Critique-Opolis
Jay & Louisa deliver a fiery, opinion fueled overview of movies, social movements, cultural behaviors and eating habits - dovetailed with a honey-based recipe and reviews of the most obnoxious movie/media news headlines we can get our eyeballs in front of. For our latest editions, we will be reviewing scripts from the infamous Hollywood 'Black List' (scripts with a ton of 'buzz' that have yet to secure a deal or go into production) - and adding our own casting and story development suggestions.
Critique-Opolis
Aliens Show Up And Nobody Watches TV
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One secret can change the world, but only if anyone believes it. We sit down with Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day and end up talking less about extraterrestrials and more about the machinery of secrecy: who holds the evidence, who controls the story, and why “disclosure” might land with a shrug in 2026.
We walk through what makes the film tick as a science fiction chase thriller, from a whistleblower cybersecurity specialist (Josh O’Connor) ripping classified UFO and extraterrestrial technology files out of a covert system, to a Kansas City TV meteorologist (Emily Blunt) becoming an accidental point of contact after a strange encounter unlocks psychic perception and an alien language on live air. Colin Firth brings real menace as the face of institutional control, and Coleman Domingo adds the film’s conscience as the voice arguing that transparency is an act of compassion, not chaos.
The most interesting swing Disclosure Day takes is framing empathy as intelligence. We talk about how social media trains us toward outrage and isolation, and why the movie insists that real “first contact” is ultimately about human connection, not invasion spectacle. Along the way we hit the practical stuff movie fans love too: the standout train and car sequences, the eerie mind-invasion tech, and the behind-the-scenes details on soundstages and real locations that keep the world feeling grounded.
If you’re into alien disclosure stories, government cover-ups, UFO lore, or sci fi that’s actually about people, queue this one up. Subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review with your take: would a real disclosure moment unite people, or just get swallowed by the feed?
Cold Open And Timebox
SPEAKER_03I hope you're ready. Because here we go.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03In the interest of keeping us on time, we know for any of you listening, we try to keep this at 45. It's going to be a little shorter today, but it's a more robust film. And I say that because this is a Steven Spielberg picture. The recently released Disclosure Day. Now, was this my pick or your pick, or was this a mutual thing?
SPEAKER_00Kind of a mutual thing, I think.
SPEAKER_03So Disclosure Day deals with it's not just the arrival of extraterrestrial life. I think it's more about how the powers that be on this planet would, if at all, allow the public to become aware of what we all suspect the powers that be already know. There's a huge what would you
Aliens, Conspiracies, And Scale
SPEAKER_03call that commun what do you call the community that's I know all of you anyone who listens to this podcast gets irritated with my long pauses or when there's air state. You know, if I was on a radio show, I would have been fired. A long time ago. Thanks for completing my sentence there with that.
SPEAKER_00I knew that's what you wanted to say. This happens all the time.
SPEAKER_03The conspiracy theory community. There's a hu the anyone out there involved in conspiracy theories has a thought on aliens. And I feel from anything that I've seen, the pervasive thought is that they're already here, and the powers that be our governments, especially the American government, keeps all of this knowledge from us. I've heard everything from the aliens just want to use us as batteries, and they've made a deal with the president and a couple of key figures to allow the Simeons, are just the regular people to function as batteries and meet batteries against our knowledge and against our will, and we'll find out long after we've been systematically enslaved. I don't know how much of that nonsense is true, but I always find it funny when I hear these things on YouTube, people talking about what they what they think the status of contact is with extraterrestrial life and what their intentions are. And then I see videos about how big the universe is, just alone our galaxy, let alone the knowable universe. And it occurs to me how small we are, and how we can look at the perspective that we have over our own life. And my life and your life, I think, are pretty good by how we've built and constructed it up to this point. Yeah. So yeah, maybe there's something out there puppeteering our way through the cosmos. But for the most part, I'm pretty okay with it. I don't I don't know that there is there might be something nefarious that is happening with our quote-unquote soul after we die. But I kind of feel like, though, that if anything, if any of that stuff was true, it's kind of silly to make those claims if you don't have any kind of solution around it. I feel like that's more like superfluous information that can't be okay. Maybe the aliens are out there and they're just waiting for us to have a complete life and then harvest our soul to do God knows what out in the cosmos. What am I gonna do with that? I want something functional out of that. But Steven Spielberg's movie is more about how there is a covert agency that's ultra-covert, but is well aware of the the presence of extraterrestrial life that they do and have tools to interact with us as human beings, and how they are trying to. You can talk over me here a little bit. How they're just trying to engage with all living things, but the government views it as a nefarious or a or it they look at it the government looks at it as a communication that it doesn't want to see happen. Almost as if the the government wants to have a lid or control over the dissemination of knowledge that we're not alone.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think they don't want anything to happen, like uh bad or like mass crazy hysteria, if people find out they want to keep it like kind of under wraps and like let it come out if it needs to in a way that they can deal with it.
SPEAKER_03Which is kind of funny, like how like deal with it how?
SPEAKER_00Like I don't know, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I always find this funny that that like we went and saw this with our friends Dave and Masha, and my big gripe with this movie after it was over was that the big reveal is they try to get they try to release the big reveal at the end of the movie on a television
Why A TV Reveal Feels Dated
SPEAKER_03station. Which I watched this and I watched this movie in 2026, and I'm like, that's laughable that you think anyone's a watching television, B, that any one report is going to cause any, aside from the world is ending in five minutes, yeah, any kind of mass hysteria because we've seen routinely what any presenter on television deems as a quote big story. Yes. They say their piece, they get out this piece of news, and it is immediately rolled over by some other piece of news. And people don't react to anything in the world.
SPEAKER_00Everybody just goes about their lives like nothing.
SPEAKER_03I feel like this this kind of story, if it were if this movie was released and the story was released 30 or 40 years ago before the advent of the internet, people would be a lot more keyed up about it. But now that we're so muted by the speed of the information and the news cycle, that when you see a movie like this, you're like, no one's gonna respond to that at all. No one's gonna give a shit about it. They're not even gonna think it's real. We struggle with that's something this movie didn't address, is we didn't we struggle now to identify what is real and actionable.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. There was definitely one side presented, so to speak. And it wasn't, and that I don't I don't personally see I don't see that as a critique to the movie, like I know what the movie was doing, but um, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So you did a slide deck on this, not a mind map?
SPEAKER_00I think I did both. I have a mind map open.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you do? Yeah. Let me see if I can back this up. You do? On on disclosure day? Mm-hmm. Oh, you do. Pardon.
SPEAKER_00It's okay.
SPEAKER_03Alright, so let's see if I can go back to. Oh, we'll just give you the broad strokes here. Principal cast, Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth. Emily Blunt plays Margaret Fairchild, a Kansas City television meteorologist who becomes humanity's first point of contact with extraterrestrial
Cast, Characters, And Standouts
SPEAKER_03intelligence. After a mysterious encounter with a cardinal, she develops psychic abilities such as intuiting thoughts and speaking unknown languages. The intuiting thoughts is really amazing. She could just make eye contact with somebody and know what all their trigger points are.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Which eventually lead her to join the quest for disclosure. Her performance has been described by critics as a career highlight and simply breathtaking. I think part of that was the scene on the train where she bursts into hysterics because she can't handle all this, what's happening to her. That was pretty poignant. Josh O'Connor was Daniel Kellner. What else has he been in? I we see I uh you're getting she's getting this look on her face, ladies and gentlemen.
SPEAKER_00I was waiting for it to come.
SPEAKER_03Really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Because I can when I watch it, this is what I do. When I watch a movie, I'm like, that person was in this movie, they were in this movie.
SPEAKER_03I know we just saw something with him. What was he in?
SPEAKER_00Um it was the last knives out movie. He was the priest.
SPEAKER_03He was the priest! Oh, that's right. Yeah, right, right, right. O'Connor plays a cybersecurity specialist and a whistleblower for the Wardex Corporation, which is the ultra-secret government thing. He initiates the plot by stealing a trove of classified extraterrestrial technology and files, leading to a worldwide chase. Eve Hewson plays Jade Blankenship, playing Daniel's girlfriend and a former religious novice. Hewson's character provides a bridge between the film's scientific and religious themes. During the casting process, Hewson met with Spielberg via Zoom and successfully pitched her own ideas for the character.
SPEAKER_00She was also in um the Netflix show. Um, I think it was Nobody's Perfect or The Perfect Couple.
SPEAKER_03I love how you looked at me and like nodded your head like I have any idea what that show's about.
SPEAKER_00I wasn't nodding my head for you at you. I was nodding it for myself.
SPEAKER_03Okay. What was it about though?
SPEAKER_00The perfect couple. It was a a murder mystery, um, like I think Sudden King Pod um with Nicole Kidman and Liv Shriver, and they were a couple. And um they were it was like a series, I think. Really? Um it was either a movie or a series, but I watched it. It was good. I mean it's one of those things that like comes out and everybody's like talking about did you watch this? Did you watch this?
SPEAKER_03Did we see clips of that in those ads last night for the movie?
SPEAKER_00Not last night, but I do believe somewhere we have seen clips before.
SPEAKER_03Who else do we got? Figures of Authority and Conflict. Colin Firth plays Noah Scanlon, moving away from his more traditional roles. What?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, go ahead, sorry.
SPEAKER_03Firth plays the film's main antagonist, the ruthlessly officious CEO of Wardex. His character utilizes advanced technology to drive into other people's minds and track Daniel and Margaret, which was done well, I think. That was pretty riveting.
SPEAKER_00It was really cool. Also creepy, so so like I did not like it. Um, but and I and I was just gonna have that. It was so interesting to see Colin Firth in this role. Because you just don't like there were some times when I was like, oh, that's just like that's not Colin Firth. And there were other times when I'm like, that when I was like, that is Colin Firth.
SPEAKER_03Well he was all bearded up.
SPEAKER_00It was just like, yeah. Anyway, so great cast.
SPEAKER_03Coleman Domingo plays Hugo Wakefield, a wardex director, turned defector, who advocates for public disclosure. Critics have noticed, have noted that Wakefield often serves as a surrogate for Spielberg himself, acting as an older, thoughtful man who emphasizes the value of empathy.
SPEAKER_00Wakefield.
SPEAKER_03Pardon me?
SPEAKER_00Who's Wakefield?
SPEAKER_03Hugo Wakefield. He was the character.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_03This was an item that I haven't read that deep into this notebook LM, but it was touched on, it wasn't over-emphasized, but it was touched on in
Empathy As A Kind Of Intelligence
SPEAKER_03the movie was the value of empathy and how it is not utilized well among human beings. How we, especially since the advent of social media, are keyed up. You've seen it with me. I'm just kind of a grumpy older guy now that is, I hate to say it, this is a bit of a character flaw, but always looking for for a reason to. And I do believe that is driven in part by social media, and I feel like, and this was one of the points of the movie was that empathy is an actual intelligence. And a lot of there's a lot of the population that doesn't understand it or doesn't understand how to access it and utilize it properly. We we kind of get it, we're s we're isolating. People try to isolate and remove themselves from other people. Where if you have can if you can understand, you can appreciate empathy and exercise it among your fellow man, you understand how everyone is interconnected and they all need one another. And it is a it is an emotion that has tremendous value, but is very hard to wrap your mind around. It's not just a mental thing, it's uh you have to feel it. And it's a it's very much a heart and mind connectivity, for lack of a better word, issue. I'm curious if they touched on that at all in here because I'm looking back to the studio and I'm considering what I want to talk about. Plot and narrative, maybe themes. That might be better.
SPEAKER_00I will say before we go on to themes, yeah, um, real quick, that um I listened to a podcast where they interviewed Coleman Domingo and a little bit of what he talked about with this movie because it was just gonna be coming out. Um, and listening to him talk briefly about this movie and like the emotional I don't know what you call it, but for lack of better word, connection in this movie. I was like, oh, I could watch this movie because the it's it's not big gross aliens or invasion or pulled me in for sure, but it was also like it's it's about aliens, but it's really I don't think it is. Like there wasn't a lot of like that's what I've been telling like friends who are curious about it or who I'm like, I'm not going to see that. And I'm like, but give it a chance, think about it, because it's not. I want to see it. It's not aliens, it's not like a third what's that movie?
SPEAKER_03Close encounters.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Yeah. It's I don't think it's that. And if anything, I mean it's giving like ET vibes. I really liked it. Yeah, but not like not not um complete. I I don't know.
SPEAKER_03Here's the thing, you're not gonna see an alien.
SPEAKER_00Not really.
SPEAKER_03No, not really.
SPEAKER_00Briefly.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_00Like there's a there's a little bit, but it's the way that it's done, it's not like I don't know. There's a lot more to it.
SPEAKER_03Way more to it. There's way more to learn from this movie about what anything any superior intelligence out in the universe could potentially teach us about ourselves.
SPEAKER_00It's just very interesting. I really liked it. But anyway, okay, little themes.
SPEAKER_03Actually, you know what I might want to do is go to plot and narrative, because we know we're we have limited time here, and then I'll jump to the themes. Okay. So This Closure Day is a high-stakes science fiction chase thriller that explores the societal and personal consequences of uncovering a decades-long government cover-up regarding extraterrestrial life. Think the little green men that are supposedly rumored to be
Plot Setup Without Spoilers
SPEAKER_03housed at Roswell in New Mexico. The plot centers on two parallel journeys that eventually converge in a global attempt to share the truth with humanity. Story begins with Dr. Daniel Kellner, cybersecurity specialist for Wardex, a secret arm of the U.S. government. Daniel steals a handheld extraterrestrial device and a massive archive of classified files detailing human and alien contact dating back to the 1947 Roswell incident. This act initiates a worldwide chase as Wardex CEO Noah Scanlon brands Daniel, a foreign spy, and utilizes advanced tech to track him. Daniel initially goes into hiding with his girlfriend, Jade Blanketship, taking refuge in a monastery in a safe house. The psychic awakening of Margaret Fairchild. I think what might be is just the what might be a good idea is just to talk about the these two items, and then the conver how they converge. We'll leave it up to anybody who is considering seeing the movie because that's really kind of the exciting part of the movie.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_03So simultaneously in Kansas, part of pardon me, Kansas City, television meteorologist Margaret Fairchild experiences a life-altering encounter when a cardinal flies into her home. This event awakens latent psychic abilities, including the capacity to intuit the thoughts and of others and speak in unknown languages. After she involuntarily emits a garbled, clackety dialect of extraterrestrial origin, during a live weather broadcast, she becomes a target for Wardex agents. The convergence and revealed history. So the key narrative revelations include childhood abductions. Both of these both Margaret and Daniel discovered that they were both abducted as kids and subjected to experiments that granted them their abilities. The archive, the stolen Wardux files, contain 80 years of visual evidence, which is funny that we just talked about that. And the the people who absolutely swallow the pill would be fervent about it, but there's their numbers are so small they'd be branded as conspiracy theorists. Aliens among us, it is revealed that the unusual animals seen throughout the characters' lives are actually extraterrestrials in disguise observing humanity. I don't think I I want to talk about that the climax. Just know that in this know that there is one. They have to get to the TV station to put the word out of the TV station.
SPEAKER_00And no one watches anything.
SPEAKER_03Like put it on social media, yeah, but like it's all they're all local clients. Like everybody has every individual person has their own feed. Yeah. There's not a way that you can make every I mean you can have stories go viral, but it makes more sense if we put on TV.
SPEAKER_00It was yeah. It was interesting. Interesting too because um it was on the news station, but then when things were happening and everybody was tuned in, I mean literally everybody in the town and on the streets and in the stores and houses and things like they were all glued to their cell phone and watching. So it was kind of funny to see like one medium go to because everything is so quick now.
SPEAKER_03And also that like you see people on their phone all the time, but with this with this movie doesn't it shifts that conversation that in real life people are all looking at their phone, but they're all looking at at their own protocols and their own email and their own social media and their own individual apps. The idea that everybody would be looking at the same thing on the sa on the same app or on the same device is I don't know. I mean like outside of we didn't really have social media during 9-11.
SPEAKER_00No. That was one where I well, that's a whole nother thing. We don't have a lot of time for that, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, let's get into the themes here real quick. Central thematic conflict of disclosure day is defined by a war of secrecy versus transparency. Pitting powerful institutions that have guarded extraterrestrial secrets for 80 years against individuals determined to share that knowledge with the world. Also, the inequality of knowledge. Spielberg was inspired to write
Secrecy Versus Transparency Themes
SPEAKER_03the story by the inequity that exists between the greater unknown. Or the great unknown is known by a select few but withheld from the general public. The concept is personified in a film by Wardex, a secret arm of the government that has managed extraterrestrial encounters since the 1947 Roswell crash. Whistleblowing and transparency. Kellner, a cybersecurity specialist at whistleblower, steals a massive archive. His motives being for transparency is supervised by Hugo Wakefield, a former Wardex director who affected to advocate for public disclosure. A data dump. This movie was so enjoyable, but I I just have a hard time in 2026 getting by that idea that that would work. And the last one being narrative control while the whistleblowers fight to release information figures like WordX CEO and Noah Scanlon work ruthlessly to control the narrative and protect the established order. So before I get before I keep rolling, what did you want to say? I you you got that look on your face.
SPEAKER_00Well, um just a few things. Yeah. Um personally, I'm not always a huge fan of Emily Blunt.
SPEAKER_03You're not?
SPEAKER_00No. But I I didn't know this. Don't really like her.
Performances, Action, And Craft
SPEAKER_00Um but breaking news! I know I'm sorry, Emily Blunt.
SPEAKER_03I don't know you, but um Trust me, she doesn't listen to the show.
SPEAKER_00But she was so good in this movie. She was so good in this movie, and I was kind of like, okay, now I really like you. Like, I've seen movies that she's been in before, and I mean she's a good actress. It's not she's not. I just I she just is I just don't give me the one movie that she was in that you didn't care for. Who um I'd have to look at her. Um I don't know.
SPEAKER_03Um There's one, ladies and gentlemen. I know there's one with that Louisa saw was just like, uh I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I just I just I'm she's not like one of the actresses that I she's not an actress that I'm like, oh, I have to go see this movie that she's in now. I don't know. Um, but I really, really did like her in this movie. And then also, um, for people who like really like action, um, there was a really good maybe you talked about this already excuse me already. Excuse me, but the car and the train and the I don't know how to sum it up or say quick, I wouldn't want to give it away or anything like that. But that was really a very good scene. And um when I listened to the podcast that um our notebook created for us, um it was what what whatever they said about it, like it being real or it being like riveting to film or I can't remember the details, but it was just very exciting. Like I thought that whatever they again, whatever they were saying really came through in the movie, like it was just very wow. Also, I just learned this movie they shot in three weeks.
SPEAKER_03They did?
SPEAKER_00That's what it said, at least that's what I understood it. Wow. In three weeks, and they said that they spent three days doing the train and the car scene. But three weeks? I can't believe that.
SPEAKER_03A lot of the car chases you could do pretty quick. Shooting it.
SPEAKER_00If you have multiple scheduling.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um what do you call them? Crews. If you got multiple crews shooting a car chase, and a lot of it was dialogue.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03A lot of it was dialogue. I mean, if I I would think most of the issue would be in just setting up. I would bet that they did a lot of this on the lot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh-huh. They did. Um, I love like filming locations.
SPEAKER_03Because they did like the where they put her house that they built.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03That's in that that street it was on in that warehouse, that could have been a on a sound stage.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_03And the like the house that she was in, there was a bunch of scenes in there. All of the the control room where he operated, where Noah operated.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That was that was a uh a soundstage for sure. And the house that ended up getting destroyed when the Wardex came after him.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03That was just a piece of shit house that was whoops, that was either built hastily or was already falling apart. And then they went to a television studio, which was probably part of the Paramount lot.
SPEAKER_00Um so they filmed a lot in um New Jersey and New York and they filmed a lot in New Jersey and New York. Uh-huh. And um the studio filming took place at Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where the massive interior of the Wardock's headquarters was constructed. The production also filmed inside the real NBC control room at 30 Rocka Rockefeller Plaza, featuring actual newsroom employees as supporting actors. An on-site an in at an industrial industrial site on the sta on Staten Island was used to capture the classified extraterrestrial footage. I'm trying to find where that house was made.
SPEAKER_03I would think if if in the planning stage you're like, alright, we got these 12 key locations, we're gonna have 12 crews, 12 little crews.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh. Okay.
SPEAKER_03We'll just arrange the arrange the sequencing and the shoot times. That's pretty amazing, though. They should have the whole thing in under a moment.
SPEAKER_00I know I'm trying to verify where I saw, or trying to, yeah, confirm that I saw where I read that. But um, I'm also because I love like shooting location information and things like that.
SPEAKER_03Um there is an actual sidebar. There's, I'm sure, a number of sites, but I think I've told you this before. I re-watched The French Connection a while ago.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03And that was shot around New York in the 70s when New York was a dump. And there were lots of abandoned and bombed-out areas like the Bronx.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03And you can see a shot by shot comparison between what a scene what a place looked like in the movie compared to what it looks like now. Yeah. And sometimes they're night and day, and sometimes you can see shadows of what that place looked like 60 years ago.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03And personally, for someone who likes movies, it's really amazing. Because you can, especially if you r can recall from your own memories seeing older movies on television when you were a child, and you see the you met you have pictures of these scenes in your mind to see what that scene looks like in real life today. Yeah. If it's still if the buildings are still there, if some of the windows are still there, it it it it makes you feel all kinds of feelings.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. Um, sorry, not related necessarily to what you were just saying, but um speaking of Emily Blunt and like in the preview you see um she's doing the weather report, and she starts speaking like for the alien or like an alien language. Um and she did all that herself. Like it wasn't um It wasn't like a like voice generated or like com like a like a tape over kind of thing. I don't really call that. She she like made all those sounds and things herself, and I thought that was really cool.
SPEAKER_03This is interesting. The real life catalyst for the movie, the film was sparked by a 2017 New York Times article regarding the Pentagon's mysterious UFO program, which signaled a real world shift towards disclosure. It's funny how like
Production Notes And Filming Locations
SPEAKER_03don't listen to me, folks. Clearly the mass media still has some effect, but people are asking for it now, but the powers that be still aren't really spitting anything out. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Man, so much good information, but I can't see.
SPEAKER_03We're limited by time, man.
SPEAKER_00Damn it. I know. How are we doing? Need to be done.
SPEAKER_03Well, I mean, we're at three minutes and forty. Okay. This is the thing. Do you ever wonder when we do these, if maybe we should just do I'm not saying we do, because I like having consistency. But I like to hope that within 40, 45, 50 minutes we can get the point across of a movie to motivate someone to go see it. Because if we just went through the slide deck, we could easily spend an hour and a half on a movie. I personally think it's a little bit of overkill, but oh, here we go. Here's an item on human empathy under themes.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03I'll talk about that. What what were you about to say?
SPEAKER_00I was just gonna say that I'm so sorry, but the movie was not filmed in three in three weeks. Oh the freight train sequence was filmed in three weeks. Oh sorry, the it took over three weeks to film that sequence.
SPEAKER_03Ah. Alright, so we're not to the point where we're making I'm so glad I found that.
SPEAKER_00I'm so sorry for the bad information.
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna let Reuters know. In the larger context of Disclosure Day, human empathy is presented not just as a character trait, but as the film's moral core. What is this? Real trains are. We don't need this. And humanity's ultimate tool for survival. While the film is a science fiction spectacle, critics highlight that it's profoundly focused on the nature of the human race and is less about aliens than it is about people. Empathy is a narrative and moral force. The film posits that salvation does not come from extraterrestrial intervention but from human connection. The Spielbergian hope. Despite a bleak outlook on modern political global self-interest, the film is deeply rooted in hopefulness for human empathy. Hugo Wakefield as the moral compass. The character Hugo serves as a surrogate for Spielberg himself, an old and thoughtful man who explicitly lectures on the value of empathy. He represents the ideological opposite of Noah Scanlon's ruthless secrecy, advocating for transparency as an act of compassion for all eight billion people. A holy act of communication. Film's conclusion, where the world watches the disclosure broadcast together, is described as a sacred ritual of coming together. Spielberg uses this moment to showcase his unadulterated faith in human compassion,
Empathy Wrap Up And Next Pick
SPEAKER_03suggesting that while the great unknown has been revealed, aliens aren't coming to save us. That's our own job. Empathy as a literal ability. Intuitive connection. Margaret's psychic awakening allows her to intuitively understand the thoughts and emotions of others regarding conflict resolution. She utilizes these abilities in a nonviolent, what nonviolent way to escape captivity, empathically influenced her pursuers to stand down rather than using force and a bridge to the unknown. Her character's ability to read others' thoughts creates an emotional tether for the audience as she navigates the film's cosmic secrets. I could go into the musical representation of that, but as you can hear by the ding, we're out of time. And two in a row.
SPEAKER_00The music was good.
SPEAKER_03The music was good, but two in a row, no recipe for you, because I gotta take a nap. We'll give you one on the hundredth. Which is, it's gonna be our hundredth episode.
SPEAKER_00Wasn't this, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03This is our hundredth. Oh, you gotta wait till the next one 101, which is gonna be Silence of the Lambs. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. I am announcing it here. It's gonna be 101. I got Louisa to watch that movie. And holy crap, was it fun. She was horrified. Not fully. I mean, come on, admit it. You had such a good time watching that.
SPEAKER_00I did.
SPEAKER_03Except for Hannibal Lecter's escape scene, which was you only cover your face for the for the beating of the guard, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. When that was over, I was back. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But the uh the uh the uh what was thought to be Hannibal Lecter hiding above the uh above the elevator? Yeah. How nervous were you?
SPEAKER_00So nervous.
SPEAKER_03What about the reveal with the ambulance?
SPEAKER_00So good. Oh my gosh, that was the best part.
SPEAKER_03Were you not I remember the entire theater just being like oh I can imagine.
SPEAKER_00I know, yeah, watching it in the theater. Oh no, no, no.
SPEAKER_03When he sat up, you just like the look. I didn't like I've seen that this scene many times. But looking over you, your your eyes were bugging out of your head. Oh god, it was fun. We'll get into that next time. Uh thanks for listening, folks. Hugs and kisses.
SPEAKER_00Alright, enjoy.