Something is very wrong in the world of Disclosure Day, the latest film from Steven Spielberg. The first trailer for the film gives us very little detail about the plot or even nature of the threat facing its characters. Instead, the teaser establishes an ominous tone, from the uncanny noises coming out of the mouth of a newscaster played by Emily Blunt to the sci-fi equipment surrounding Colin Firth.But in our world, things are very right, at least for a moment, because not only is Spielberg re-teaming with blockbuster screenwriter David Koepp, but the duo are evoking the mood of one of the filmmaker’s mid-period masterpieces War of the Worlds.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});For those who have forgotten about 2005’s War of the Worlds, or perhaps were turned off by the ending and thus put it out of mind, Spielberg turned the classic sci-fi tale into a powerful piece of post-9/11 art. Written by Koepp and Josh Friedman, War of the Worlds sets the H.G. Wells story in modern day Brooklyn, where deadbeat dad Ray (Tom Cruise) has his kids for a weekend, the same weekend in which Martians attack the Earth.Even more than dramas such as Spike Lee‘s The 25th Hour or Paul Greengrass‘s United 93, which openly evoked 9/11 to great effect, Spielberg’s sci-fi tale captured the feeling of the attacks. The scenes of Ray and other Broolynites treating the first signs of invasion with bemusement, the total social breakdown that puts Ray and children in constant danger, even the hyper-militarization of the final act all reflect the unreal feelings of that era.Powerful as it is, War of the Worlds suffers from a lack of conviction in its final act, in which Tom Cruise’s character pulls off an incredible feat and the American military fights the aliens. However, some (read: this writer) find the ending of the film discordant in a way that highlights the false triumphalism of the presidential administration of the time. War of the Worlds showed why it’s not the aliens that we needed to fear in the 2000s.With Disclosure Day, Spielberg and Koepp seem ready to do the same for the 2020s. Instead of any plot details, the trailer introduces a variety of characters, including Blunt’s newswoman, Firth’s rich-looking guy, Josh O’Connor as a very earnest-looking man with a backpack, Colman Domingo as someone with an incredible voice, and more. The characters talk vaguely about people needing to know the truth and how there must be more out there than just “us.”This combination of some nebulous truth hidden from the people, lots of screens, and combinations of the super rich and the devout cannot help but resonate in our time, when we can still mistrust media enough to know images aren’t always truth, and we feel the pull of various economic, religious, and ideological forces on our daily lives. Yet, we often fail in trying to articulate what those forces are or what we should do about it. When we open our mouths to speak about it, only indecipherable noises come out… not unlike Blunt’s character in Disclosure Day.Disclosure Day arrives on June 12, 2026.The post New Steven Spielberg Trailer Has a Real War of the Worlds Feel appeared first on Den of Geek.