Steven Spielberg’s new film, Disclosure Day, is now in theaters, and it comes with a few promises. Those promises are: it’s a movie about aliens, and it’s a movie where something about aliens is going to be disclosed. But what exactly is being disclosed, how does it happen, and what does it ultimately mean? Those are the questions you sit down in the theater for.
And, once you’ve done that, we thought you might like to go back through what happens in the end to discuss it in a bit more detail. Massive spoilers follow.
After many wonderful twists and turns, we learn that Daniel and Margaret were both abducted briefly as children and given crucial and superhuman abilities. Daniel could read and use the universal language of math, making it possible to communicate between the aliens and humans. Margaret was given the ability to see inside a person and understand their deepest emotions, helping the aliens understand humans. We watch Margaret’s abilities play out in several stunning scenes, including one where she appears to people as their dead or estranged loved ones. It instantly became one of my favorite Spielberg scenes ever.
With Daniel and Margaret now fully aware of the truth and their role in it, the pair and their friends head to the news station in Kansas City to begin disclosure day. Margaret gets on air so she can communicate with the viewers, and Daniel stays in the control room to upload and play all the files he stole from Wardex. (Side note: the teamwork and journalism in these scenes make them even more exciting and satisfying.)
Those files include irrefutable proof that aliens exist. We watch them crash at Roswell. We watch them communicate with government officials. We see them interrogated, and we see some wild, massive sci-fi spectacle that is right at home in a summer blockbuster like this one. I was half expecting Spielberg to start putting images from classic alien movies in there, maybe even some of his own, as a way to say “E.T. and Close Encounters took place in this world, the Steven Spielberg Cinematic Universe.” Alas, we don’t think that happens. But hey, it might. There were a lot of screens. We’ve gotta see it again.
Eventually, Hugo and his team wheel in the alien he helped to break out many years ago. The same alien who told Hugo about Daniel and Margaret. As he’s wheeled out and revealed to the world on live television, the alien whispers something to Daniel. Daniel then translates it to Margaret, and Margaret gets ready to deliver it to the world, each of them finally and fully embracing their destinies. Margaret comes on camera to pass along the message, but only says one word before the credits roll: “Listen.”
And so we too say, “Listen.” On the one hand, we understand the moment is a little frustrating. What did the alien say, right? We watched this whole movie waiting for this moment, and we never get to see any of the fallout. Well, we think there are a few reasons for this, and, in the end, ending the movie there is a much stronger, more profound choice.
The most obvious reason is that not even the greatest writer in the world could craft something as perfect and profound as what we’d expect this message to be. After all, this is the first communication ever between an alien species and the entire world. It’s almost impossible to quantify. So, leaving it blank lets us infer our own thoughts onto it. Whatever you want that alien to say, they did. However, you want the message to make you feel, feel it.
More importantly, though, was the reference back to a discussion between Noah and Hugo from earlier in the movie. Noah is still worried about the world being decimated by the release of this information, but Hugo disagrees. Hugo believes that the world will understand. He believes empathy is the most important message the aliens want to convey, and that empathy begins with simply listening to other people. Therefore, the word “Listen” at the end of the movie isn’t just Margaret delivering the message to the people in the movie; she’s delivering it to us. We should listen to others. We should hear others. We should do our best to make the world better.
In terms of plot, the obvious implication too is that this message does a lot of good. It lands like Hugo imagined, working to heal the world around them. We saw soldiers on the front lines of this massive potential war stop to watch the footage. We saw people all over, focusing on what was happening. Disclosure Day doesn’t show us the next day, but we think it was a better, more peaceful day indeed.
What did you think of the ending of Disclosure Day? Do you have another take? Let us know below.
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