Steven Spielberg is obsessed with aliens, and he’s not alone. With his new film, Disclosure Day, he’s back with another tale of extraterrestrials coming to Earth. This is the fourth movie about aliens that he has directed, alongside Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and War of the Worlds (2005). His extraterrestrial fascination doesn’t stop there, either, as he has produced other notable works of alien fiction, such as the TV miniseries Taken (2002) and J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 (2011).
With the announcement that Disclosure Day would be another Spielberg science-fiction film about aliens, audiences were eager to see how the film would build on the ideas he had explored in his other extraterrestrial films. But as much as this film is certainly in conversation with his previous work, it also shares an astonishing amount of DNA with an alien movie made by another prolific director: M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs (2002).
Shyamalan, like many major directors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, has obviously been inspired by Spielberg’s work. From their early success to their heart-on-sleeve storytelling to the ways they have explored various genres, the comparison is rich.
But Signs is a terrifying horror film about a deadly alien invasion, whereas Disclosure Day is a sci-fi drama about government cover-ups and modern media. The richer answer, then, lies in how these movies approach their core theme — namely, the ways in which humanity chooses to engage with (or in some cases, reject) the existence of the divine. This is an inherent tension in almost any piece of fiction that grapples with the existence of extraterrestrials, but what stands out here is how Spielberg and Shyamalan land in such a similar place despite the stark difference in genre between these two films.
Both films are about belief. The hardest thing about believing in the existence of life beyond our planet is believing in something that you can’t see, and something that has always been outside of humanity’s ability to definitively prove one way or the other. We tend to discuss aliens through the framework of belief, constantly asking if we believe in them. With Disclosure Day and Signs, Spielberg and Shyamalan posit that humans want to believe in the otherworldly, even if they might be too scared to do so. Both films end on surprisingly hopeful notes about collective humanity and the existence of divine or spiritual entities.
The two films also share specific details indicative of how their directors engage with the idea of extraterrestrial life. Both include crop circles, which provide striking imagery steeped in a rich history of paranormal research, extraterrestrial studies, and even spiritual communities. They also share a train of thought about animals and their connection to the natural world, and by extension, the divine. In both films, animal behavior is the first indication of the supernatural. Finally, both have a major television and news component, as both directors are clearly interested in news and media as our widest-reaching form of global communication, and as an infrastructure with immense connective power.
The other key similarity between these two films, and the one that really makes them interesting in conversation with one another, is their religious elements. Believing in God and believing in aliens are both on the spectrum of belief in what humanity cannot see, and these films question whether those two forms of faith are inherently at odds or can coexist.
What better way to explore these themes than through the eyes of the characters Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson) and Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), who both share one crucial thing in common: devoted religious backgrounds. Jane was previously in a novitiate to become a nun, and Graham is a former reverend. Each of them walked away from their religious dedication for one reason or another, and a central conflict of their characters is grappling with their individual faith.
Spielberg and Shyamalan both smartly recognize the opportunity for these two characters’ personal crises of faith to clash with the existence of aliens. Each is faced with proof of extraterrestrial life. In Jane’s case, it is instantly irrefutable video proof, whereas Graham gets a slightly more gradual buildup of evidence before he is unable to deny it any longer. Whereas some would see proof of alien life as a miracle that restores their faith, for these two, it only heightens their doubts.
Jane worries that the existence of alien life is contradictory to what she has been taught in her education, while Graham sees the threat of alien invaders as proof that God is not watching out for humanity. In a pivotal scene, he tells his brother, Merrill, that there are two types of people in the world: the ones who believe that we are not alone, who believe in signs and miracles, and the ones who believe that no one is watching out for us, and that everything that happens is just a random coincidence. What Spielberg and Shyamalan are telling the audience, then, is that maybe we should all try a little harder to be more like the first type of person.
That doesn’t mean these two directors are simply telling their audiences to believe in aliens, or God, or any other otherworldly entity. Rather, they’re asking us to think about humanity as a collective whole rather than every man for himself. Disclosure Day and Signs both explore humanity’s desire for connection and the idea of a collective experience. They use the existence of life beyond Earth as a reminder that we are all in this together, stressing the importance of community and empathy. These same ideals are what Jane and Graham sought in their religious communities, and it’s the first thing they lose sight of once they distance themselves from their faith. It’s only later that they realize their own personal tragedies, and the newfound knowledge they have about the universe doesn’t mean they can’t still hold their religious beliefs, too.
Much discussion of the existence of aliens can be boiled down to the famous quote from author Arthur C. Clarke: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” Spielberg and Shyamalan grapple with this tension while also taking the stance that it is much more comforting to believe that we are not alone. It is far more preferable to them that both good and bad entities exist beyond our world than to believe that there is nothing out there at all. It parallels how these films explore religious faith, as Graham and Jane realize they’d still rather believe in and pray to a higher power, even if doing so won’t necessarily spare them from hardship.
These films’ ability to be so radically hopeful while also exploring some of the worst tragedies and tendencies of the human experience is a feat that few other directors could achieve, and it brings us back to wider comparisons between Spielberg and Shyamalan. Disclosure Day and Signs are so effective because they bring a uniquely optimistic worldview to stories that could otherwise be bleak and cynical, without sugarcoating tough subjects. Disclosure Day can be about the government’s attempts to control and suppress information while also urging us to find compassion for the world and the people around us. Signs can address the inevitability of death and tragedy while affirming that the only way to move forward is to lean on the people you love.
UFOs might not be landing on Earth tomorrow, but Spielberg and Shyamalan’s message is clear: we are not alone.
Article Courtesy of Claire May Lewis
Feature Image Credit to Universal Pictures