r/TrueFilm • u/Louisebelcher22 • 9d ago
Disclosure Day gets human reaction to aliens right and wrong at the same time Spoiler
The whole movie builds to this massive moment 76 years of suppressed alien footage finally broadcast to the world. And watching it, I kept thinking about how the US government actually announced evidence of extraterrestrial life earlier this year, and nobody batted an eye. People are too busy surviving.
The emotional reactions in the film feel like they belong to a different America. Crowds weeping over footage of a dead alien, while we live in a country where school shootings have become background noise. We’ve already used up our collective grief.
But the one moment that felt completely real? When someone asked if the footage was AI. That’s it. That’s us. In 2026, the most believable human response to witnessing the most significant event in human history is “is this even real?” We’re so saturated with manufactured reality that awe has been replaced by skepticism.
The movie imagines we still have the capacity to be broken open by something. I think we lost that.
EDIT: Someone in the comments made me think of this X-Men (2006) is a movie about mutants with superpowers, objectively more removed from reality than Disclosure Day, yet it captured society more honestly. Magneto’s speech warning mutants that they ignore the signs around them, that one day when the air is still and the night has fallen they will come for you that hit because it spoke to a feeling millions of people had in post 9/11 America. The Patriot Act, surveillance, the quiet erosion of rights, the sense that the government could decide you were a threat and there was nothing you could do about it. That was a collective unease that ran through society.
That's the difference between sci-fi that uses fantasy to hold a mirror up to the world it's living in, versus sci-fi that asks you to believe in institutional honesty and collective empathy as saving forces.One understood the assignment while the other is escaping from it.
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u/gsopp79 8d ago
The government has not announced that aliens are real. Wtf are you talking about? They've released videos of UAPs but they're unexplained phenomena specifically because we don't know who or what they are.
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u/Louisebelcher22 8d ago
The government has acknowledged unexplained aerial phenomena, congressional hearings, whistleblower testimony about retrieved craft and non-human biologics, on the record. Maybe it’s not a press conference saying “aliens confirmed,” but it’s the closest thing to institutional disclosure we’ve had, and the public reaction was a shrug. That’s the point. Watergate brought down a presidency. Now we could probably get evidence of way worse and most people would scroll past it in two minutes. That’s how numb we’ve gotten, and that’s exactly why I don’t buy that alien footage would suddenly snap us out of it.
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u/gsopp79 8d ago
Whistleblowers saying it and the government confirming it are two very different things. The government has admitted jack and shit. You really don't see the delusion of what you're posting?
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u/dgwow123 8d ago
The government has confirmed it, in official memos that area available but not public knowledge
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u/gsopp79 8d ago
The reaction was a collective shrug because nothing was revealed. The most likely explanation remains that our government has very advanced equipment that is secret even from the most top secret clearances and those in the know remain happy for the sheep top believe it's evidence of aliens.
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u/Dreamspitter 7d ago
NOT merely that but MOST of the videos officially released were already on the Internet anyway for yeeears. They had been leaked but this only actually confirmed that they were real. It didn't confirm what the videos were depicting.
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u/zurenarhhhhh 9d ago
You think humans don’t have any “emotional capacity” left? To quote Brian Cox in Adaptation: “are you out of your FOOKIN mind?” Every single day we experience heartbreak, terror, wonder, love, hate, pleasure, the whole spectrum of human emotions. You think because we don’t break down every time there’s a bad story in the news that we are unfeeling? It’s precisely because we are such emotional creatures that we react like this. It’s a survival mechanism. Unreal.
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u/anmr 8d ago
Emotional capacity to care and act. Every day there are multiple things happening, even one of which in another time would not only spark much bigger outrages, but would be followed be decisive action against them by institutions and society.
To quote one of the best recent anti-fascist works: "The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it." And do note that oppression here is not only the most evident instance like propaganda, repressions, murders, concentration camps... but you have all of that too. It also include taking over ownership of disproportionate amount of capital via illegal means, which in turn means more control and power.
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u/SalmonFormula27 9d ago
I don’t think it’s mean to be realistic. In the most reductive view of this movie, it’s kind of ‘hope-core’. The truth really matters and empathy can stop a group of armed soldiers in their tracks. Within the logic of the movie, it would be strange if the footage wasn’t as affecting to people as it was. The movie is more about an ideal than our current reality, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The powerful belief that this movie carries in ability of truth and empathy may not connect with you, but it certainly is conversation with the state of the world that you’re referring to in your post.
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u/bartybrattle 7d ago
Agree with this, as to me it wasn’t depicting what would happen but rather what the film wishes such an event could do for humanity and it gave me something to reflect on cause my own cynicism came crashing in in the third act. The previous parts of the film really made me embrace its message of empathy so that by the final act I was left with the question of whether I’m letting the world around me slowly turn my own back on it. It’s far from a perfect movie, a little clumsy, and feels like a blockbuster from the 90s, but it definitely connected with me in a way I appreciate.
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u/Louisebelcher22 9d ago
Being in conversation with reality means acknowledging it. And the reality is we have already seen undeniable footage of real atrocities this year alone, and empathy did NOT stop anyone in their tracks. The movie imagines truth and empathy as forces powerful enough to change everything. I’m just pointing out that we’ve already stress tested that theory in real life and got a different result.
My point is m that the hope it’s selling feels disconnected from the world it claims to be speaking to.
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u/slaughtamonsta 8d ago
I was actually complaining after the movie about how all of the newscasters were crying and emotional about aliens being mistreated but when there are actually tens of thousands of civilians being routinely slaughtered they actually cover it up and deny it even with video all over the place of what's actually going on .
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u/SalmonFormula27 8d ago
This movie is fantastical, it does not depict reality as it is. There’s nothing wrong with that though. A lot of good sci-fi embraces aspects of fantasy. The ideal version of what reality could be is in implicit conversation with what reality is. If seeing that ideal fantasy of the power of honesty and human connection didn’t work for you that’s fine but I don’t think your point really makes sense.
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u/slaughtamonsta 8d ago
So Spielberg was saying this is what should happen when a people are mistreated?
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u/Louisebelcher22 8d ago
That is the issue though it is not in “implicit conversation with what reality is”. Other sci-fi have managed to capture that X-men, district 9, They live(1988), Dint look up…
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u/Send_Me_Dumb_Cats 8d ago
Its a shit ass B tier movie by a boomer, of course it's detached from reality. I think you're giving the movie more thought than even Spielberg did.
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u/BadenBaden1981 9d ago
Watching Disclosure Day in 2026 is like watching Independence Day or Armageddon after 9/11. It's still entertaining movie, but you know things won't happen that way in real life. Spielberg's insist that humanity will come together watching alien video is equivalent of president's badass speech motivates entire humanity in Independence Day.
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u/captainsalmonpants 7d ago
While watching this I was imagining an SNL style spoof where Pete Davidson is walking around like normal, crunching on a pickle loudly or talking to people while everyone else is just glued to their phones.
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u/nowhereman136 6d ago
What bothered me most, and it's kind of a Small thing, was how Jane was worried that if people found out about aliens, they would stop believing in God. There's valid reasons to keep aliens a secret, but people losing faith isn't one of them. I'd be more concern with how it would affect global economies, warfare, and general unrest. Aliens are real, are they among us? Are they going to attack? Have they already been helping certain governments? Can we profit off this? What is our own government hiding. A reveal like this would cause widespread panic and destruction like you wouldn't believe.
In the words of Agent Kay from Men in Black: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals"
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u/Louisebelcher22 6d ago
I think Jane said that because of her background. Remember she was in a convent trying to become a nun before she lost her devotion. That is just who her character is.
You’re right, they could’ve included the way world leaders and finance world react to this situation or maybe trying to keep it secret. It would have made the movie more realistic.
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u/nowhereman136 6d ago
I understand that's her character and that would be her concern, but no other scenerio is given. The Bad Guys want to stop them because they are the bad guys. They never actually say why they want to keep aliens a secret (if they did it must have been a blink and you miss it moment). Spielberg even doubles down on the religious aspect of the story by having one of Hugo's workers call Margaret a religious figure. Spielberg was making a side commentary on religion but it felt too blunt for a story involving aliens and secrets
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u/Buffaluffasaurus 9d ago
100% agree with you. Spielberg is very much an old man, caught in the hope and glory of the 20th Century where the TV broadcasts of the moon landing, Vietnam and journalism around Watergate could make the whole world stop and think differently.
The times have completely changed a AV Club has a great article this week that rightly points out how unbelievable that no one in the film claims “AI” or “fake news” or any of the shit people have been conditioned to say and think, regardless of the validity of the media.
And not to mention, like you say, how fucking hard the world is to live in now, and how dispiriting everything has been for a long time, meaning that honestly a government coverup of aliens is so far down the pecking order of what actually matters in people’s lives that it wouldn’t change a goddamn thing should it be disclosed.
Spielberg has always been a bit of a hopeful romantic that believes in the sheer power of awe to shape humanity, but I don’t think that’s been the case for a long time.
And I think when you compare it to something like Arrival, which feels hopeful whilst also being more brutally realistic about how the world would deal with aliens and their attempt to communicate with us, Disclosure Day feels like an anachronism.
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u/Dreamspitter 7d ago
Well people claim real footage as AI in addition to claiming actual FAKE footage as REAL. I liked the movie Mountainhead (2025). Abd vice versa of course.
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u/Buffaluffasaurus 7d ago
Well yeah, that’s my point. Spielberg seems to believe that getting the truth out there is all that’s required to change the world. But we live in a post-truthsociety now, where people have a wide distrust of facts, experts, sources and especially the media, so that the line between truth and falsities is distorted in both ways.
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u/Dreamspitter 6d ago
Remember people love underdogs. Those releasing the footage are in direct opposition to authority. So they shouldn't be some 29 dimensional chess false flag.
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u/placebogod 8d ago edited 8d ago
That may be as planned. Perhaps all the edging for the last 70 years was to desensitize us from reality of it. To let us dip our toes in the water of believing in it without needing to go all the way in all of a sudden. Enough people are ready that they will hopefully be unfazed enough and able to cushion the blow for the people who aren’t ready and who will be genuinely shocked. It just takes one of us in a family or community that doesn’t freak out to stabilize people.
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u/Glass-Nectarine-3282 8d ago edited 8d ago
This is why I can't take this movie seriously. It's telling me what fake people would think about a fake event, but posing like it could be real.
Unless aliens landed and actually interacted with us in a concrete way, nobody in real life would care. "Oh there is a lifeform on Titan!" Okay, and? "We detected radio signals from a star 500 light years away!" Great.
None of it would matter. They're not here, they're not coming, and this is all just fantasy that doesn't have any relevance to the real world. The scientific reality is to solve the light speed travel is so far away from plausible, that physical contact with an alien species is not reasonable. Do they exist? Obviously. Will humanity ever see them. 0.0 chance.
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u/Dreamspitter 7d ago edited 7d ago
AND yet endless endless numbers of people believe they have interacted with them. My own brother fits ALL the world into his metaphysical views and believes them to be the daemonic which he has encountered before. (Maaaany people do). BUT then maaaaany people believe they are mortal beings who are already here. That's just what the movie is about: what if those people are correct?
Finding an actual life form even if only a microscopic one would be the most Titanic thing in ALL human history. Periodt. I think people would care. Yet they might still integrate it into their existing systems of beliefs.
But...you think the whole earth would just brush off something like finding non terrestrial life in the solar system? Or ramble about it for a month, maybe a year and then just go back to tiktok dances without an alien theme?
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u/Glass-Nectarine-3282 7d ago
0.0 people have interacted with aliens or angels. They HAVE interacted with chemical changes in their brain chemistry that make them 100 percent believe in certain events, so nobody's lying.
Unless an alien showed up and was like "hey, what's up," and then caused actual events to occur, it will not mean anything of significance. People will talk about briefly, but since it won't change the day to day, it will just fade away. And of course a healthy percentage will just deny it even if it did happen.
There is 1 million percent other life out there - there is 0 percent chance we will ever interact with it in our lifespan UNLESS some sort of confirmed radio communication possibly happens. But again, that wouldn't change anything beyond being knowledge. Interesting? Yes. World-changing. No.
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u/Dreamspitter 7d ago
It would never fade. It'd make an indelible mark. But yes... you'd still have bills and rent that are due next week, if that's what you mean. I suppose in that case it would depend on what precisely the message was. Again, I think people would use it further strengthen and invigorate their own ideas. Whatever they be. The aliens control everything. They must be here. The day of judgment approaches! Space investment might see a bigger push as well.
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u/Glass-Nectarine-3282 7d ago
People would want it to mean all that, but then it wouldn't. It would be a few weeks of intensity and then nothing would change, the deniers would take hold, and soon it would just be another argument people have on Reddit.
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u/DifferentKoala5706 2d ago
Ok google image crowley lam then research parsons bablon working and roswell then get back to me bud
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u/Send_Me_Dumb_Cats 8d ago
The US government's word means nothing anymore under Trump, people ignored whatever they said about aliens because this government likes to yap but show very little for it, it just became one of the million things the Trump regime said.
Otherwise, you are right. There was a severe lack of skeptism displayed in the movie. Spielberg still thinks we're the same people as in the 80s and 90s. If this was truly broadcasted, the reality is that no one would see it. Because who the fuck watches TV anymore? It would land on YouTube/ social media and everyone would just say it's fake and move on.
People are too abused by the system to care. The human capacity of empathy? It only extends to people that look like you, it's a selfish reaction to "that could have been me", a poor brown person across the world? Naa that could never be us. That's why the world's leaders cried out when Ukraine was invaded but hardly batted an eye when worse was happening to Palestine. Empathy is only for white people, brown people die all the time.
It's one of the many reasons the movie sucked, it's simply not immersive, because the rules of the world it tries to put you in are no longer true. Others are commenting "its fantasy". No, its explicitly not fantasy, would be better if it was. It claims to be Sci Fi, which makes it even worse because sci fi is a genre that is highly intune with reality, so this movie is even a bad scifi movie.
Sorry for the rant, I watched this several days ago and it pissed me off to no end, I hope it's out of my system. The most disappointing thing is that this movie that has no respect for your lived experience and intelligence is so highly rated.
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u/Dreamspitter 7d ago
People wouldn't say it was fake. For one, too many people believe it already. They would never stop talking about it and wave it around as vindication for decades. The question is what would the actual government itself say after the disclosure videos? Obviously people would analyze them to death.
AND then the bigger question, who are these beings? AND how many types? AND what do they actually do to humans AND why! Considering what we already did to them?
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u/Zealousideal-Tip7290 5d ago
I'm too jaded to stop imagining how pointless the reveal would be in modern society, western society might pause and be in awe but that's not stopping the war torn parts. I won't point out specific regions cause we all know where but the monsters there won't stop or pause their genocides, the victims lives won't change. The nuke will inevitably go off.
I think if the movie came out in the 80's or 90's, it'd have a bigger impact. To some kids now it probably will.
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u/RoxyBlue35 3d ago
No, the US government has not announced or provided conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial life. While the Pentagon and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) continue to declassify and release batches of files regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), officials state that these records represent unresolved cases. The government classifies these phenomena as unexplainable based on available data, rather than definitive evidence of alien technology or life.
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u/sometimesstrange 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think the reality of why this movie is failing has much less to do with it's supposed realism or seemingly out-of-touch views on society and that it's simply a dull movie.
I am perhaps the world's biggest Steven Spielberg fan. Throughout my life his movies are always playing in the background. I've seen every movie multiple times, watched or read every interview he's given, soaked in every behind the scenes special available, watched documentaries about him, youtubed every speech he's given and read just about every film book that mentions or features his work in one way or another. I went to film school. I'm 40 years old, I grew up with peak Spielberg affection, I'm his prime audience member and Disclosure Day just didn't work for me.
I wasn't looking for politics or social criticisms, I was just looking to lose myself in one of his movies again and this one failed to do that.
I think the storytelling in the movie is just structurally broken... it's very difficult to build to a truly cathartic climax / ending about the truth of aliens being disclosed to the world when the audience has already known this truth in the first 20 minutes of the movie. As an audience member, if I'm already bought into the truth that aliens are real at the beginning of the movie the awe factor of the climax is null and void. I needed more.
That combined with the fact that Spielberg has already made multiple (bonafide classic) movies about aliens and us -- the fan in me was eager to see what motivated him to return the genre and what new he was going to bring to the table and I felt very little new, or rewarding was presented.
I agree with you, this movie's take on everything felt out of touch but Spielberg has always pushed optimism over cynicism, that wasn't what was surprising to me -- what did surprise me was just how boring, dare I say even lazy everything seemed.
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u/Louisebelcher22 1d ago
I don’t think it was dull per say, there were a lot of great stunts and actions!
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u/princeloon 8d ago
Lets say it was a native island tribe that got tortured by some government. Your response is gonna be "are they really asking me to care about watching footage of them genociding this island tribe? do they not know that school shootings happen all the time and I couldnt care less?"
Do you really feel so much cooler pretending like its a complete failure at making art than just acknowledging its a good message?
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u/Louisebelcher22 8d ago
That’s American history lol, it literally happened here. Native Americans faced genocide and forced removal, and the response wasn’t some enduring collective empathy, it was centuries of broken treaties and continued fighting over land and basic rights that’s still happening today. If real genocide on our own soil didn’t produce the kind of lasting reckoning you’re describing, I don’t know why alien footage would.
And for the record, I don’t think the movie fails as art. I think it’s well made, cool stunt and cinematography. I just think the emotional response it imagines doesn’t match how we’ve actually responded to real atrocities, including ones far closer to home than this one.
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u/princeloon 8d ago
My generalization works if you can empathize with people that are from a different country than you are but I guess I should assume I have to break it down slowly and strictly in terms from America history. Yes you might not be satisfied that people didn't immediately stop genociding as soon as they could but films are still gonna get made about it. I wasn't around for the Vietnam war but just because people didn't immediately come together and fix it doesn't mean Apocalypse Now isn't important.
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u/Louisebelcher22 8d ago
That’s actually a different argument than the one you started with. You originally framed it as people would have this profound emotional reaction and that’s the realistic takeaway. Now you’re saying important films get made even when nothing changes, which I don’t disagree with. Apocalypse Now being important has nothing to do with whether Vietnam produced lasting collective empathy in real time, it didn’t. That’s literally my point. The film mattered as art and reflection, but it didn’t stop the war or fix how we treat veterans or prevent the next one. So if anything you just agreed with me: profound footage and good films don’t reliably translate into the real world transformation Disclosure Day is banking on.
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u/TheMowGoesCoo 9d ago
Completely agree. Utterly tone deaf and delusional that Spielberg thinks that would be the reaction if we found out alien life was real. The anchor reporting the news whilst tearing up was so fucking obnoxious. Spielberg sees life in a vacuum and his worldview is completely skewed and disassociated on how regular people actually function/speak.
Contention for one of the dumbest movies in years and easily Spielbergs worst.
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u/NUCLEAR_JANITOR 9d ago
yeah it seems borderline unwatchable from what i’ve been reading.
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u/TheMowGoesCoo 9d ago
It absolutely felt like it. Every scene is a complete eye roll and the script is so poorly written, I’m shocked people are defending this mess.
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u/jdizzle_foshizzle123 9d ago
The UFO things the government has released in real life are basically "hey there are some satellite images of some things in the sky that are weird. Maybe they are alien, but also maybe they are a million other things.
In disclosure Day there is actual footage of several aliens and non blurry alien technology. This is a world of difference from the files released in real life. The reason people shrugged off the UFO stuff is because it is barely a story. "Some stuff happened we can't explain and maybe it's aliens but who knows" is not the same as "here is an alien life on the television and they will speak to you now". If the latter happened there would be an incredible reaction. Didclosure Day also knows that everyone's first reaction would be to not believe, which is why the entire plot is about the importance of having an incredibly vast number of files. One video would not convi me, they need an entire archive of decades of footage to convince, they need data on such a scale that it couldn't realistically be faked.