I simply do not believe Emily Blunt is normal

If you just look at Steven Spielberg’s resume, you would never know that the film industry has suffered two major work stoppages in the last five years. Since 2020 he has released two films, West Side Story and The Fablemans, with a third due in 2026. Three films in six years is an average pace of output for a filmmaker. Granted, Spielberg usually works faster—he released seven apiece films in the 2010s and 2000s. But still, given everything the industry is up against, releasing three movies since 2020 is an accomplishment.

Spielberg’s next film is Disclosure Day, a sci-fi/drama starring Emily Blunt. Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson, and Wyatt Russell. The trailer dropped yesterday and I’m sort of not feeling it. It could be end of the year numbness—too much has happened and I am emotionally hibernating until January 3—but I have to be honest, Spielberg is hit or miss for me. Oh, I acknowledge he is one of the greatest living filmmakers, but emotionally, his work doesn’t always engage me. Especially his sci-fi I find kind of cold, and yes, I include Close Encounters of the Third Kind in that. Argue with a wall!  

The trailer introduces Emily Blunt as a Kansas City TV meteorologist, to which I immediately and out loud said “no” to my computer. Emily Blunt has got to stop playing everywoman roles, there has never been one second of any film in which I have believed her as anything less than an English lady born in 1897. She does not have resting normal face, she has resting duchess face. I suppose they think that because she is on TV, this character could believably look like Emily Blunt, but in this case, they would be wrong, as they so often are. 

Anyway, she chokes on air because some weird noise comes out of her—I think—and it’s probably aliens. The animals are acting weird, there is an Upsetting Noise, Josh O’Connor is ranting about the truth, Elizabeth Marvel pops up as a nun. I love Elizabeth Marvel, SHE has resting normal face. I 100% believe Elizabeth Marvel as a nun. There’s also Colin Firth, looking like some kind of tech guy, doing something weird with machines. Everyone’s gonna die because of the tech guy.

Disclosure Day is set for June 2026, making it a big summer blockbuster. It’s Spielberg, it’s sci-fi, there are a bunch of famous faces, I see the reasoning behind it. And it will probably do pretty well, if we’re still going to the movies at all by summer 2026. It’s getting harder and harder to predict box office because audiences have basically dried up, but going by the old math, this should work out. Even Spielberg’s bad sci-fi movies, like A.I. Artificial Intelligence and War of the Worlds, do well at the box office. 

The Disclosure Day trailer just isn’t doing much for me, but there have been notable instances when a Spielberg trailer is uninspiring and then the movie is a total banger (see also: Munich, Minority Report). Hopefully, that will be the case here. Though I will simply never believe Emily Blunt is a regular lady from a regular place like Kansas City.