Alien Blockbusters Need a Second Thought

Steven Spielberg’s latest sci-fi opus entered theatres a few weeks ago and might be slinking away in short order amidst stifled laughter and “OK, boomer” jeers.

Straining for profundity might be among the kinder things one could say about Disclosure Day, and not without reason.

The movie comes out of a long Spielbergian obsession with aliens. Unfortunately, Disclosure Day ain’t E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Nor does it even come close to the operatic grandiosity of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Traces of both these earlier films are on display as the director rifles through his greatest hits in Disclosure, laying the schmaltz on thick, like spackle over drywall. Little wonder that people hooted when they were supposed to be wonderstruck.

To be fair, the first third of the film contains many hallmarks of the master. There’s the mixture of the uncanny with the everyday, casual conversations interrupted by deep weirdness, government conspiracies and ordinary people thrust into the maelstrom of world-changing events.

But all the usual ingredients fail to rise. It could also be that there’s a little too much going on; too much icing, too much candied fruit and cream filling amongst the usual Spielberg sponge cake.

While the start of summer blockbuster season usually opens a door to over-the-top movie confections, Disclosure Day is a mostly a dud. Burnt on the edges and raw in the middle. The political moment is ripe for a more pointed critique, not a squishy business about coming together. But this being a Spielberg joint, maybe it’s silly to expect a weightier response to how his country is treating newcomers — namely “illegal aliens” — these days.

A study in underwhelm

In the film’s opening, the world stands upon the precipice of Armageddon. A war with North Korea has everyone on edge. But the global population doesn’t realize that it isn’t this planet’s inhabitants they ought to be concerned with, but creatures who aren’t from around here.

This bit of information has been carefully excised from the official narrative by a little-known arm of the U.S. government called the Wardex Corporation. Like many shadowy operations, Wardex has been happily doing dark deeds under cover of secrecy, until they are undone by one of their own. There’s a whistleblower in the ranks about to sound Horatio’s horn about one of the most badly kept secrets of the past few decades: the aliens are here.

That the American government has allegedly shielded the public from this information since 1947, when interstellar visitors turned heads near Roswell, New Mexico isn’t exactly a new concept.

So how to spruce up an old idea?

Spielberg throws in some theological debate to add spice. The idea that humans, supposedly God’s favourite creation, will be displaced from their rightful place in the universe by the existence of other sentient beings, is one aspect.

Another is that refugees, wherever they hail from, aren’t welcome in the U.S. This is a rich tranche of potential exploration. But rather than take a closer look at these encounters, the film frontlines the usual stuff of power and profit. And of course, weapons.

There is a fair amount of exposition in the opening act before the narrative settles into the usual stuff of run, run, chase, chase, shoot, shoot as the whistleblowers are set upon by legions of agents in black SUVs and sunglasses.

In the film’s penultimate moment, the forces of truth, justice and interstellar communion meet on a local broadcaster, and the world is glued to its phones. All the heft and thunder of the previous rising action falls away, and the conclusion is, as the kids say, “meh.”

It’s equivalent to ending an orchestral symphony with a kazoo raspberry.

Spielberg is pushing 80, and one must give the superstar director some credit for keeping on keeping on.

But if you want to see how to truly organize to make life better for refugees, I recommend another, infinitely better film, Everybody to Kenmure Street.

A real story of hope and resistance

I have rarely seen a documentary this rousing of late. Everybody to Kenmure Street debuted at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and won the Sundance World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Civil Resistance.

The events depicted in the film took place in 2021, but one could easily imagine them happening in Minnesota or Texas right now.

One morning in a working-class area of Glasgow, the U.K.’s Home Office and Immigration Enforcement, with the support of the Scottish police, attempted to take two men into custody in a pre-dawn raid. That the authorities chose the first day of Eid-al-Fitr to enact the raid was an odd choice, but it had the effect of upping the ante. When the residents discovered what was happening, word spread quickly.

Among the first on the scene was an individual who came to be known as “Van Man.” The unnamed man crawled under the police vehicle, wrapped his arm around the car’s axle and refused to be budged. Without his immediate action, the story might have had a very different outcome.

As news of the incident spread, all kinds of people got involved, from a long-haired highschooler on his way to a biology exam to the local imam, and eventually Roza Salih, a member of the famous Glasgow Girls activists. Salih was part of a campaign that helped to end child detention in the U.K., when a friend was arrested and detained by immigration forces in 2005.

Director Felipe Bustos Sierra, a resident of the neighbourhood, sums up not only the events, but more importantly what preceded them, all the way back to the people and industries that gave the Kenmure Street its name.

That Glasgow’s cultural, social and even architectural foundations were built with profits from the Transatlantic slave trade adds another startling layer to the story.

As the citizen crowds on Kenmure Street grew and far outnumbered the police, everyone present seemed to be filming the action. The documentary makes excellent use of footage taken on cellphones and overhead drones.

Another remarkable aspect of the day was the speed and efficiency of self-organizing. As one man says: “They had the time. We had the water.” A nearby bus shelter was quickly transformed into a battle station, filled with medical supplies, water, crisps and a giant iced cookie.

In the film, the anonymous Van Man is played by actress Emma Thompson and the nurse who comes to his aid by Kate Dickie. These two individuals didn’t seek the spotlight; they just wanted to help out. The rest of the people in the film are neighbours, friends and a lone politician who navigates the political intricacies of the day with a forthright courage and clarity that would put most elected officials to shame.

A week after seeing Kenmure Street, I am still thinking about the film and feeling better about humanity.

On the other hand, Disclosure Day faded into irrelevance before I’d even left the theatre.

Turns out that hard, gritty reality is infinitely more interesting and hopeful than fictional accounts of alien invasions.

“People need to hear a story like this now,” activist Pinar Aksu told the Guardian about Everybody to Kenmure Street.

“We don’t always have a victory at the end of our stories, but hope is all we’ve got.”

Sometimes, hope is more than enough.

‘Everybody to Kenmure Street’ screens at VIFF Centre in Vancouver through July 2.