Greetings Friends; rare movie review post; not really a review so much as a discussion of the concept. Disclosure Day is a hard sci fi film by Steven Spielberg and basically the idea is that empathy will defeat all evil magically, so kind of the plot of every JRPG. Since its hard sci fi and philosophically interesting I like the film, it does have some rather glaring flaws that we'll go over but a flawed interesting movie is way better than a by the numbers movie. Essentially since the 1970s at least the gubmint of Disclosure Day has been concealing that there are Aliens and has been taking advantage of their technology; this is very effectively shown to be a long distance mind control device that works as long as you know what a person looks like; like extremely telepathic godhood essentially. Despite this the organization that uses said device to interfere with the protagonists and has infinite resources can't seem to wrangle two to three fairly inept people at any given point in the story........................................................................................................................................................................................................Now; the current state of the government leaves a lot to be desired as far as general competence goes however if the government and/or secret corporate pseudo government had access to godlike mind control powers they probably would be fairly competent; so basically this is a failure of making the villains seem effective or dangerous at all in the film with one interesting exception. So for one thing the villains should be more competent and also Emily Blunt's character should have more superpowers basically, it shouldn't be she has to look into everyone's eyes individually to tame them but she should have a personal burst aoe mind control effect or something instead. These two things together would make the film a lot better, it might also benefit from being rated R and considerably more violent, they don't necessarily have to kill characters for that to work either just be more imposing on that end, the subject matter is relatively heavy for being relatively toothless (aside from the fabled car vs train battle).............................................................................................................................................................................................................Okay on to the philosophy aspect; does empathy being imposed on you from an external, alien force lead to a better society. It might lead to a better society relatively speaking but would probably have some adverse effects especially in the short term. One of the characters does sort of present this argument in the movie but it kind of just gets tossed aside ultimately. Ayn Rand's Anthem basically has a forced empathetic society in it and objectivism which is generally pretty terrible is sort of rooted in a counter philosophical aspect in that regard. I'm not that much of an individualist but the "Great Man" theory as far as how history moves forward is somewhat appealing to me and a universally empathetic society would probably prevent and eliminate greatness as a concept. John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism is not unlike the philosophy Spielberg presents in this movie, I think Utilitarianism works quite a bit better than forced empathy from an external source but also has a milieu of issues............................................................................................................................................................................................................So, how would I improve this movie on the philosophical level; I think going deeper into the concept of forced empathy would be good, the CGI animals and presumably not CGI alien that is piloting said animals could probably be used in a creepier fashion to highlight this. Basically you need to present the counter factual in the movie instead of just giving it lip service; if you then present a situation where that is remedied then it would be more cohesive as a plot point. You could also have a flashback sequence at some point demonstrating how the aliens made first contact and how the human alien relationship broke down; if their empathy is so godlike and powerful as to tame Colin Firth easily then surely they could've handled Nixon too. Perhaps Kissinger with a shotgun shows up and blasts the aliens to smithereens. Shoutouts to John Williams.
