Steven Spielberg’s 37th film as a director is a corker, a proper summer movie, a prime example of the genre he first created. jaws. Take care of the trailers – the less you know beforehand, the more you’ll enjoy them.
Anyway we continue. Discovery day it’s Spielberg’s fourth alien film, or maybe just his third, since he’s said so War of the Worlds from 2005 (the only one in which the aliens are hostile) was a metaphor for 9/11. Otherwise, Spielberg is fascinated only by aliens, as much as by children and toys: “I said to myself: wouldn’t it be wonderful if all this was true?”
promoting discovery day he went further: “Now I’m much more inclined than when I did Close encounters of the third kind to truly believe that we are not the only intelligent civilization in the universe.”
At its bottom, the truth about aliens has been relentlessly suppressed for 79 years (ie dating back to Roswell), but not by the government. The secret organization behind it, Wardex, is led by a twisted Englishman with a hairdo, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth, the weakest of the cast). However, some of Wardex’s most charming employees have gathered to get the truth out there, led by the wise and mystical Hugo (Colman Domingo).
Wardex security expert Daniel (the likable, self-deprecating Josh O’Connor) has just stolen not only data sticks containing all the evidence of alien life, but also an alien device the size of a TV remote that gives off incredible power. He finally returned from a video of a suffering alien being cruelly experimented on under Scanlon’s direction (“No anesthesia! Go in now!”). It is as bad as seeing a child being tortured.
The film opens with a dynamic scene set in a mixed martial arts show. Sitting in the audience with his double briefcase, Daniel is attacked by black-clad Wardex agents, desperate to recover the data and the device. But, this being the first scene, he escapes.
For almost two hours, Discovery day then it becomes a straightforward, all-terrestrial Hitchcockian chase movie (complete with MacGuffin). By my count, there are no less than six attempts made by Wardex operatives, rolling around in a fleet of big black cars, to take down Daniel and his sweet girlfriend – and ex-nun – Jane (Eve Hewson). Every time they leave, Scanlon tracks them down again, perversely using another one of the aliens’ captured devices to enter their minds, see what they see, and control them.
Meanwhile, in an ever-converging parallel narrative, we meet Margaret Fairchild, a glamorous weather girl for a Kansas City television network, wonderfully played by Emily Blunt, the film’s absolute star. When a bright-eyed cardinal (the bird, not the personality – the little gray aliens manifest as animals so as not to scare people) lands on her breakfast table one morning, she suddenly discovers that she has supernatural powers of empathy.
She can understand any language and read any mind, disarming opponents with her instant understanding of their family pains, a perfectly Spielbergian superpower. To her confusion, she also finds herself in telepathic contact with Daniel, with whom she has much more in common than she knows. United, fighting against Wardex, they race towards the day of discovery, broadcasting to the telephone world from Kansas City.
Discovery day it’s as brilliantly filmed as anything Spielberg has ever done: the camera moves us irresistibly through every scene; always exciting lighting as only he knows how to do; John Williams contributing a wonderful 30th score alongside Spielberg, evoking sharks, dinos and miracles. The textual pleasure is so great that it’s easy to forgive the plodding development and expository dialogue.
Spielberg is playing on the same desire for other life in the universe that made Dan Farah’s bleak documentary 2025 The Age of Discovery (2025), regarding the US government’s alleged suppression of extensive extraterrestrial evidence, one such strike. But Spielberg does it in a much more dramatic, artistic, satisfying way, from the clever inclusion of a nun giving a religious blessing to the alien life to settling on the most familiar alien references and forms.
Hokum has no more sincere exponent. Somehow, he makes entirely Hollywood films that are entirely his own. Scientists engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence may not have heard a peep in 50 years; Elon Musk has pronounced consciousness “a small candle in a great darkness”. Steven Spielberg, however, still hopes for the best for all of us.
(Further reading: The British aristocracy has never been so miserable)
