One thing Steven Spielberg’s 2022 self-autobiographical masterpiece, The Fabelmans, revealed is that the filmmaker’s whole career may be a series of feedback loops. The divorced parents. The return to childhood. The awe and wonder at the unknown, undercut by the bitterness of reality. The train.
But if it is, then Disclosure Day is a beautiful culmination of those feedback loops — a synthesis of Spielberg’s entire sci-fi movie career (and then some) that turns that feedback into a brand new song. Sometimes it’s an unwieldy song, with a few too many ideas and obvious motifs. But it’s one that feels like the clear next step after a soul-baring film like The Fabelmans. Some might call it a return to form, for others, this is maybe a return to the overly familiar. But even though it calls to mind the best of Spielberg’s most iconic blockbusters, beneath its wildly entertaining crowdpleaser is a relentlessly hopeful treatise on humanity’s inherent capacity to embrace the unknown.
