r/Spielberg

I read or heard somewhere that Peter Falk gave much resistance to Steven Spielberg directing an episode (Murder By The Book) because of his young age, believing him to be inexperienced and naive. After working together, Peter Falk admitted Spielberg was a “genius.” Later, in Mind Over Mayhem, the boy genius character is named Steven SPELLberg. Then, in Murder, Smoke and Shadows, the Hollywood director Alex is mocked for being very young and has a striking resemblance to a young Steven Spielberg. I couldn’t help but think one of both of these instances was an ode to Spielberg.

I kind of get the impression that he had the right instinct basically splitting it up into E.T. and Poltergeist (and also Gremlins to a lesser extent). From what we know of Night Skies, I think it likely would have been a very overstuffed film.

FORWARD

When this idea first started forming I was reluctant to push it hard. Spielberg movies usually wear their hearts on their sleeves, and part of me wanted to take the wonder and the “Listen” at face value. But the more we line the details up, the harder it becomes to ignore what the film is actually doing underneath. I’m not claiming this is the only reading, but I am claiming this film is deliberately engineered so you can’t sit comfortably with the conclusion.

WHAT IS DISCLOSURE DAY?

On the surface it’s a classic Spielberg UFO conspiracy thriller: whistleblowers racing to expose a decades long coverup while the world teeters on the brink of World War III.

Ordinary people against shadowy power.

Truth versus secrecy.

Empathy versus control.

But look just a little harder and the whole thing starts to feel… staged.

THE OPENING IS BLATANT

Of all the ways to open this movie, Spielberg drops us into a wrestling match. The crowd is roaring. The violence looks intense. The camera is right in the middle of the stomps and impacts. We even get a POv sequence. And then we pull back and meet Daniel who is using the noise as cover for the backpack exchange that kicks off the film.

Wrestling is kayfabe.

Everyone involved knows the fight is choreographed. The emotion is real, but the outcome is predetermined, and the audience buys in because the performance delivers.

This film is a wrestling match.

One side of that ring is Wardex. The other is Hugo’s faction. The desperate chase that follows for the next two hours is the same performance. The same kayfabe. The intention all along was for the information to get out when and how it does. Daniel and Margaret were being worked every step of the way.

Hugo says the aliens are calling the shots once and it is seemingly never brought up again.

THE TIMING IS NOT A COINCIDENCE

The world is on the brink of World War III. Actual conflict is erupting as Margaret takes over the news station. Disclosure doesn’t just happen to land at that moment. It interrupts it while the entire world is glued to their televisions or streaming live broadcasts from around the globe. Daniel is told explicitly he can not just dump the files on the internet. The how is just as important as the what.

MARGARET’S ACTIVATION

The cardinal flies in. The switch flips. And Margaret becomes unmistakably childlike. She doesn’t fully understand what’s happening. She speaks languages she doesn’t know she knows. She moves through the world with a wide-eyed, youthful openness. She describes the experience as surrendering to a current instead of steering.

The aliens modified and abducted her as a child. They kept the abilities dormant so that when she was activated her human heart reverted to a state of open mindedness only seen in an unjaded child. When they reactivate her, they restore the unguarded, receptive state they need for this plan to work. The reconstructed childhood home, the Disney song, the fairytale animals are all designed to pull the adult with agency back into the child who could be gently led.

THE DEAD AS TOOLS

Margaret walks through a facility full of armed men and forces them to see their dead or estranged loved ones. Scanlon sees his deceased wife. Others see children, mothers, people they haven’t seen in years. The guns lower. Empathy as a weapon. The most private human pain becomes leverage for the plan. Our fear of death. Our longing to traverse time and see lost loved ones again.

Exploited.

THE CROSS

Jane is under Noah’s psychic control via the alien device. She resists by praying in Latin, clutching her large ornate crucifix, and grinding it into her own palm until it bleeds. Classic stigmata. Later, when he’s forcing her to raise a knife against Daniel, she drives the blade into the exact same wound to break free again. Noah even quotes Christ at Gesthemane while he’s inside her head in an incredibly sinister and satanic manner. It also worth noting this particular quote from the Bible is about total surrender to a higher power “Not my will be done but Yours.”

Faith and self inflicted suffering are the only things that temporarily push the alien technology out. When the cross drops, the control wins out completely. The movie is not subtle about this.

THE TITLE CARD

When the title appears, the letters that form S O SURE fade in first. Not an accident. The movie opens by flashing the phrase that undercuts certainty before “DISCLOSURE DAY” even fully resolves.

THE QUESTION THE FILM REFUSES TO ANSWER

Every major beat is calibrated to leave one distinction blurry:

How would we know the difference between salvation and subjugation if the power offering it was so completely in control?

The aliens interrupt a world sliding into nuclear war. They deliver a message of empathy at the moment people most need it. They free themselves from decades of experimentation. The film stages the global reaction as collective awe. “Listen” lands like grace.

But the methods are far from pure for a species that supposedly values empathy so highly. They selected for abduction and two children whom are not only unable to consent but methods of deception fully utilized to get them to come without fuss.

They watched them for decades.

They restored one to a childlike openness so she would be a perfect unquestioning vessel.

They weaponized grief.

They ran a multi decade operation that treated the struggle between Wardex and the whistleblowers as kayfabe.

The power differential is absolute.

They never have to fully explain themselves.

They simply arrive with the much needed solution at the opportune moment and the means to enforce the conditions under which it will be received.

Spielberg has spent a career making us feel the wonder of contact. Here he seems to be asking what happens when the contact is so total, so far ahead of us, and so willing to shape the human (and perhaps nonhuman) players that the difference between being saved and being told to kneel becomes almost impossible to measure from our vantage point.

Margaret and Daniel experience real fear, love, and moral choice. The audience is invited to feel the uplift of the final broadcast. And yet the architecture underneath is the architecture of a higher will that decided the outcome long before the first frame.

IN CONCLUSION

The film never resolves the tone on purpose. It keeps the aliens benevolent at a surface level read in stated intent and unsettling in practice through closer observation. It lets the religious imagery both elevate and disturb. It opens with a staged fight and closes with a single word that could be either a gift or a command. The title card already asked the question the entire movie is built around:

Are you so sure you want this?

Now, it's interesting, putting the Tom Hanks factor aside, this does demonstrate that Steven Spielberg has had a hunger to make a romcom for a while. Also interesting: Spielberg and Hanks kind o' made a romcom... kind o'... with The Terminal. But I get it: The Terminal's not really a straight romcom, and I imagine Spielberg's itch to make a romcom has not entirely left him.

What do we think? Tom Hanks enjoyed his 70th birthday a month ago. Would you want to see an AARP romcom for Boomers? Maybe Tom Hanks opposite Tina Fey? Or, would Spielberg be on surer ground with stars who have not arguably "aged out" of the genre, in terms of commercial appeal?

I've long thought that Spielberg has been too hard on himself for decades regarding his inability to make a classic comedy. He needs a strong screenplay, but Spielberg films are teeming with pretty grand comedic moments, including the unlikeliest candidates such as Schindler's List and Lincoln. Spielberg's preternaturally gifted blocking and such would doubtless be a huge benefit to him in creating the comedic timing necessary for a film such as this to take off.

What are your thoughts?

https://preview.redd.it/z79r0zcub9ih1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c02a532f3a4e1fa107058eb984c43c18f0b0c084

I’ve seen this in a few of his films, where he gives us an opening shot that almost hints at something bigger and better to come…however, it’s a compare/contrast thing.

Here are three examples:

Hook: In the opening, we see a school production of Peter Pan, with low-tech effects and precocious children. Later on. We get our big-budget version pf the story with big-budget effects and kids with attitude.

Jurassic Park: We get something moving in the trees, only to see it’s a machine. The counterpoint to this is when we get our first full-view of the Brachiosaur amongst the trees later.

War of the Worlds: We see Ray handling a machine that moves cargo containers, a counterpoint to how primitive our machines are compared to the alien war machines that rise up out of the ground.

Any other scenes like these in his films?