Disclosure Day, Spielberg and Close Encounters
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With 'Disclosure Day,' the director returns to a longtime preoccupation. Two Times staffers explore his ongoing fascination with extraterrestrials.
For roughly the first three decades of his career, Spielberg tended to take a fairly sanguine view of aliens, refusing to succumb to the disaster-movie framework of aliens attacking terrified Earthlings. That changed in a big way after 9/11, when Spielberg made a couple of Tom Cruise -starring sci-fi blockbusters grappling with a changed world.
“Disclosure” has become a cult word. It shouldn't be, since all it means, technically, is to reveal something. But the new wave of alien conspiracy theorists have made “disclosure” into a teasingly passive-aggressive code word.
Steven Spielberg 's 1977 UFO epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind is one of the most influential and beloved sci-fi movies of all time. Its presence is still felt today — not least in Spielberg's new film Disclosure Day.
Five Steven Spielberg movies have been about aliens, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Disclosure Day, but which of them is the best?