Steven Spielberg‘s sci-fi thriller Disclosure Day follows a whistleblower and a TV meteorologist who uncover a 79-year government conspiracy to conceal the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, and Eve Hewson, the film marked Spielberg’s long-awaited return to the alien genre after classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and War of the Worlds. While critics gave it mixed-to-positive reviews, audience reactions were more divided. Some viewers found the ending confusing, but not because they couldn’t follow the plot. The bigger complaint was that it was deliberately ambiguous.
With that in mind, here is a breakdown of Disclosure Day and its ending explained.
Where can you stream Disclosure Day?
Disclosure Day is available to rent or buy for home viewing on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and other major digital video-on-demand platforms.
What is Disclosure Day about exactly?
The story follows Daniel Kellner (played by Josh O’Connor), a cybersecurity expert who steals data drives exposing decades of suppressed unidentified aerial phenomena encounters dating back to the ’40s, and Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a Kansas City weather anchor who begins speaking an alien language on live television. They are chased by a shadowy paramilitary organization called Wardex, led by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), that seeks to suppress the secret history of extraterrestrial contact.
Working against Wardex is Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), who leads an organization of ex-Wardex employees. He tries to bring Daniel and Margaret together so they can safely broadcast the truth about alien life to the world.
How does Disclosure Day end?
Hugo helps Daniel and Margaret infiltrate a Kansas City television news station. Despite Wardex cutting the power grid, the group successfully overrides the system to air decades of hidden UFO footage worldwide.
As the broadcast goes live across the globe, Hugo delivers the ultimate proof. He and his team of advocates wheel out an actual, living extraterrestrial — an aged gray alien whom Hugo had previously rescued from Wardex custody.
His old adversary, Noah, realizes he is completely defeated and simply sits down to watch the world change forever. In fact, the entire world stops what they are doing to watch the broadcast.
The movie concludes with the alien clicking a message to Daniel, who passes the translation to Margaret. Hugo stands by as Margaret addresses billions of viewers watching the screen, uttering the film’s final word: “Listen.”
What does the ending mean?
Many interpret the ending as a plea for empathy through genuine listening. It appears to urge the audience to pause, hear the struggles of others, and truly understand them rather than simply waiting to speak. In that sense, the film’s final message isn’t just from an alien race to humanity, but it is a reminder to humanity: Real understanding begins when we choose to truly listen to each other.
At least that is one interpretation. Or she just wants the audience to listen.
What are some of the issues that fans and critics had with the ending?
Many longtime Spielberg fans found the film intriguing and appreciated its ambitious ideas, but some felt the screenplay and plotting didn’t fully live up to its potential. While the film’s themes resonated, some believed its execution lacked the emotional clarity and narrative focus that have defined many of Spielberg’s most beloved classics.
“Boy, the protagonists really got put through the wringer in all their attempts to thwart the sinister government cabal to reveal aliens to the world. Too bad they didn’t have a living sentient 11-foot-tall alien they could’ve just wheeled out in front of a camera or something from the start,” posted one person on Reddit.
One Redditor wrote: “The whole movie is based on the idea that it makes sense to risk your life 100 times over so you can upload videos to a local news station in the Midwest rather than putting them online. Even in a movie where aliens appear as oddly terrible CGI, that was too much of a reach.”
“I’m pretty surprised with the amount of love this movie is getting. I didn’t hate it, but it felt very empty for being about empathy. Felt like the audience was being treated like children, but the overall story was not geared for younger audiences. I think this one will be pretty forgettable, unfortunately,” wrote another.
On X, one critic wrote: “The reason Disclosure Day isn’t resonating is the whole plot revolves around using broadcast television to change the world, a concept that anyone under the age of 55 finds completely unbelievable. The movie starts with a weather woman sperging out and making weird sounds live on air, and that’s meant to go viral? In Australian television, that’s any given broadcast. In real life, the network would bombard YouTube with copyright takedown notices; no one would ever know it happened. Then they broadcast the government secrets to the whole world on one station’s rig? Why didn’t they just post it online? That’s never explained! It probably would have been a cool movie in 1999.”
Disclosure Day, Available for rent and purchase on Apple TV, Prime Video, and other major video-on-demand platforms