Melissa and I just got back from seeing Disclosure Day, and I want to talk about it.

However, Melissa doesn’t have a lot of fun talking about movies and stories with me, because I overthink a lot of things. To her, it probably feels like an argument.

The movie just came out, and I don’t want to spread spoilers. Hell, with the movie so fresh in my mind, I’m not even sure I’m ready to give it a grade or critique.

If you’re here for some kind of review of the movie, I’ll give some non-spoiler information. Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor were fantastic. All the actors were great, really. The movie looked good, with some excellent suspense. I think you should see the movie for yourself and judge it on your own.

I think people are going to talk about the ending, and I don’t think they’re going to be kind. I foresee YouTube essays trying to explain the ending in the most banal ways possible, missing the point of the movie and ignoring the underlying message, even if it is quite explicit.

Some things happened in the movie that people are going to complain about, and I understand why Spielberg made the choices he made, from a very utilitarian perspective.

I really want to criticize something in this movie, but it would get into spoilers. I won’t do that.

Instead, let me take a couple of moments to talk about Glass, because that’s been out a while. Glass is M. Night Shyamalan’s third movie in the series he started with Unbreakable. It completes the trilogy, and at the end, wipes the slate clean of any supernatural heroes or villains.

The action at the end with Bruce Willis grappling with James McAvoy is tame by comparison to modern superhero movies, but I think it’s a valid artistic choice which does more to ground these characters in our world. They do things that are extraordinary, beyond what one would think a regular human capable of doing, and all of this action is captured on video, which the survivors upload to The Internet.

Glass’s true antagonists aren’t Sam Jackson or James McAvoy, but the super secret group lead by Sarah Paulson. The secret group killed the special people and cleaned up the mess so as to keep society safe from the knowledge of supernatural people living among us.

The only way the heroes can win is for this super secret group to be foiled, which is what uploading the footage to The Internet is supposed to do. The surviving loved ones meet at a train station and watch to see if the footage has an impact. Their hope is rewarded. The secret is out there.

Here’s the problem, though: people are not so easily swayed.

We are divided, cynical, and rightfully untrusting of videos posted to The Internet. With the prevalence and the unfortunate embrace of generative A.I., it’s all too easy to create realistic looking footage in support of an agenda or a big, stupid lie.

The current President of the United States is a conman and a blathering idiot, and a third of this country still thinks he’s the second coming of Christ. They are not swayed by what their eyes and ears are presenting them.

In Glass, Shyamalan is overly optimistic about the power of media swaying folks. The naive solution to his story is to just tell the people the truth. The light will banish the shadows of the secret organization, and we will all rise up together in solidarity, uplifted and united in our new found and shared knowledge.

That’s just not how the world works.

Our world is fertile soil for lies and ignorance to spread, weeds clogging out the truth and stunting the growth of productive thought. Just look at Flat Earthers. They would rather listen to their own “common sense” and make up stuff to fill the gaps of their understand than accept knowledge earned by others through hard work. Incurious, regular folks embrace conspiracy theorizing rather than take the time to look critically.

So, at that point in Shyamalan’s Glass, I fell out of the story in disbelief and couldn’t get back into it. I still enjoyed the movie up to that point, and think it’s brilliant in some ways, but I’m ultimately disappointed with how that trilogy concluded.

Once you’ve seen Disclosure Day, let me know, and we can talk about that movie instead of Glass.

I’m going to keep this without spoilers until the end, but what spoilers I’ll indulge in will be very light. The movie is still in theaters, though it seems to be hurrying to leave. I don’t think this Star Wars movie is getting particularly good word of mouth.

Quick Review:

This was a good time! Honestly better than a lot of movies in the Star Wars franchise. Fantastic music. It looked good. The story contained decent highs and lows. If you like your Star Wars to be popcorn fun, you won’t be disappointed by this one.

Longer Review:

I went into the movie with relatively low expectations. I hadn’t heard much about the movie. I avoided spoilers and whatnot, so I went in fresh.

It helps that I saw The Mandalorian series, so I already cared about our main character and his adorable sidekick. I imagine anyone without Disney+ will not be as invested going in. However, the opening scenes give enough of what the characters are about, and with enough cool factor, that folks new to these characters will easily get on board.

When I go to the theater, I go in wanting to enjoy the movie. I’m not looking for plot holes or inconsistencies, and I try to leave behind any preconceived notions about how the story should unfold. Looking around The Internet at other Star Wars fans, this makes me a weirdo.

No one hates Star Wars more than a Star Wars fan, but even in this case, I don’t see anything for them to latch onto and hate. It really is fine.

The story isn’t particularly complex, which puts it inline with pretty much all of the movies of the original trilogy. The ships in particular look beautiful. There was good action and a lot of badassery on the part of The Mandalorian. It ticked a lot of boxes and I don’t see anything missing.

A quick search of the movie shows it having a rating of 7 out of 10. That seems fair. The music was good enough I’d probably give it an 8 out of 10.

Final Thoughts, With Minor Spoilers:

Here is a last warning. I’m mostly going to talk about some actors I saw in the movie, and a character I really liked. If you don’t want anything close to a spoiler, now is a good time to close this.

It was fun seeing Sigourney Weaver in this, though she didn’t have that much to do. Pedro Pascal gave a great vocal performance for sure, and we got to see him without the helm for a short while.

I liked seeing Dave Filoni get a cameo. When Filoni talks about Star Wars, he sounds like someone that gets it. Getting to be in a Star Wars movie must have been a real thrill. When I saw him, it made me smile.

The character I was surprised to enjoy as much as I did was Rotta the Hutt.

Doing a quick search, I see that the character was introduced in The Clone Wars, which I didn’t see. I didn’t know anything about Rotta going into this movie. The trailers depicted a muscular Hutt fighting as a gladiator and I assumed rightly that was him.

It turns out, Rotta is cool. I liked his whole thing. Rotta is probably my favorite character introduced in this movie.

Opening weekend for this movie, Melissa and I looked for showtimes near us, and every showing was packed. Tonight, there were hardly any showings, and the showings that were closest to us didn’t have great seating available. We wound up seeing it in Roseville in what is described as IMAX. The screen seemed a bit too small to be IMAX, but it is what it is, I guess.

This is a weird world in which a Star Wars movie starring Pedro Pascal and an adorable muppet isn’t pulling a billion dollars.

I had a good time, though, and I think this was better than most of the sequel trilogy.

If you enjoyed it, let me know.