The most important words in the latest trailer for Steven Spielberg‘s Disclosure Day are not words at all. They are a series of clicks and grunts that emanate from the mouth of a local newscaster played by Emily Blunt, a series of clicks and grunts that mean nothing to anyone except a secretive figure played by Josh O’Connor. The second most important words are also not spoken in the trailer, but they certainly come to the mind of any ’90s TV fan watching it: “The truth is out there.”
Unlike the more opaque teaser released a few months earlier, the full trailer for Disclosure Day leans into tropes made popular by The X-Files. O’Connor appears to be a government leaker who plans to release secret information about the reality of extraterrestrial life. That decision at least coincides with Blunt’s newscaster speaking the alien language on live television, an act that catches the attention of several other characters, including a nun played by Elizabeth Marvel and a young woman played by Bono’s daughter, Eve Hewson. Heck, we’ve even got Colin Firth as a tech mogul whose eyes blacken over and Colman Domingo shouting about hunger for the truth, neither of which would be unfamiliar to Mulder and Scully.
Of course, Steven Spielberg’s interest in aliens goes back to before the Clinton administration. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and War of the Worlds are all defining films about humanity’s relationship to life on other planets. The same could be said of the paranoia driving the Disclosure Day trailer, as everything from the decrees of the mayor from Jaws and the final shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark to Minority Report and even The Post all show how the government hides secrets from the populace.
Yet, there’s no denying that Disclosure Day feels distinctly 1990s, which makes one wonder why it’s coming out now, when the government’s promise to release information about UFOs barely raises an eyebrow. We have so many more pressing and terrestrial concerns to deal with that, frankly, alien overlords seem like an improvement to our current condition.
