Disclosure Day’s Surprise Ending Unlocks the Movie’s Most Radical Idea

Steven Spielberg‘s Disclosure Day is out in theaters now. The film features a surprise ending, but one that fits the movie’s most radical idea of all.

Disclosure Day explores more of humanity than that of an actual alien threat, and the film has divided many people. This fits with the entire movie’s theme. The movie is led by Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson, and more. Based on a story by Spielberg, the script for Disclosure Day was written by David Koepp, who previously worked with the Jaws director on films such as Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Why empathy sits at the heart of Disclosure Day’s ending

Disclosure Day follows a group of whistleblowers trying to reveal the existence of aliens to the world. As a group known as Wardex (led by Colin Firth) tries to stop them, Dr. Daniel Kellner (O’Connor) and Margaret Fairchild (Blunt) come to find out that, as children, aliens visited them and imbued them with special characteristics in the hope that one day they would help disclose their existence.

Without getting into it too much, the movie ends with “disclosure day” happening. The whistleblowers broadcast a series of revealing videos live across the news, with humanity all reacting in stunned silence across the world. The abrupt ending comes as an alien is wheeled into the room and relays a message to Daniel, who then tells it to Margaret. The movie comes to with Margaret revealing the message from the alien to the world: “Listen.”

For many, the ending was an abrupt one. The film culminates with humans finally learning that aliens not only exist, but are already amongst us. This left some audience members wanting to see more of the consequences of the reveal. However, the sudden end fits the theme of the movie much more, as Disclosure Day was never about aliens on Earth, but instead how humans need to come together.

Throughout the entire movie, the two driving forces of the film are the group of whistleblowers, who empathize with the aliens and their desire for shared connection, and Wardex, a group that believes too much information would just cause further division. As such, the ending is perfect. Humanity is now forced to see the truth of an alien delivering a powerful yet simple message, one that’s been echoed by Steven Spielberg himself.

“At the core of Disclosure Day is the question: Where has all our empathy gone?” Spielberg said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly earlier this month. “Would an actual disclosure day reunite what’s divided, or begin to repair what’s broken in this siphoning away of empathy? And I think that was the personal link for me. There’s more focus in this story on human connection than even the eventual and hopeful connection between an off-world civilization and the human species.”

Source: Comingsoon.net