Pete Wright: For decades they told you that you were alone. They buried the signal. They classified a file. They wheeled the truth into a back room and turned off the lights and poked it with stuff. But the truth does not stay buried. The truth goes on the run. It leaks out of a cybersecurity terminal. It crosses a darkened country one seedy motel at a time, and it ends up exactly where they feared it would. Kansas City.

Pete Wright: Tonight we’re commandeering the broadcast to do the one thing all the men in the back room dreaded the most. We’re gonna talk about it out loud, with opinions. The Film Board gathers Justin JJ Jaeger, Mandy Kaplan, Tommy Metz the Third, and Steve Sarmento. Quick, before they cut the feed: pull up a chair. Tell no one.

Pete Wright: And listen.

Tommy Metz III: Yeah, I have my device.

Steve Sarmento: That’s why they kept cutting the feed on you, Pete. They knew you were gonna be speaking the truth.

Mandy Kaplan: Pete, I hoped you would do that in the language, but you didn’t.

Steve Sarmento: Yeah.

Tommy Metz III: Wait, that’s not what you heard? Did you hear English, Mandy?

Justin Jaeger: I don’t know what’s going on.

Pete Wright: I did, Mandy, I did.

Justin Jaeger: Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?

Pete Wright: Okay, everybody. Spielberg returns to the alien-contact genre he basically invented for modern audiences, and his obsession has given us a, what, seventy-nine-year-old man’s view of the panic that will surely ensue when the truth is at last revealed. This is Disclosure Day, and I’ll just open the floor by saying I went into this not wanting to enjoy myself. Is that weird? I went into it not wanting to be moved, for some reason.

Steve Sarmento: Right.

Pete Wright: I don’t know why. I think it’s because when I personally am confronted by the whole aliens thing, I just don’t care. I do not care one lick about the alien UFO stuff. So I went into this as the blasé D-bag that everybody knows is probably sitting in the theater with him. And, damn it, Spielberg. Damn it. You are an extraordinary filmmaker. I don’t care if I don’t like the story, my God. He plays the hits, man. He plays them in a way that causes those big old tears to just gently fall.

Justin Jaeger: Sure.

Pete Wright: Let us begin with opening thoughts. Mandy, go ahead.

Mandy Kaplan: Well, I went in very much looking forward to having a good time and to being moved, with no cynicism whatsoever. And I did not enjoy this film. I found it disjointed. I have an issue with casting almost solely non-Americans, so they’re struggling with their accent the entire time. And that’s not a patriotic thing. They’re all good actors. I just couldn’t get past their accents. I didn’t feel it worked, and I know it’s getting good reviews, and I can’t quite figure out why.

Tommy Metz III: I am interested in this podcast because I’ve talked to many other people that have seen it and have really not liked it. I, as a whole, think there are a lot of problems with the movie, and yet I liked it so much more than I didn’t. And I loved the acting. I don’t have the ear that Mandy does, so that stuff doesn’t bother me. But I do have the eyes, and the Spielberg magic. When he does things like show characters experiencing awe, I feel like he’s the one that made it happen. And that’s what this entire movie is, and I’m there for it.

So this movie, to use your phrase, Pete, to play the hits, he plays a lot of hits and even redoes some stuff from movies like Minority Report that we’ll get into, that were my favorite parts of those other movies. So I really overall enjoyed it, albeit it being too long.

Pete Wright: Endorsed. Okay. Stevo.

Steve Sarmento: So Spielberg’s let me down the past couple times. I just rewatched Ready Player One and was like, this should have been something great. So with this, I didn’t want to go in overly enthusiastic or overhyped. I avoided everything. I saw the initial short little teaser, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high. So I’m gonna go in knowing that he’s let me down in recent years. I don’t know if he has the magic in him anymore.

Then I heard rumblings like, oh, this is a secret sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Don’t. Mandy knows how important that movie is to me. Don’t tease me with stuff like that. So I’m putting that to the side. This is its own thing, whatever it is. Walked into the theater, sat down, not knowing what to expect. And that’s my boy. He delivered the movie that I didn’t know I wanted and needed, and hit in so many ways.

Tommy Metz III: I do know.

Steve Sarmento: The themes, there’s so much going on. As you say, there are connections to other films, there are the characteristic Spielberg moments, there are some new things, and I had a tremendous time. My wife and I talked all about this, so many things that we see in this, connections, themes. Just really enjoyed it. And it’s something that I know I’m gonna go back to and dig deeply into. And it hit me right there where I needed it to.

Tommy Metz III: Because you and Mandy talked about Close Encounters on Mandy’s podcast, right?

Steve Sarmento: That’s right, yes.

Tommy Metz III: Make Me a Nerd. That’s right.

Steve Sarmento: Yep.

Tommy Metz III: So you can go and get all of your thoughts from there. All right.

Justin Jaeger: I super love this movie, in a really big way. I think this movie accomplishes a whole lot of stuff. I’m not super deep on Spielberg. I’m deep on Spielberg in the way that the average Joe is. I’ve seen the big Spielberg movies, but I don’t have the eye that we talked about, catching Spielberg’s tricks. I don’t know about that stuff.

But for me in this movie, and I have a lot of quibbles, it sounds like I agree with some of Mandy’s quibbles, and I want to talk about those too. There was something that happened to me when I was thinking about the story, and in particular how the story can work for a lot of people that want to believe in alien narratives. But there are some allegories about the IRL human experience that are really fun to play with in this movie too. And I want to talk about that as what’s very special about this story.

And honestly, what you guys are saying about the performances, they hit me really hard. Some of them were really, really good, and those I want to talk about a lot. Some of them I was kind of bored by, and it felt a little episodic. So that’s a quibble. But for me, the way that it was all wrapped up and packaged made for a top-tier movie.

Pete Wright: Top-tier movie, man. Okay. I feel like we should probably just do a little bit of due diligence for Mandy. So Mandy, we’re putting you on a throne. But let’s go through, as we’ve invested deeply in our research over on our sister podcast, Sitting in the Dark, we begin with axes to grind. So let’s go ahead and pull out some of the things that you guys are pulling on that did not work for you.

Justin Jaeger: Well, can I ask Mandy right away about the accents? It was actually kind of frustrating to me too, and I didn’t notice the thing you were talking about, the non-Americans doing American roles. I found, in particular, I’m a huge fan of Emily Blunt in this movie, but her Russian accent is way better than her American accent. I was like, oh my gosh. And your Korean is great too, but why do I not hear the American? I want to hear more of your take on that accent piece for sure.

Mandy Kaplan: I’m always an Emily Blunt fan. I think she is a spectacular, fine actress. I didn’t think this was her strongest work, and I questioned why she put on a mousy, she put on kind of a voice like this, and it wasn’t just when she was the weather girl, which I totally understand. She was speaking like that throughout the movie, and that’s not her natural voice. So to me, that’s like when Nicole Kidman whispers through a whole movie because she’s really trying to maintain her American accent. I do bump on those things because I am a voice snob.

I want to get names right. Josh O’Connor can do no wrong, his accent was flawless. But Eve Hewson sounded like a leprechaun. Why cast an Irish person with a thick Irish accent to be American? Why not just let her be Irish? She’s a fine actress, I like her. So that bumps for me and takes me out. It’s plain and simple, those were the two egregious ones. Colin Firth does a great British accent.

Tommy Metz III: The only voice that kind of bumped for me, only because he’s got a beautiful voice, so I’m not really complaining about it, but Coleman Domino, every line he speaks, it’s how it’s pronounced. Every line he speaks is the most important line that he’s ever spoken.

Pete Wright: Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan: He’s like Morgan Freeman narrating. Yeah.

Tommy Metz III: And so it can make things, if the line isn’t perfectly written, it can come off as a little precious and a little too majestic, because when he’s ordering a latte, you’re like, settle down, Coleman. That was the only voice that bumped for me, just because a little bit of that goes a long way.

Justin Jaeger: But wasn’t that also sort of inferred in the character? That totally makes sense.

Tommy Metz III: Yeah.

Justin Jaeger: And if we carry over how we treat this actor in other films too, I felt like that was Hugo’s role in this story, to be the, yeah, getting into that thing when Emily Bluntsky finally sees him and she’s like, I don’t want to look at you because you know everything.

Pete Wright: Unwavering awe.

Justin Jaeger: Right. He represents that. He is counseling everyone through this movie. He is that thing that you’re saying. So that didn’t bother me at all. I was buying into it with the story for sure.

Pete Wright: I think that’s where I landed too. I also didn’t have a problem with any of the accents. I love Eve Hewson so much, and I’m such a huge fan of Bad Sisters, that it was just a massive delight to see her in a Spielberg movie. What an awesome lift for her.

The issue that I had, if I had an axe, was that poor Eve and Wyatt Russell have a lot to do and then they’re out ordering the lattes for people, I guess. They just disappear. And Wyatt Russell’s was maybe the more egregious one, because he’s left abandoned at a gas station and we see him one more time in a cutaway during the alien montage at the end, where he just gets to have his mouth open at camera. That was a weird choice around economy of character. I guess we were just done with his character, but I don’t know that I was done with his character.

Tommy Metz III: I liked it because it showed that not everybody is just going to go along, that this movie is very optimistic. More optimistic and hopeful and empathetic about the idea that if you are going to release this kind of information: A, people will care; B, people will believe; and C, it might stop this incoming World War III. We don’t get that far to see the full reaction.

But during the big, and I’m skipping to the very end, during the big unloading of all the footage, you see an enormous amount of people in awe staring at their phones, but also people not handling it well. Getting off of buses, moving very fast, almost in tears. And that’s gonna be the way it’s gonna be. So you’re gonna pick up certain people on this ride, and other people are going to have to get off the bus. He was already thinking, it sounded like their relationship wasn’t doing great anyways.

Pete Wright: Yes.

Tommy Metz III: So that worked for me. I liked the idea that this new journey is going to have a new cast of characters.

Steve Sarmento: Well, I took it as closure to the relationship a little bit, because he’s like, when are you gonna settle? When are you gonna be happy? And she’s like, I know when I’ll get there. For me, we needed that moment, not only the awe of what he’s seen, but I also took that as a realization of, okay, she’s found her place. His realization that this is where she needs to be. I had something else in mind, oh, okay, I see why she was being pulled in this way. And it may be putting a lot of baggage onto something, but to me that’s what that moment served, to tie a bow on that.

Pete Wright: Where do you guys land on this as the spiritual end to Spielberg’s alien trilogy? We start with Close Encounters, it’s the experience of private awe, government as the obstacle, ends in transcendence. Then we have E.T., where we get contact as this intimate childhood friendship, and government again is the faceless threat. And now Disclosure Day, where contact is a global public event, big tech is the new villain, and it’s a story of truth versus mass media, which was not a major angle in the other two movies, unless I’m forgetting something. This is new Spielberg. What did you make of this as a completion of his trilogy? Steve, you’ve got maybe the biggest heart for Close Encounters.

Steve Sarmento: Yes. There’s so much in this, and I thought this is the logical step for where we are in global communication. I thought the idea of taking it global, balancing two things, I love that our quote-unquote villain is really just about maintaining the status quo. This isn’t the evil mastermind, this isn’t about my own glory and power. It’s really, I’m trying to protect the world from itself, because I know this will unravel everything and I need to maintain the status quo.

And then that bleeds into the breakdown of communication between people, this whole idea of empathy, the understanding of each other, and that transparency between each other. So for me it really went from, in Close Encounters and E.T., a personal experience, to: as we get older, as we move from childhood, we have to be able to effectively engage with each other. To me that was the follow-through of, we need to pull the curtains back so we can be fully transparent, open ourselves to each other.

I think that’s the power that Margaret has as she’s talking with people, they’re being seen, fully seen by somebody else. She’s seeing things that are true to their core, something that’s important to them. And to me, the media, getting that part out there, wasn’t so much the story. It’s really those personal connections. If you look at Close Encounters, it’s Richard Dreyfuss isolating himself from his family and going off on this journey by himself. You’ve got Elliott and E.T., it’s that relationship between the two of them, the alien and the human. And now this really wraps all that together. We have the two characters: one that is the empath to draw people to each other, and then Daniel is the translator that can speak the language back and forth. We need to bring everything together in coherence. To me, that summed up and capped off that trilogy very well.

Tommy Metz III: I love what Steve said so much, and that’s such a through line, especially for this movie, that those in charge aren’t trusting the aliens, so they’re covering them up; they’re not trusting the human public, so they’re keeping the truth from them. And then Coleman has this speech about empathy. And what is the very last line in the movie? It’s “listen.” We don’t know what she’s saying, she could be saying, listen, and then enslaves the world. Probably not. It could just be: listen to each other, trust each other and listen to each other, because that’s what’s missing in today’s culture, just the ability to listen across barriers.

Justin Jaeger: And I think that’s a really interesting take too, because we’re in this weird place in the world with empathy. We have the sort of famous line, I can’t remember if it was from Tucker Carlson or Charlie Kirk, or maybe even Elon Musk was saying, that empathy is going to be the fall of human culture. So there are two narratives here. And that’s the interesting thing to me about this movie: whether you want to buy into the belief about aliens or whether you don’t, there is an interesting story about humanness in this movie.

So the question I would ask, reflecting back at you, Pete, when you say whatever about the alien stuff, “I don’t care,” is it because you don’t believe, or is it because it’s not interesting? Because right now, the way I look at it, looking at this trilogy, I don’t even know whether I care to believe or not, but I think it’s really interesting to think about the stories that Spielberg is trying to tell, using these as the vehicle to tell them about what our human experience is.

Pete Wright: Yeah. Listening to him talk about it, you can tell he’s very much in tune with his perception of, whether or not aliens exist, this is his cause célèbre, he really wants to dive in. This whole movie was made by focusing on the real evidence that has been released, that people are talking about, UFOs, UAPs, whatever. And this is important to him.

To me, I actually statistically do believe that there is life outside of us. I just statistically do. And I also think that is irrelevant to the price of gas. And I think any of me being obsessed with life in outer space visiting us is a distraction. So I have to remove myself from seeing stories like this that are so clearly, so deeply personal. This is practically a journal entry for this guy. And he made a great film about it, for me. And I still stand unconvinced.

Yet I read all these stories about the actors who are saying, Emily Blunt said, oh, now that I’ve been in this movie, I totally believe that aliens exist and are among us. And I’m like, oh, well, you were good in the movie. Why, are you studying astrophysics? Come on. So that’s where I am. My opinion doesn’t matter, my belief in the existence doesn’t matter. And I was still moved by the movie. And I think I was moved because I actually really bought into the Emily Blunt / Josh O’Connor, the Margaret / Daniel, search for one another. What he made here is a real journey movie of bringing these two people together. And it could have been a massive whiff. It could have been complete nonsense by the time they get together.

Once they got roped up together and they meet Coleman Domino, we’re calling him, and Hugo, and they go into the giant warehouse, they’re in her parents’ house, where she was, to recreate the environment where she was first visited by the thing. And Daniel and Margaret are seated together where her bedroom is the stage, and they hold onto the bar device and they see what she saw. And I realized that’s when the whole movie sort of came together for me, the entire journey, the parts, following their separate journeys, it came together as a whole, weirdly, unexpectedly successfully, when the little-girl version of Margaret is wandering out into warm snow. I was impacted by that. I thought that was a really successful way to tell this story, to give them both equal purpose. And it just played. It played. For that last hour of the movie, I was deeply invested. And it’s all down to the way these two characters were written, for me.

Justin Jaeger: Well, the only reason Mandy didn’t like it is because her heart is dead.

Tommy Metz III: Oh, that’s right.

Mandy Kaplan: Yes. Yes, good point. Good point. But it also took too long and too many repetitive beats to get there. There were so many near misses, and all the bad, like whenever one dude can outsmart twenty armed agents in their black cars.

Tommy Metz III: There were too many operatives.

Mandy Kaplan: I roll my eyes.

Tommy Metz III: Yeah.

Justin Jaeger: It was a little bit like National Treasure in that respect.

Mandy Kaplan: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin Jaeger: That’s what I was thinking the whole time. I was like, this is National Treasure with aliens.

Mandy Kaplan: But I love National Treasure.

Justin Jaeger: Oh, there you go.

Pete Wright: It’s interesting you say that, because I was in a very similar place, especially when O’Connor comes back up over the hill where he’s been using his satellite burner phone and he sees that the farmhouse where they have set up shop is completely overrun with black cars, and instead of going the other way, he goes in and steals one of the black cars on the front lines. And a chase ensues. He drives through the living room of the farmhouse to pick up Eve Hewson’s character. And my goodness, I thought, this is the stupidest thing I love right now.

Mandy Kaplan: They did not seem to be a very connected couple. As it starts, they’re like, well, I never told you anything about myself. Well, I never told you anything about myself. So if they’ve been dating a couple of months, I didn’t buy that he would risk his life to go back for her over and over. Their relationship was undefined to me.

Justin Jaeger: I agree with that. And one thing I liked in the story was putting their roles in life, not the actors, but their roles in life, as this criminal who was drafted into big tech, and this nun, someone learning to be a nun. The line that got me was when they started talking about how they lost their calling. There was a lot of that in the movie, and I was feeling the same thing. I didn’t get it until then.

And I felt that a lot of the ways in the movie. Pete, you bring up the scene where, why didn’t he go the other direction? The whole time I’m hating it, why are you walking to the cars? And then we have the amazing motion-control shots in all of that scene.

Tommy Metz III: Oh my God.

Justin Jaeger: The way the camera goes from, and then all this stuff. So for a very mechanical reason, I loved that they did it, and coming out, just, the camera was spectacular.

Tommy Metz III: Through the fence.

Justin Jaeger: But then the scene in the car where she’s being possessed, controlled to kill him, and they work through it, I’m getting emotional just thinking about it. That made it work for me. All of a sudden there’s a purpose. The character knows that this is possible, and knows that it can be done to people. So he puts himself in harm’s way because he cares about a person. And I agree, it’s shallow till then, but the fact that it happens actually helped me buy in. So it’s really weird, I was worried, and then it won it for me.

Tommy Metz III: With that leap of faith, he’s saying, what am I doing? What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Because there is a calling, there is a higher thing. And it’s much more pronounced with Emily Blunt’s character. When I brought up, hello, Tom Cruise and Colin Farrell and balls are rolling, Minority Report, the original title was Colin First, Balls Are Rolling.

Steve Sarmento: A.I., or Minority Report.

Pete Wright: There we go.

Tommy Metz III: Not Colin Firth, Colin Farrell.

Justin Jaeger: Yeah.

Tommy Metz III: Anyway, my favorite part of that movie, one of my favorite parts, was when Precog Magoo is out and about, out of the milk, and walking through a mall and just warning people about things because she knows everything. That’s the exact same trick they use for Emily Blunt for a lot of this movie. And I love it. I find it exciting. I love these little tricks, that he’s hearing English and everyone else is hearing completely different viewpoints and different ways of taking all of this in. That stuff really worked for me. It was very repetitive with Colin Furl, Colin Firth. I’m going to figure this out at some point.

Pete Wright: Firth.

Tommy Metz III: Colin Firth using the device that seems to be able to do anything, but I’m fine with that, to possess people. But I found it so magnetic each time. It was really scary and really well filmed. So I didn’t care that I didn’t understand the rules that much, because it was well acted and well played. I really enjoyed that.

Pete Wright: I think that was going to be the next thing I wanted to talk about, because the tricks, the trick of the bar, the pressed-latinum bar, I don’t know what it is.

Tommy Metz III: We all have one.

Pete Wright: Everybody’s holding a bar. Okay. The fact that, I think they sell it for me by demonstrating how they don’t know how it works either. We don’t need to know the rules, because they keep screwing up with it and guys just disappear. You think they’re gone, but then they come back on the ground. Nobody understands the rules behind it. They know one thing it can do, and they’ve sort of got that down, being able to dive into others’ consciousness. I thought that was a slam dunk for me. And it was another one that could have been such a whiff. It could have been so confusing.

Mandy Kaplan: It was, to me, unfortunately.

Pete Wright: And it was.

Mandy Kaplan: That bar, it was like, oh, now it makes you invisible.

Pete Wright: Why?

Mandy Kaplan: Oh, now it makes you dive into other people. Oh, and it—

Tommy Metz III: That’s what I meant, it can sort of do whatever it needs to in the scene. But I was okay with it.

Mandy Kaplan: Right. To me, that’s a cop-out. To me, it’s a cop-out. And then it feels like when you’re playing a game on the playground as a kid, and it’s like, oh, no, wait, you stepped outside of the safety zone. Oh, I didn’t know there was one. Well, now there is. And if you step there, you’re safe. Just making up those playground rules as you go. I’m such a rule follower that that’s not my comfort zone. I wanted to know what that bar was. I got that it could allow you to inhabit another person, I got that. And the eye-color changing was fantastic. But I wanted to know what that bar was. And then it just disintegrated. Once it makes you invisible, it disintegrates.

Pete Wright: Well, to me that was just like, it had been used real, real hard and it burned out.

Tommy Metz III: It’s like a Duraflame, right?

Steve Sarmento: Yeah.

Pete Wright: Yeah, it’s a Duraflame.

Steve Sarmento: Right.

Pete Wright: That’s what it is. That’s a Duraflame.

Tommy Metz III: Sparklers go out.

Pete Wright: And I agree that the rule set around the bar itself was fuzzy, and the degree to which it makes sense or not, the degree to which you give in to it, is a different thing. For me, the thing I expected to be a mess was specifically the cosmic FaceTime, where they were sitting at the table together. I thought, do I know what is happening right now? I think it was specifically the cutting that made this absolutely play, and that Firth kept getting, when he would break out in a cold sweat, he would start sweating in the kitchen of the farmhouse too. I thought that was such a great touch. Everything about the cosmic FaceTime is what worked for me, even though I totally agree the rules of the bar are Wonkaville.

Justin Jaeger: I want to ask Mandy, how do you feel about, we did Project Hail Mary just a couple months ago here, and also Arrival? Those two movies, neither?

Mandy Kaplan: I’m nodding.

Justin Jaeger: Okay, gotcha.

Mandy Kaplan: I’m on a podcast. I am nodding and looking dopey.

Justin Jaeger: That’s why I was asking, because both of those have, the interesting thing about the bars in particular is that both of those movies have a little bit of an explanation of the unknown where they show and not tell. And that’s kind of what they’re doing here. And I agree it really shows up as deus ex machina for the story. But when it’s done well, in those two, the reason I bring up those two movies in particular is because those are also movies that use this type of logic leap in a very skillful way that doesn’t make me hate it as much. Those are favorite movies for me. So that’s why this movie works for me, because the story, and those potential cop-outs, actually worked for me in this story.

Steve Sarmento: Well, I think one of the reasons it works well is because they drop us in the middle of the story. It’s not like we see the discovery of these things. We start off with Daniel negotiating, he’s negotiated this trade. We’re in the middle of stuff. We don’t know anything. And then this device shows up. They sort of know, don’t put too much pressure on it, so we know it’s something dangerous. And there’s enough forward momentum in the story, we’re able to backfill a little bit of backstory while it’s moving forward. I think that gives us that sense that we need to trust this story; it’s going to drop us in the middle and we’ll get what we need as we go along. So it’s not just the magical device that somebody pulls out of a drawer out of nowhere. It’s been introduced. We know that we’ll get information as we need it.

I think David Koepp gives us that trust in him as the storyteller, in that script, to move us forward, give us what we need when we need it. Sure, we could start pulling on threads and things would start to fray apart, but the pacing moved us along so that there wasn’t time to start thinking too much about, is this being done consistently? I didn’t care, because it worked the way it needed to work. I bought into it and it gave me what I needed.

Mandy Kaplan: Look, I love musicals. People burst into song, it makes no frickin’ sense, and I allow it every time.

Steve Sarmento: Yes, exactly.

Mandy Kaplan: So I understand the mentality of, who cares, it was entertaining and interesting.

Steve Sarmento: Same thing, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan: I fully respect that.

Pete Wright: There is a mystery box in here that frustrated me. It’s at the end, and I can’t tell if it’s a master stroke of cinematic genius on behalf of Steven Spielberg, or if it’s a complete cop-out. And it’s not about the bars, it’s about the geriatric alien whisper at the end.

Justin Jaeger: Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan: Oh, yeah.

Pete Wright: They refuse to translate that binary message. I don’t understand. Let’s just say, as a foundational premise, that Spielberg not wanting to describe the rules of the bar is foundational, I get it. In-universe, people may not know how the bar works, and that may be what he hangs his hat on. But everywhere else, they have started teaching us, translating for us the way people communicate, especially Emily Blunt and O’Connor, that they can sort of talk to each other, translate for each other; they speak empathy, they speak math. And this one time, standing in this room together, they don’t say a thing out loud. I don’t understand that. I want to understand it. Maybe I’m supposed to feel crappy about that, maybe that was the intention, that I need to live in this tension. But I did not care for that.

Justin Jaeger: For the alien in particular, you didn’t like that he whispered it, as opposed to saying it out loud?

Pete Wright: It’s when he leans over and whispers to Emily Blunt the translation from math to something she can understand. Presumably she then takes that and says, here’s what happens, listen, whatever, and tells you, here’s the grocery list that the aliens want.

Justin Jaeger: My apology for that is just that she was the chosen spokeswoman, and we have this opportunity to say it to the world. So I bought into that. And with the alien doing the whispering, I just felt like it was too bold to say it loudly. So there weren’t story breakdowns for me in that.

In that newsroom, though, you want to talk about my quibbles with this? At a local news station, for that many people to be in the place, it’s just not that way anymore. That is a fiction. The fact that they had like fifteen people in the room where the anchors are, there’s literally maybe one, if that. Most of it is remote. So that was super hard for me. That’s very deus ex machina. But then later on, when they start uploading the feeds, all of that is very true to the way that works. So that momentum in the climax of the film got me, as a news guy. I was like, oh yes, and they’re calling, and she’s getting on the phone like, CNN, picking it up. All of that was very real. So it was weird, like everything with this movie, I got super worried and then it totally kicked my ass. And I was like, oh, that’s perfect. That’s how I felt the whole way.

Tommy Metz III: That anchor person is really an unsung hero of this movie.

Mandy Kaplan: Yes.

Justin Jaeger: Oh, what’s the actress?

Mandy Kaplan: She’s so good.

Tommy Metz III: She brings it all home.

Mandy Kaplan: I’m looking.

Tommy Metz III: That whole scene, to what JJ’s saying, is such a tightrope. And she speaks for the movie and Spielberg. She’s breathtaking. I started tearing up.

Mandy Kaplan: Courtney Grace. Courtney Grace.

Justin Jaeger: Courtney Grace.

Steve Sarmento: I think, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan: She was so good.

Justin Jaeger: Might be the best performance in the entire movie.

Mandy Kaplan: I agree.

Justin Jaeger: And the other one I want to focus on is the train scene, when they have the moment and the panic attack in the train. I hear you, Mandy, when you say this might not be top-to-bottom Emily’s best performance, but I have never been more connected to Emily Blunt on screen than in those moments. And the two of them together, it was just emotionally perfect for me. I was with them the whole way. That’s what I go to movies to see. It was so, so good.

Mandy Kaplan: That’s what I said right after the movie, her panic attack was one of the most real portrayals of a panic attack that I’ve ever seen on screen, as a person who has panic attacks. As a person whose father had Parkinson’s, it was gut-wrenching. I thought that was miraculous acting. And Courtney Grace, watching a news anchor, we’ve all seen it, right? Breaking news, I’m not sure what’s happening. She was so emotional, but so professional and composed, trying to keep telling the American people what she thought she was seeing. I was riveted by her. She was so good.

Pete Wright: I’m sorry, you’re having to watch along with me for this?

Justin Jaeger: Yeah, oh gosh.

Pete Wright: Those kinds of strings of words where she’s just incapable of describing what she was—

Justin Jaeger: Oh.

Pete Wright: The entire veil gets pulled back. I thought she was transcendent. She was absolutely incredible.

Mandy Kaplan: One more actor I need to point out, the waitress who said, you’re paying for their meal because they let you use their phone. She’s a friend of mine. Okay, carry on. Kathy Deach.

Justin Jaeger: Nice. Yay.

Pete Wright: Hey, she did great work.

Mandy Kaplan: Yeah.

Justin Jaeger: All right, Kathy.

Pete Wright: I believed every bit of it.

Mandy Kaplan: Yeah.

Pete Wright: You brought up the train thing, and I totally agree, that was a fantastic beat, especially the resolution when he says, here, put your hands on the piano, feel the vibration of the strings. That was chef’s kiss. But can I just tell you how much of a relief it was when the car was actually taken under by the train? They never give us the punchline in those sequences, where the people were still in the car and it got pushed into the underside of the train. We see cars get hit by trains all the time, but they always escape at the last second. And this, as an action beat, I thought was really refreshing. Give us a new perspective on what happens. Maybe the least believable thing is that that Alfa Romeo actually didn’t have to go in for service before it was destroyed by the train. Notoriously unreliable.

Steve Sarmento: I’m not sure if you can’t see it.

Pete Wright: Anyway. I thought that was a really great choice, a really great action beat. And once we’re into the Steven Spielberg chase, I am in for it. Were any of you overwhelmed by lens flare in this movie?

Justin Jaeger: I like it.

Tommy Metz III: I liked it.

Justin Jaeger: I’m a fan.

Steve Sarmento: Yeah, it’s all good.

Justin Jaeger: Yeah.

Pete Wright: Did you?

Justin Jaeger: Yeah.

Steve Sarmento: Oh yeah.

Pete Wright: You like it?

Tommy Metz III: Yeah, it brought me back.

Pete Wright: You’re all suckers for lens flare. I am too. We used to joke about JJ Abrams being lens flare king. He learned it from Daddy.

Justin Jaeger: This guy, yeah.

Steve Sarmento: It’s the difference between the master who knows when to apply it appropriately, and the novice who’s like, I’m just going to use it all over the place. If a little bit is good, then a ton of it is great. That’s where JJ Abrams went with it. And Spielberg knows light, always cinematography, always. I’m looking at the credits, and he’s got the band back together. He’s got all his regulars working with him.

Justin Jaeger: And it’s so good. There’s only one camera move that bothers me, and that’s when we’re looking at the laptop and we’re showing the videos to Jane, because we do this over the top of it in a twist and come down. The choice for it is to show the disorientation, but in the moment it’s way overdone. I only bring it up as a quibble because every other camera motion was spectacular. One of my favorites is when the big-tech baddies are coming into the final area and the camera just pulls back wide to reveal the emptiness and the nothing. And then it does it again to reveal the fire trucks and everything. In these simple camera choices, it gives you the perspective of all the people involved in the movie and keeps you excited as an audience member. Everything was thoughtful and wonderful except for that one. I loved the camera in this movie.

Pete Wright: I’m right there with you. I thought it was super effective and dynamic and everything I wanted out of it. The quieter moments, and the reason we have Jane as a character, is to get us to the church. And we have to go to the church because we have to meet Sister Mara. And we have to meet Sister Mara so Sister Mara can have a phone call later. That allows us to address, we already addressed the Spielberg benevolence versus threat. This is, as somebody already said, a classic Spielberg optimistic film. Aliens are not invaders; aliens are a corrective to humanity if we understand them, if we are empathetic enough.

But we also get this discourse on, why would God make life only for us? We’re the supreme, I don’t know that we’re the supreme whatever creation on Earth, she says over and over, on Earth. What is your perspective on Spielberg putting this part in the movie? I don’t think the other two movies address as much overtly religious architecture.

Tommy Metz III: What occurred to me was, it’s an answer to the questions brought up in the movie Contact, Robert Zemeckis, the whole Matthew McConaughey, they are saying that if these aliens are real, then we have destroyed God, because God has not mentioned aliens or dinosaurs, left a couple chapters out, that one negates the other. That’s what a lot of Matthew McConaughey’s whole part is. And this is a pretty succinct answer to that. He did other stuff too, but you’re reading the source material about the Earth stuff. There’s a whole other book, but it sounds like this: knock, knock, nick, nick, knock, nick, knock.

Pete Wright: There’s so many books.

Tommy Metz III: Yeah. You’re not gonna enjoy that audible at all.

Pete Wright: Yeah. Have you read the Bible in math?

Tommy Metz III: Yeah, right.

Steve Sarmento: I see it as an important dynamic, because with Margaret and Daniel, you’ve got two sides. He’s the math and science piece, the coding, all of that. Margaret’s that human component. It’s science and religion. You’ve got to have them both, and they’ve got to work together in a complementary relationship. That’s why I felt like that whole aspect of faith, the line of, she’s saying to June or Jane, you didn’t lose faith in God, you lost faith in people. It’s those things of, how are we human together? What is that spiritual connectedness piece? Whatever your supreme being is, it should be bringing us together. That’s Margaret’s role. And then you’ve got to couple that with the science of it. So I felt like it created that balance, a parallel between those two characters and their relationship having to come together, and how people need to reconcile their faith, belief, whatever that is, with the facts they’re presented with. How do you integrate those two and maintain your balance in life?

Tommy Metz III: Yeah, because in Contact it leads to terrorism. Jake Busey’s character ends up destroying the first shuttle because he’s saying it’s taking God out of the picture. And so, a way to maybe show that empathy, that optimism in humanity, being able to make this leap and not just be taken down by its own hypocrisies. She just sort of puts it out there. She needs to put it in a blog right away; she can’t just tell one person.

Pete Wright: I think the film is demonstrating that there’s a very broad slate of reactions to this thing. Generally, there’s the one position, the protective position, the conservative position, we can’t tell, because civilization will fall apart. And the other two, and maybe the aliens, I don’t know, we never get to hear what they think, seem to think that it’s not for any one gatekeeper to decide how humanity is supposed to act.

Justin Jaeger: So, your question, do you like that, is the question for me. I believe in that, that it’s not for any one gatekeeper to decide. And we have a bunch of different perspectives from the different characters in this movie. There’s actually really great debate brought up by the characters. And this is probably Daniel’s position that I’m falling into the most. Ultimately, the thing I do believe in is care and good and do no harm. And what Daniel said, as a sort of gatekeeper, is, no one person should decide. They mention that a couple of times, this belongs to you now, to everyone. I think that is the thing I believe in most: that we need to put it all out there.

I have that about lots of things we’ve dealt with recently, the tragedies, like COVID and all these things. There’s been a lot of gatekeeping about information because we assume that people are going to deal with it poorly. We see in this movie how there are examples of that, but the reality is that everyone needs to be trusted with information, because it actually has a better result when the information is shared, rather than trying to gatekeep it. That is the thing I believe. So I don’t know if that’s the question you’re asking, but that’s what comes up for me.

Tommy Metz III: It’s the end of the movie, we know which side he’s on. I think it’s much more optimistic. I know I brought up the mitigating factors, but it’s much more optimistic than that. And I know there have been some complaints, friends of the show, that it seemed like the hook of the movie was the disclosure, and then it ends at the disclosure, thus negating the entire point of the movie. I go back and forth on that. I kind of see that idea, but I like the mystery. To answer your question from a long time ago, Pete, I like the tension. I like living in there. I think the movie is leaning more toward, this is going to change everything, and in a good way. There doesn’t seem to be anything malevolent coming from the aliens that we can sense.

Mandy Kaplan: I don’t want to get too political, but I will say it seems like an opportunity for warmongering and hunting these aliens and killing them, which reminds me of our current state of affairs and ICE. So I do fear, if we were to tell the world, my fear is that ninety-five percent of people would say, cool, let’s learn from each other and expand our worlds and our cultures. But the evil oligarchy at the top would say, now here’s an excuse to hunt these creatures and kill them, or do experiments on them the way Colin Firth is like, no anesthetic. That’s the fear. I would like to say I have complete faith in mankind and it would all be benevolent, but these days I can’t say that.

Justin Jaeger: Right. There may be additional things to say about that. But one thing I’d like to point at, just before we wrap on it, because I think all of us, Mandy and I talk about it, I think we’ve all seen Thunderbolts now, right? The interesting thing about Thunderbolts, a comic book movie, is that it’s actually talking about dealing with personal trauma to find healing, to find a way to go, and that is in this movie too. Whether or not disclosure or aliens or any of this stuff matters to you, there is a very strong message about going back in and facing the things that you’re terrified of, to get to a place where you can be more optimistic and more open and more communal, I don’t know if that’s the right word. The point is, I saw Thunderbolts here with Disclosure Day and I loved it, I talked about it to no end when we talked about Thunderbolts. And that’s here for me too: there is a message that whatever you’re struggling to think about or deal with, there is something better on the other side of that. And that’s a good message for everyone.

Pete Wright: I’m gonna cue some John Williams music, and I’m gonna give JJ a little reverb on that last line, and it’s gonna be spectacular.

Justin Jaeger: Yeah. Love it.

Pete Wright: This movie is trending, leading up to this weekend, it was trending toward like thirty-eight million opening weekend, and going into this movie I was such a downer, I would have picked the under. But now I think it’s targeting forty-four. It’s doing a little bit better than expected.

How did you guys feel walking into this movie, a movie made by our seventy-nine-year-old cinematic mainstay, when we also have in theaters, right next door to it, Backrooms and Obsession, movies made by these young upstart, foundational YouTube filmmakers? Did you have any inner thoughts about those experiences? I’ll tell you, I have not seen either of those movies in the theater, because I had to go see Masters of the Universe and this. So everybody’s taking the under on me now.

Tommy Metz III: Oh no.

Pete Wright: So what are you thinking?

Justin Jaeger: Warranted.

Pete Wright: What are you thinking about? Any thoughts?

Steve Sarmento: Well, I can say I saw it on Friday afternoon, and looking around, the theater was maybe pushing close to a third full, I think. It’s the afternoon, it’s a Friday, but just the average age, I’m like, oh, these are Spielberg kids. All in our forties, fifties or whatever. That’s who’s shown up, the diehard Spielberg fans. They grew up on his stuff. They’re like, yeah, we’ll come back to the fountain one more time for this. And that’s fine.

But I agree, the diversity of what we can see in the cinema now, if we get these young upstarts from YouTube or whatever, that’s great. That’s the next film school. That’s where they’re learning their craft. There’s a place for that. And hopefully you get some cross-pollination of somebody walking in like, oh, this is here too, maybe I’ll check that out. They’re on a level playing field versus the direct-to-video, straight-to-streaming, whatever that is, like second-tier. Now that we can have those things side by side at the multiplex, it gives them that credibility and status that they’re due and that they deserve.

Pete Wright: Remember when David Fincher was criticized for coming from MTV?

Steve Sarmento: Oh yeah.

Tommy Metz III: Uh—

Steve Sarmento: Yep. Exactly. That different film school, right? It’s the YouTubers, all those guys, that whole different approach. And hopefully that will create a different style of storytelling, a different type of cinema. It needs to evolve. We’ve talked about multiple times how there’s no creativity left, it’s the same thing, Hollywood cranking out the same old same old. Maybe we’re starting to see the next generation start to crack through.

Pete Wright: All right, it’s time. We have to transition to letterboxd.com/thenextreel. That’s where you can find all the reviews of all the films that we talk about on this family of film podcasts associated with the Film Board. I get very distracted when Tom holds up his bar—

Mandy Kaplan: Drops, yeah.

Pete Wright: —because I think he’s gonna make me invisible. It’s very terrifying. So, how are we gonna rate it? You’ve got five stars, you’ve got one heart, you have to apportion them responsibly. All right, Mandy, we should just start with you. What are you gonna do?

Mandy Kaplan: I knew you would. After we hang up, Tommy, will you call me and tell me of these other people that you know who didn’t like it? Because I knew I would feel on an island about my feelings, but I really didn’t like it. There were things I liked, and performances I liked, and moments that were very cool, but I would give it, oh God. Send all my hate mail to petewright@petewright.com. I’m gonna say two stars.

Pete Wright: Okay.

Tommy Metz III: And no heart, I assume.

Pete Wright: Totally fair.

Mandy Kaplan: No heart.

Pete Wright: Tom, that means you have a total of eight stars to work with, and two hearts.

Tommy Metz III: Oh my God, it’s insane.

Pete Wright: What are you gonna do?

Tommy Metz III: No one understands your stars and hearts. I’m really interested in revisiting this movie later on. I have a feeling my score is going to either go up or down, maybe by quite a lot, because this may end up, for some of the things Mandy has said and other people have said, maybe I got blinded by the bag of tricks and the sentimentality of it, and didn’t give enough credence to the fact that the movie at times does not work, is very episodic, a road-trip kind of movie, and that could really hurt it. Right now I’m giving it four stars and a heart.

Pete Wright: All right, Stevo.

Steve Sarmento: As I said to start, this is the movie I didn’t know was coming, the one I absolutely needed. I’m at four and a half stars and a heart. On a rewatch it may go to four, it may trend over to five. I never give five stars on a first viewing, because I just need to see it with a second set of eyes. This one I could see going either way. Just loved it, loved it, loved it.

Pete Wright: All right, JJ.

Justin Jaeger: Well, I’ll do that for you. I gave it five stars. In review of it too, I definitely have stuff that annoys me. I mentioned National Treasure, or the Da Vinci Code, where it really feels like you’re just on a road trip and everything is deus ex machina. But it didn’t matter to me, because it was so meaningful to me, and that was enough to win me there. Actually, looking back at Project Hail Mary, I don’t think I gave that five stars. But looking at these two as 2026 movies, these movies are making me feel good about movies again, to be honest. We had a long swoon of not-good stuff. I am now excited about the stuff coming out, both from the young people you’re talking about and from these old stalwarts that are great films. I’ve been let down by Spielberg a bunch too. This one did it for me. So I’m five stars here. I’d revise my Project Hail Mary probably up to five stars. I really liked it.

Mandy Kaplan: JJ, I’m assuming you’re trying to spare Tommy’s feelings. You’re talking about Y2K, right?

Justin Jaeger: Right.

Tommy Metz III: What a terrible legacy.

Pete Wright: That is a gift that keeps on giving. I’ll tell you what. Brilliant. I am also at four stars for this one, and a heart. With all of the things you guys have said, actually, you making me think about, I think I gave Project Hail Mary four stars. If this one is four stars, then I feel like I need to revise Project Hail Mary down, because I liked this movie more than that movie. It made me feel, in places, energized in ways that Hail Mary did not. So I’m on board with this movie. It could go up. I’m relieved. With Spielberg, it would be okay if he decided, I’m kind of done making movies. It’d be okay to end on this one. He did fine.

Justin Jaeger: You could say that ten years ago.

Pete Wright: It’s a winner. It’s okay.

Mandy Kaplan: Well, his daughter’s making a movie now.

Pete Wright: Oh my God. Anyway, this is great. It’ll be interesting to see how it performs, if it’s got any legs to it after opening weekend. But it’s definitely one for the collection. I’m gonna be watching this one again, I can already tell.

So thank you, everybody. And shout out to podcasts represented on this show. First and foremost, we’ve already dropped Make Me a Nerd with the fantastic Mandy Kaplan. Who even knows what’s coming up? By the time this goes out, who knows what it’s gonna be, but it’s gonna be great.

Mandy Kaplan: It’s gonna be great.

Pete Wright: You’re gonna nerd out. I can already tell. Sitting in the Dark, the horror podcast, if you’re interested, that’s the thing that Tommy Metz does ably. And this is where you can find Steve and JJ all the time, monthly. That’s it. And I’m all of the other places too. Links in the show notes. Thank you so much for hanging out. Make sure to send us a note. Jump in the free Discord if you’re interested. You can find all the links at trustory.fm. We’d love to see you there and hear what you think of this fair film. On behalf of Justin JJ Jaeger and Steve Sarmento and Tommy Metz III and Mandy Kaplan, I’m Pete Wright. We’ll see you next month, right here on the Film Board.

Pete Wright: Listen.