{"id":537353,"date":"2026-06-16T04:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T04:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/537353\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T04:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T04:03:15","slug":"disclosure-day-ending-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/537353\/","title":{"rendered":"Disclosure Day Ending Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDisclosure Day\u201d is upon us.<\/p>\n

Steven Spielberg\u2019s latest, which follows a whistleblower (Josh O\u2019Connor) and a TV weatherwoman (Emily Blunt) on a desperate quest to expose the truth about extraterrestrials to the entire world, is in theaters now. It was the #1 movie at the box office this past weekend, with an impressive $44 million in the United States.<\/p>\n

And if you are one of the many who watched the movie on opening weekend, you probably have some questions \u2013 particularly about the ending. Thankfully, while discussing the film with screenwriter David Koepp, one of Spielberg\u2019s closest collaborators and creative allies, we had time to breakdown some aspects of the ending of \u201cDisclosure Day.\u201d<\/p>\n

We should first issue an extreme and explicit spoiler warning<\/strong>. Trust us, you don\u2019t want this stuff disclosed until after you see \u201cDisclosure Day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tPlay video<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"Play\"\/<\/p>\n

The Device<\/p>\n

Koepp said the biggest hurdle involving the rod-like artifacts recovered from downed UFOs, which become key tools for both Colin Firth\u2019s villainous head of the Wardex corporation and for O\u2019Connor and Blunt while they are on the run, was simply naming them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just wanted something that didn\u2019t sound corny, didn\u2019t sound hard to figure out, you didn\u2019t want something that then had to be addressed in dialog to explain what it meant. I was referring to it in the script as the Device, and Steven said, \u2018Well, that\u2019s what it is. Why don\u2019t they just call it that?\u2019\u201d Koepp explained. \u201cThey can\u2019t call it the mysterious space wand and they don\u2019t really understand fully what it does. It is a device, so yeah, let\u2019s call it that. It\u2019s like when you find your title in the description in the script, you\u2019re like, Oh, well, that\u2019s what it should be called.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for what the Device did \u2013 or could do \u2013 that was baked into the screenplay too.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great because it\u2019s allowed to be mysterious. We don\u2019t understand it. We know it does certain things. The primary one, in terms of the story, is being able to look in another place, or look at the world through someone else\u2019s eyes, which ties into the dark side of empathy, which is what the movie is all about,\u201d Koepp said. \u201cLetting it do a couple other things was great fun, but we were comfortable not understanding it fully, because the characters don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Emily\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cListen\u2026\u201d\/The Cut to Black<\/p>\n

One of the things we were most curious about was if the script always ended with a cut to black. Why were we curious about this? Well, because Spielberg movies so infrequently cut to black \u2013 they usually fade to black, oftentimes after a prolonged sequence with some gorgeous plate photography. In fact, since \u201cJurassic Park\u201d in 1993\u2014Spielberg and Koepp\u2019s first collaboration\u2014only four Steven Spielberg films have ended with a cut to black: 2022\u2019s \u201cThe Fabelmans,\u201d 2018\u2019s \u201cReady Player One\u201d and 2017\u2019s \u201cThe Post,\u201d with one, 2011\u2019s \u201cThe Adventures of Tintin,\u201d featuring an iris in.<\/p>\n

Koepp said that, from the first draft, the cut to black was present, as was the final word of the script (and now, the movie) \u2013 \u201cListen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was writing the last scene in the first draft, I got to the last scene, and I wrote the first word. I knew what I wanted the first word of what she said to be, because it has a lot of meaning. She\u2019s saying not only listen, because space guy told me a lot of interesting stuff, but she\u2019s also saying listen to one another. The script is about empathy, but also it\u2019s the first word of a lot of Hebrew prayers, and it\u2019s the first word of \u2018Slaughterhouse-Five\u2019 by Kurt Vonnegut,\u201d Koepp explained. \u201cThe first sentence is, \u2018Listen, Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.\u2019 And I just love the word \u2018listen.\u2019 I wrote the word, and then I just wrote a period and lifted up my hands, because I realized when one word says everything you want to say, you should stop talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for what the alien told Blunt, Koepp says he knows exactly what the creature said but wouldn\u2019t reveal it. (O\u2019Connor told a reporter that he also knows what the alien said<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

When we asked if it would ever be revealed, Koepp joked, \u201cIs there money in it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Colin\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Other Aliens<\/p>\n

While the aliens depicted in \u201cDisclosure Day\u201d are primarily the little grey aliens that we have read about in countless tales of abduction (and resemble, to some degree, the guys at the end of Spielberg\u2019s own \u201cClose Encounters of the Third Kind\u201d), Koepp did say that there were likely other kinds of alien visitors to the planet \u2013 and to the world of \u201cDisclosure Day\u201d \u2013 given how different some of the ships and technology are in the montage towards the end of the film.<\/p>\n

And did we really think Colman Domingo would only know some grey aliens? We bet he\u2019s encountered a whole bunch of outer space freaks.<\/p>\n

Watching Television<\/p>\n

Part of what makes \u201cDisclosure Day\u201d so bold and so emotionally satisfying is its climax. Blunt takes part in a news broadcast where she shares decades of secrets with the entire world. (An unspecified military skirmish, between Russia, the United States and Korea, has been quietly simmering in the background of the movie and we see troops on all sides stop to watch their phone.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tricky because much of that climax is people watching news footage as the various pieces click into place \u2013 Firth\u2019s baddie shows up at the television station in Kansas and attempts to shut down the broadcast, Domingo\u2019s character gets the alien (who had escaped Wardex facilities years earlier) into place, O\u2019Connor races to upload all the footage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was something that was hard, and they\u2019re watching so many different things, and you have to decide which things \u2026 directing that control room sequence at NBC was a feat of concentration and projection into the future, because the footage [Spielberg] was going to put up didn\u2019t exist, except in his head and a little bit in the script, but we were continually reworking it, but deciding what screen was up, how big, and which one would have prominence in any given shot \u2026 That there was a massive shuffling act.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t
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