Decades after Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters first turned UFO obsession into family drama, it has become the perfect warm-up for his new conspiracy thriller Disclosure Day—especially after Spielberg said he has a “very strong suspicion” we’re not alone.
When Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day arrives, it doesn’t ask you to ponder the unknown from a safe distance. It’s built around a whistleblower trying to get proof of alien life to everyone on Earth. That premise alone is enough to pull viewers in.
But if you want to understand why Spielberg keeps returning to the same pull—wonder sharpened by doubt—there’s one movie that still feels like the key in the lock: Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
In 1977. Spielberg framed the kind of story he was making with the words: “IF YOU believe. it’s science fact; if you don’t believe. it’s science fiction. I’m an agnostic between the two beliefs. so for me it’s science speculation.” He wasn’t just selling a UFO picture. He was describing a posture—open to the mystery, unwilling to pretend it’s settled.
The film follows Roy Neary. played by Richard Dreyfuss. an electrical lineworker in Muncie. Indiana. whose life is threaded with routine and resentment. His home, with his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) and their two sons, is not loveless. It’s worse than that: noisy, strained, and heavy with the sense that something essential is missing.
So when Roy is driving during a routine investigation of power outages across town and a UFO flies over his truck, the event doesn’t land as a spectacle. It flips his inner life into an obsession. He risks his own life to learn what’s out there.
Close Encounters also refuses to keep the mystery at a distance from ordinary people. Three-year-old Billy (Cary Guffey) wakes up one night to find his toys whirred into life. He’s nearly lured toward a spacecraft—until his mother, Jillian (Melinda Dillon), stops him.
Roy and Jillian aren’t the only ones touched by the sight. The story notes that other witnesses—open-hearted sky-watchers—are chased away from sites of previous encounters by mysterious government agents. And scientists. working in secret. are shown trying to understand why long-missing aircraft and navy vessels are reappearing in strange places. minus their crew.
At the center of it all is a visual obsession that won’t let the characters breathe: the witnesses fixate on a strange image. “a flat-topped protuberance of unknown origin.” Spielberg made sure the wonder came with detail. and the film’s craft—especially the spacecraft’s prog-rock visuals—is one of the clearest reasons to watch it even now.
Close Encounters is remembered for popularising ufologist J. Allen Hynek’s categorisation system for supposed alien sightings. And it carries its signature emotional swing: Spielberg is “a sentimentalist who lurches into cynicism. ” a shift that becomes part of the movie’s strength rather than a flaw.
That darker side is exactly why the film still lands after half a century. The story’s portrait of a family in crisis has only gained complexity with time. and Spielberg has spoken about wishing he could have changed its bittersweet ending to something less controversial. Even so, the film remains a fitting culmination for the fractured family at its heart.
Since 1977, Spielberg has returned to the sky with new language—and Disclosure Day seems poised to bring that language forward. In March. he told an audience at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin. Texas. that he has “a very strong suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now – and I made a movie about that”. The gap between those words and the 1977 mindset feels like a tightening spiral: Close Encounters’ science speculation gives way to Disclosure Day’s closer approach to science fact. at least from Spielberg’s perspective.
Whatever you make of the fringe framing. there’s something undeniably thrilling about the fact that the mind behind Close Encounters is still looking up. This time. the angle is sharper. the story is more confrontational. and the questions are aimed at the world instead of staying inside one family’s unraveling.
If Disclosure Day is Spielberg trying to get a claim—alien life—into the open. Close Encounters is where he first showed how that kind of claim can reach people through longing. fear. and belief. Before the whistleblower shows you his proof. watch the movie that taught Spielberg how obsession feels when it turns the lights on and refuses to turn them back off.
Steven Spielberg Disclosure Day Close Encounters of the Third Kind UFOs alien life conspiracy thriller South by Southwest J. Allen Hynek science speculation