Steven Spielberg has spent much of his career looking to the stars. From the wonder of Close Encounters of the Third Kind to the childhood adventure of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, few filmmakers have done more to shape the way Hollywood approaches stories about humanity making contact with something beyond our world. Even War of the Worlds, though it was an adaptation, offered a glimpse into Spielberg's fascination with extraterrestrial life.
Now, Spielberg's latest alien movie has finally made the jump from theaters to streaming. Disclosure Day began streaming exclusively on Peacock on Friday, Oct. 9, giving Spielberg fans a new opportunity to catch the director's latest exploration of alien conspiracies. The sci-fi epic arrived in theaters on June 12, where it earned mostly favorable reviews and became one of the more prominent releases of the summer.
The movie earned a respectable $244 million at the global box office. Disclosure Day follows several people who find themselves caught up in a decades-old conspiracy surrounding humanity's encounters with extraterrestrial life. Josh O'Connor plays Daniel Kellner, a cybersecurity expert who steals information from the powerful corporation Wardex, revealing an almost 80-year-old government cover-up involving alien visitations.
He soon finds himself on the run from Wardex agents determined to recover the information before it can reach the public. At the same time, Emily Blunt plays Kansas City meteorologist Margaret Fairchild, who becomes entangled in the conspiracy after unknowingly broadcasting a message written in an alien language. Her path eventually crosses with Daniel's, while Colman Domingo's Hugo Wakefield — a former member of the conspiracy and prominent advocate for disclosure — attempts to help expose the truth.
The result is part alien-contact movie, part conspiracy thriller, and part chase movie. Polygon's review described Disclosure Day as something of a return to the Spielberg of the 1980s, combining the pursuit and suspense of movies like E.T. with the otherworldly pull of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The review also praised the film's sense of wonder and its more sentimental side, arguing that it comes surprisingly close to the classic Spielberg formula.
Rather than simply treating extraterrestrials as an invading threat, Disclosure Day is built around the idea that the truth about alien life belongs to everyone — and that learning we're not alone could fundamentally change how humanity sees itself.
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