Day—triumphant deliverance from the bondage of ignorance into the liberation of revealed truth. Throughout the film, Margaret and Daniel are led supernaturally toward that Red Sea deliverance in a way that echoes the pillars of cloud and fire.
Most of Disclosure Day feels like an extended chase sequence that builds to the ‘Red Sea’ moment of the actual Disclosure Day.
Margaret frequently describes the feeling as being a “passenger,” not the driver. It’s not scary to her and she just “goes with it,” like she’s in a “flow.” This made me think of God’s sovereignty and the freedom that comes when we surrender to his lead—however unnerving it may feel at times. Indeed, Blunt—whose acting here is the best of her career—makes surrender to sovereign guidance look beautiful.
Notably, another character in the film explicitly references Luke 22:42 and Jesus’s posture to his Father’s will: “Not my will, but yours, be done.” The film evokes numerous Old Testament scenes of prophets and chosen leaders who do great things not because they’re great but because they’re willing. Margaret says at one point in the film, “I will not be anyone’s religion.” She’s an instrument, not an idol.
It’s compelling to watch characters moved around a high-stakes chessboard by a benevolent force, even as others are manipulated by evil forces. This is a spiritual battle. Will we be vessels for good or evil?
God Who Reveals
Some spoilers follow.
A script’s final line is often an interpretive key to the whole film. In Disclosure Day, the last word is “listen.”
Given the film’s Pentateuch allusions, “listen” made me think of Deuteronomy 6:4 (“Hear, O Israel . . .”), arguably the central verse in Judaism. Even as it’s spoken by an alien in this film, there’s a clear parallel to the Judeo-Christian God of Scripture, a self-revealing God who graciously reveals, rather than hides, his character.
We don’t see a “Sinai moment” in the film. Spielberg doesn’t specify whatever revelation follows the invitation to “listen.” The film ends merely by observing that this alien form—this God proxy—speaks, wants to communicate with us, desires to self-disclose. This ending left me reflecting on the beauty and miracle of a God who initiates communication with us, illuminates our unknowing, and “will guide [us] into all the truth” (John 16:13). We can’t know everything about God. We don’t deserve to know anything. That we know some things is the result of sheer grace.
Courtesy Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
The film’s beautiful moments of human-to-human communication (chiefly in Blunt’s character) also made me marvel at the way we, God’s image-bearers, reflect his relational, communicating character. As in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016)—a “benevolent aliens” film that feels like a clear reference point—Disclosure Day celebrates the gift of communication, this miraculous means of knowing and being known, seeing and being seen.
Light and eyes are key visual motifs in Disclosure Day. Both speak to the wonder of communication as a bridge between the darkness of unknowing to the light of truth, from the fears and conflict wrought by misunderstanding to the hope and communion that clarity brings.
Earth-Shattering News
Disclosure Day is a sincere and hopeful film, but what’s the source of that hope? Does humanity have the capacity to overcome its divisions and misunderstandings if it just prioritizes empathy enough? If that’s Spielberg’s hope, it feels naive. But I suspect his “alien intervention” plot hints at the idea that humanity’s only true hope is in the divine rescue story Scripture tells—the God who doesn’t leave humanity to walk in darkness but graciously shines a “great light” (Isa. 9:2), who doesn’t leave us to wander in the wilderness but graciously shows us the way (Deut. 1:33).
Disclosure Day celebrates the gift of communication, this miraculous means of knowing and being known, seeing and being seen.
The film’s climax shows how the world would react to “disclosure” of alien visitations and presence among us. Billions immediately stop in their tracks, eyes glued to screens as the news is broadcast live. News anchors get emotional, at a loss for words. The world shares a moment of dumbstruck awe at news that changes everything, news that reframes reality itself.
But hasn’t news like that already arrived? The Christian gospel—the good news that God visited us, became one of us to save us, died and rose again, offering the gift of eternal life—changes everything and reframes reality. But does this news stop us in our tracks as it should? That’s the convicting question raised by the final 15 minutes of Disclosure Day.
We don’t have to hope or wonder at the prospect that we “are not alone” in the universe. We already know we aren’t alone. In his grace, God saw fit to reveal himself and dwell among us. “Disclosure Day” already happened: “In the beginning” in creation (Gen. 1:1), to the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, in the person of Jesus, in the revelation of Scripture.
The question for us is the question Spielberg’s film ends with: Are we listening?