I was excited to finally get into the theater for Steven Spielberg’s UFO blockbuster Disclosure Day . Spielberg’s first UFO film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE3K) his, blew me away when I was a space obsessed teenager back in the 1970s. And his version of War of the Worlds is one of the most terrifying alien invasion movies ever made.

Most of all, however, I’m an astrophysicist whose day job is studying the possibilities for extraterrestrial life. That job has given me plenty of exposure to the phenomena of UFOs and the very human culture that surrounds them. As my son and I sat down to watch Disclosure Day - popcorn bucket between us - I was ready to get blown away again.

That’s not exactly what happened (Alert… spoilers to follow).

Without doubt I thought Spielberg’s newest film was fun. The plot hummed along. The chase scenes were exciting. The acting was excellent (Emily Blunt shined). While it might have been a little long (clocking in at about two and half hours), for the most part I was entertained. I can certainly say that Disclosure Day is worth the price of the ticket. In the end, however, I was hoping for something going far beyond mere entertainment.

How the UFOs Arrived (in Culture)

In the 40 years between CE3K and today so much as changed when it comes to UFOs and their supposed connection to aliens. Back then, UFOs were very much not part of mainstream culture. Instead, they were the realm Wack-a-doodle tin-hat conspiracy theories. Now we live in the age where the government is taking UFOs (which have been rebranded as Unidentified Ariel Phenomena or UAPs) seriously. There have been multiple congressional hearings on the subject leading to explosive testimony claiming the US government has both crashed spaceships and their dead alien pilots in its possession.

And yet, in spite of all that, we still have zero scientifically verifiable evidence that UAPs have any link to anything extra-terrestrial. As a scientist who works in astrobiology and does science communications, the domain of UFOs/UAPs has been really frustrating.

I am on the record advocating for an open, transparent, scientific investigation of UAPs. At the same time, what used as evidence for a UAPs / Aliens connection doesn’t come close to basic standard science requires to claim a discovery of anything. It’s all just an endless parade of fuzzy blob images and videos accompanied by unverifiable personal testimony (and here I’ll note for the billionth time that personal testimony is the worst kind of evidence ).

What Disclosure Day Didn’t Disclose

So, what I was hoping for from Disclosure Day was a Spielbergian piece of expertly crafted high drama that also dealt with all the questions that’s swirl around UFOs. Questions like:

  • If the aliens don’t want us to know about them how come they are so terrible at hiding?
  • If the aliens do want us to know about them (which is the what the film claims) why don’t they just land on the White House lawn and announce themselves?
  • If the aliens have such super-powerful technology (as shown in the film) why are there spaceships crashing so often?
  • If the government has had so much contact and recovered so much alien technology how could there be no substantive leaks (like a physical piece of evidence) about it over 70 years?
  • If we have been reverse engineering technology from crashed alien spaceships (as the movie claims) where is that tech? Every gadget in the world today looks like stuff that follows directly from known science.

Hollywood Plot Lines and Reality

These are the tired questions every UFO skeptic asks. What UFO believers give back are story lines that sound like a Hollywood science fiction plot. Disclosure Day being a Spielberg film I was hoping for at least a really good Hollywood plot line that answered these questions.

Instead, the film breezes past them. I was really hoping for a gripping story that set all these big disclosure relevant questions into a formidable narrative frame. Instead, I mostly got a lot of chase scenes.

There were some peak moments though. The speech that Coleman Domingo made demanding an end to cover-ups was passionate and stirring. The scene when Emily Blunt speaks in alien tongues was deeply spooky. And the final scene of the big disclosure itself had its share of awe if it was a little goofy.

So, from the 10,000-foot view I would give Disclosure Day a “B”. It was good. It was fun. But like UFOs themselves I was just hoping for something more substantial.