The Harsh Reality of “Disclosure Day (2026)”—and Why it’s Wrong
One of the best decisions of my life, probably the best decision, was to get my AMC Stubs movie-goer pass. Four free movies a week, discounts on popcorn, and seemingly endless rewards. It is because of this movie pass that I am now in the theaters at least once a week. Unlike before, when going to the movies was a conscious decision to waste $17 on a movie I would rather watch at home, I now try to go see anything that even looks remotely interesting.
And that is how I found myself seated at Stephen Spielberg’s new movie Disclosure Day (2026).
Now, I love movies, and I, like many, have a soft spot for Spielberg. After the movie, I heard a group of teenage girls discussing Spielberg as “the guy that directed West Side Story” and it made me feel old despite the fact that I am probably only ten years older than them. (They then went on to say that the movie felt more “traditional,” and I am not quite sure what that means). Needless to say, I was excited. Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) is my favorite movie of all time, and something I consider to be a cinematic masterpiece.
Disclosure Day was definitively not that.
Now, there were lots of issues with Disclosure Day as a movie. Too many themes, glaring and ridiculous plot holes, hilariously bad CGI, goofy aliens, and atrocious American accents. But one of the main issues with the movie is how it ends. As a high school history teacher, I immediately clocked when, during a scene when the characters were showing “old footage” of aliens from the 1970s, an actor with a slight slump, receding hairline, and signature walk was impersonating a president I was very familiar with. Immediately I turned to my dad, who I forced to come to the theaters with me and asked, “Is that supposed to be Richard Nixon?”
And indeed, it was.
A prevalent theme in Disclosure Day (although it might have been hard to tell because they were balancing so many plots) was that people have the right to know the truth, even when it might cause chaos. As you can imagine, Watergate, although not by name, was briefly mentioned.
This tie into Watergate during a movie with aliens and a crying Emily Blunt was interesting to me, and also brings forward the movie’s main problem. At the end, the main characters defy the odds, go to a newsroom, and disclose to the American public the existence of aliens. They bring old footage, de-classified documents, and in a dramatic twist, even bring out the alien himself (themself? itself?). An awestruck American public is glued to their screens as the newscaster begins to cry, both at the revelation of aliens and also at the videos of the government abusing the creatures. The movie ends with a shocked and stupified public watching in awe as Emily Blunt’s character delivers the truth, despite the chaos it can cause.
More than the aliens, more than the glaring plot holes and unexplainable plot-armor-proof technology, that was the most ridiculous part of the movie.
During the uncovering of Watergate and the scandals surrounding it, there was a palpable feeling that something had to change. The American public was outraged, and there had to be consequences. For the first (and possibly last) time in American history, a president stepped down while in office because the crime committed was so egregious he knew it would not stand. The American public, especially the American media, held the government accountable, and they would not have been able to do that without the outrage and outcry of the American public.
How chilling of a revelation it was sitting in that theater to look at the movie and truly believe that if something like this ever happened, if we released proof that the government had been lying about extraterrestrial life or even something less significant and much more believable, the reaction of the American public would be apathetic at best and without a doubt disbelieving as a whole. In talking about the movie, my friend and fellow teacher pointed out the fact that every day we are bombarded with proof of atrocities being committed, of schools and children being bombed and shot in the street, and yet that is not enough to motivate us into action, so this definitely wouldn’t be.
And as much as it stings to admit, she is right.
Disclosure Day tries to convince us of a reality in which people not only still actively care about what is going on, but react to it. But in recent years, we have seen no proof of that. The empathy that was once felt for not just people in our own country but also people outside of it has taken a steep decline. The concept of a “global citizen,” one who cares and believes that the wellbeing of those outside of the borders of the United States, has all but evaporated. Trying to convince people to care for their fellow Americans with differing beliefs or socioeconomic status is hard enough, so you cannot expect me to believe that suddenly Americans would feel empathy towards beings from a whole other galaxy.
The other issue I took with the ending was the much too brief discussion of the validity of the information that was presented to the newsroom. It made me, as a viewer, go, “Even if an alien was dropped down in front of me, I wouldn’t believe it.” That speaks volumes about the world that we live in now. CGI, AI, and the many new softwares coming out with the ability to fabricate new realities should scare people senseless. I have typically seen two reactions to this new reality—those that believe it all or those that doubt it all.
The new reality is this—even if there is video evidence of someone of importance committing a crime or doing something wrong, all they have to do is shout “AI” and now there is plausible deniability. Imagine if, after the tapes were released, all Nixon had to say was “someone recreated my voice using AI,” and there was enough doubt and suspicion that the entire case no longer mattered. Now, those that are critical thinkers probably would not have fallen for it, but we must begin to face the reality that the ability to think critically is a skill that we are slowly but surely losing in society.
We are now living in a reality where truth is becoming abstract. People get to pick and choose what they believe to be true, and despite what in some cases appears to be an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary, people will always be armed with a conspiracy or claim of “AI” or other generative programs. No branch of government is safe. If the court makes a decision I don’t agree with, then all I have to say is they are biased. If a group of people I support commits an act of violence, then I create and spread the conspiracy that it was actually the other group that did it by pretending to be members of my group. If there was a video or tape of a crime being committed, then obviously it was doctored.
We are very close to living in a lawless society, one where either people can deny any wrongdoing as “an attempt by unseen and unknown actors to discredit them” or the much more dangerous alternative: people simply don’t care what is true anymore.
I recently had a conversation with someone about politics who basically said, “I don’t look into a politician’s personal life because, often, there’s something shady there.” It used to be that politicians were a representative of the people, but now we have just accepted the truth that they are corrupt, that they are morally questionable, and that when we go to the polls we just have to close our eyes, plug our nose, and vote for the lesser of two evils.
If Watergate happened today, it would simply be denied and/or excused. It would be impossible to seek justice and truth because those two things have now become flexible depending on if you like the perpetrator or not. We are extending the concept of “pretty privilege” to “whoever I agree with politically.” It makes it almost impossible to have real and true conversations with people regarding politics because truth has become subjective in nature. Arguments that used to be solvable can now go on in eternity because for things that we simply do not like, we just create false narratives to excuse them.
As someone who taught history for almost four years now, I see this phenomenon happening in real time in the classroom. In the past, I had students who did not believe in the moon landing and instead chalked it up to conspiracy. While this is a relatively harmless conspiracy, it does drive me particularly crazy. Gen Z in particular has a nasty problem with believing more outrageous truths for the sake of attention and “uniqueness,” so it is hard to tell when they are being serious about some of these more absurd beliefs or if they are attempting “rage bait.” Normally when something like that is said in the classroom, I debate with them, present the facts, and at the end of the year put on the Mythbusters episode about the moon landing as my final argument.
This year, however, I had a student tell me that their father did not believe in the Holocaust. I had friends tell me that they believe the Titanic was a conspiracy, and that they wholeheartedly believe both that Bush was responsible for 9/11 and that former President Barack Obama had a fake birth certificate. We are past the harmless and hilariously infuriating conspiracies like a fake moon landing or a flat Earth, and instead we are believing what once were considered fringe and are most certainly harmful conspiracies and turning them into our reality.
We are reaching a point where we are making history subjective, and I can only see this problem getting worse before it gets better. How long before it becomes “controversial” to say that the Holocaust did indeed happen? Already I have seen a trend where people are glorifying Hitler by taking the “edgy” stance of “yes, he was bad but . . .” Where once theories and viewpoints like this were seen as what they are—moronic and intentionally harmful towards communities affected—they are now growing in popularity and acceptance as a part of a narrative spreading that history and truth are whatever you want them to be. Edgy “Reddit” humor has now become a part of an alarmingly growing number of American’s realities, and I believe it is in part because of the way things are treated now: the truth depends on what you want to believe, not what is actually true.
Things that should never be taken as political are now political statements. “Love always wins” is now considered a political statement. Calling attention to children’s hospitals being bombed and populations starving because resources are being purposefully withheld is a political topic, and not what it should be: a moral crisis. News organizations taking stories of tragedy, criminal wrongdoing, and scandals and telling their viewers that showing empathy for those involved or wanting to hold people accountable is taking a political stance is dangerous, negligent, and morally damning.
So with all that being said, how can a movie expect me to believe that the population would care about or react to something so significant as “the government has been lying about and mistreating aliens for seventy years?” In reality, if this were to come out, I believe that many would choose to flat out not believe it, others would excuse it, and some would simply not care whatsoever. We have yet to see anything in the past ten years that has genuinely shocked our population into action, that has united us against a common cause or a common enemy.
Republicans and Democrats alike condemned Nixon for Watergate, an entire public united under the idea that what occurred was wrong, but nowadays there seem to be no consequences for any actions whatsoever. We are desensitized and demoralized to the corruption around us, and if we want to make any difference whatsoever, we need to learn to break free from that. We need to start engaging again, start fact checking and digging into sources. We need to encourage people to set a moral truth and foundation for themselves that they hold all politicians and influencers accountable to—not just the ones they don’t like. We need to stop encouraging and promoting dangerous and purposefully divisive ideas and influencers, and instead call them out on the damage that they are doing. We need to teach history the way that it happened, not the sanitized version that makes us more comfortable or pushes a specific narrative.
I always tell my students that in my classroom, it is not my job to tell you how to think or feel about something, rather it is my job to provide you with all the information and perspectives on an issue so that you can make an informed decision. While I follow standards and have topics I need to hit in my class, my main goal is that by the end of the year, my students are more empathetic and passionate people, and if I have done that then I have succeeded as a teacher.
Disclosure Day paints a picture of a society that cares enough to drop everything and react when something traumatic and life changing is revealed to them. While this is certainly not true of the society that we live in now, perhaps one day it could be. Perhaps we can rally together as a generation and decide that we care about truth, that we care about our country and the world around us, and that empathy is not weak or a political statement, empathy transcends that, empathy is what it means to be human.
