Why Steven Spielberg doesn’t consider Disclosure Day to be science fiction

Coming nearly half a century after Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Disclosure Day is a grand bookend for one of the most cosmically minded filmmakers of our time, whose dreams of extraterrestrial life have shaped all of ours. It is a distant answer to the final notes of Close Encounters. But while Spielberg grants his 1977 film was “speculative”, Disclosure Day, he insists, is the real deal.

“It’s my first film that will be considered science fiction that I do not consider to be science fiction,” Spielberg says. “It’s much more reflective of the world as it is evolving and discoveries that are being made as we speak.”

Spielberg, at 79, is trying to revive the alien wonder that has lingered in his mind, from E.T. to War of the Worlds. Disclosure Day, his first summer movie in a decade, is already being hailed as one of his best in years. But this time, Spielberg is testing whether he can conjure some of his trademark film magic less with imagination than with conviction.