PMP#228: Spielberg's Alien Fetish

Spielberg and Alien Cinema

0:00This episode is sponsored by Claude, the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough.

0:12This is Pretty Much Pop, a culture podcast, and the truth is out here to be revealed to you all today. In light of the new film Disclosure Day, we're looking at Steven Spielberg's films reflecting his interest in aliens, including 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1982's E.T., and maybe 2005's War of the Worlds. This is Mark Linsenmeyer, whose early drafts of this podcast was, in fact, a mashed potato sculpture. This is Al Baker, just delighted to finally see an E.T. sequel. I'm Sarah Lynn Bruck, and would like to thank Steven Spielberg for all his work saving Reese's Pieces.

0:47And this is Lawrence Ware, and if aliens ever do actually land, they'll probably ask to meet Steven Spielberg first. That's a reasonable assumption, and he'll be dead? Yeah. Okay, were there aliens at the end of AI? It was unclear, I think. They were either super advanced, evolved humans. It was something powerful, but I'm not sure if it was aliens. So, War of the Worlds was the outlier. That was not even in our initial outline of this episode. The others you could maybe see... Or Crystal Skull. That's a good point. Yeah, Crystal Skull has aliens as well.

1:19So, honestly, War of the Worlds is my youngest son's favorite film. Like, he loves that movie. He watches it maybe... Really? ...maybe twice, three times a year. Oh, my goodness. That's a dark film. It has action. It's fun. It's a fun film. To alert the listeners, if you haven't seen Disclosure Day yet, you know, we don't blame you. We're not going to spoil it completely right away. Whoa, whoa. We don't blame you. We're not going to spoil it completely right away. So, we'll warn you when we get into what actually happens at the end.

1:50But I can say, like, I was looking for this to be, at least between this and Close Encounters, a coherent story. At some point, they're showing sort of the past interactions with aliens. And I was so looking for actual footage from Close Encounters to show up in there. And I was so disappointed. It did feel like it was going to show up. I really wanted the melody to be dropped somewhere in the movie as an Easter egg, but he resisted. They're definitely in conversation with each other. It's not a sequel, but it could have been a sequel to Close Encounters. It was great that you mentioned Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

2:22Because if the conversation is about, like, what is Steven Spielberg's fascination with aliens and what does he think about them? That's one that I just never thought of. But it's the clearest kind of case of where he's shoehorned a Spielberg alien thing into a movie that didn't necessarily need it. For no reason, yeah. I guess I had heard that that was George Lucas's idea and his fault and that Spielberg and the rest of the people involved did not actually want that element. But I guess the compromise was, oh, they're not aliens.

2:53They're from another dimension or something like that. This is half remembered third hand knowledge. That movie was so weird. I disliked that movie so much, I've kind of forgotten about it.

Reviewing Disclosure Day

3:03Yeah. Lucky for you. Let's at least give our sort of initial take on the new movie as reviewers, as a tomatometer, tomatometer, one-fourth accredited critics. I tried to get you guys accredited. I tried to get you guys accredited. Lawrence, start us off, Lawrence, with your professional opinion. Disclosure Day is a good to very good movie. The direction is top-notch, as you would expect. I thought that the set pieces were really good. It takes some time to get going.

3:34I was surprised how much patience I had to give the film before it started kind of coming together. But all the performances were good. And I think that, oh, what's her name? Emily Blunt? Is that her name? Yeah. Emily Blunt was a standout performance. And I think that she, if is not nominated, should be considered for nomination for her performance. But I thought it was a good to very good film. Didn't love it. It's not among the top tier of Spielberg. But it is fine. And I strongly recommend that people watch it at home and not spend money to go to the movie theater to watch it.

4:11Because if you do that, you will be disappointed. That's my review. Yeah. Like grading on the Spielberg curve, it's middling. But I was really surprised at how much I liked it. Because I saw some reviews which seemed pretty lukewarm on it. So I went in with like reasonably low expectations. But what really struck me about it is this very mature Spielberg. It felt like Spielberg in his Bridge of Spies kind of mode. But tackling the alien subject matter. And yeah, the slow burn in the first act, I really, really enjoyed.

4:42What I was pleasantly surprised by was how the pacing was very propulsive still through the entire film. I didn't feel bored by anything. I kept waiting for it to kind of devolve into action schlock. As some of the lesser Spielberg movies sometimes do. And it didn't really do that. It also didn't dwell too much on the kind of heavier themes, which a movie like this is always going to touch on. There was a lot of discipline and restraint on show, given the subject matter, which was hugely impressive to me.

5:13And it really let the performances shine through. So obviously, Emily Blunt is fantastic. I will also give a huge shout out to Chubby Colin Firth, who put in a really cracking villain turn, too. Actually, I had a great time at the movie theater watching this. Both Josh and I really enjoyed this movie. It is, if I were to score it, like, I'd give it a B, probably. It's not his best, but it's definitely not Spielberg's worst. And on the Spielberg meter, you know, it's still going to be in the top half for me.

5:45But again, I have to echo, the performances were really good. Emily Blunt was a standout. Colin Firth was just absolutely mustache, twirling villain. He was really fun. Josh O'Connor, he's always really good. Coleman Domingo, his part was woefully underwritten, but he managed to make lemonade out of lemons. I thought the writing was probably the weakest part of this movie, but I love the set pieces. I had a great time watching the set pieces.

6:16Spielberg is just showing off with all the camera moves. It was, again, propulsive. I love the fact that we were just dropped right at the beginning in the middle of story. The immediate rest. Yes, I really love that. I think just the weakest part, though, was some of the clunky storytelling. It was tough for some of the actors to pull off, but you know what? Every scene that Emily Blunt was in, it all just fell away. I just thought her performance was outstanding. Every scene she was in, I was absolutely dialed in.

6:48So I ended up having to rent this because I was trying to see it a few days ago, and it had basically left theaters. I would have been able to see it at like... The Odyssey took over everything. Yeah, I would have been able to see it at like 10 p.m., and I just didn't want to do that, but it became rentable for the $20. So I did that, and I kind of expected, given the length of the movie, that I would see it in a couple different sessions. But after, you know, an initial starting it off and then having to do something else, I was really pretty engrossed. And I think the kind of alien magic that it presented has a special place in my heart.

7:21Oh, tell me why. My mind is brought to Escape to Witch Mountain, which was a very influential movie on my childhood. Totally imprinting right there. Oh, my goodness. Some of the best kid movie magic is ESP is so easy to film, and I just love the way, you know, the Colin Frith dialing into people and talking to them as if he's in the room. Just that whole mechanic, which, you know, you've seen before, maybe not in exactly that way, not such that when somebody breaks the connection that it physically hurts him.

7:55I like that addition for some reason. But just the being able to, like, look at somebody and tell all their personal stuff, like, there's no effects are required for that. That's just pure storytelling magic. But yet I'm a sucker for that. So she's an unstoppable force just by being able to, one by one, be really nice to the whole army and tell them. But not the one guy. The one guy is neither turn. You never see his, well, okay, this is kind of a spoiler, but you never see his good side, but yet he doesn't just, you know, murder them, which he should have done, frankly, in that last scene.

8:33The alien ESP magic, I think, is a really good case in point for how Spielberg kind of shows his class in this movie, because you're right, it is very easy to film, but it is not over-explained at all. Like, there's never a dialogue scene where two people sit down to one another and say, this is what this spooky alien device is, and this is exactly how it works. They just show it working, and this is clearly Spielberg, being Spielberg, understands the grammar of sci-fi enough to know how to show something that weird without telling us how it works.

9:05And it's part of what makes the movie feel snappy, because he knows when he can trust his audience. But here's my question, because I enjoyed it, I had a strong suspicion you guys would enjoy it, do you think a regular person, because we're not regular people, just a regular person who is not deep into philosophy, who is not deep into these ideas and interested in them, does it have enough for that person? Because that's the question that I was asking myself as I was watching this. Is it a movie that just a regular person who enjoys E.T. and kind of is cool with aliens, but wants fun at the movie theater, is it a fun movie?

9:41Like, what do you guys think about that? I think it's mostly a fun movie. So there are these kind of heavy and highfalutin themes that get explored with it, and there's a bit of lip service to it. But ultimately, it's a chase film. It reminded me of Enemy of the State more than anything else with, like, Will Smith, except, you know, clearly a better version of that. But yeah, there's the first act setting up all this weird stuff, and then the second act, which is a really great high-octane chase with Spielberg's favorite action trope of two very heavy vehicles moving very close to one another, and our hero's trapped in the middle.

10:12And he always, always nails it. And then at the end, like, we warned against spoilers, but I'm not going to spoil anything, but I will say I don't think any part of the plotting of the movie is particularly surprising. The movie is called Disclosure Day, and then the thing that happens at the end is exactly what the title promises. What keeps you interested is just the action and the pacing, and it's all delivered brilliantly. Well, and I guess I wasn't taken in emotionally in the way that you're supposed to be, that you're supposed to just be struck in wonder at, you know, the things as the movie wraps up.

10:45And, you know, I feel like I'm repeating things that I heard on the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, but the idea of, like, it all comes to a head at a TV studio, because that's the way people get their news now. Like, could you not have dropped it? Yeah, that's about how we get our news. Drop it on the internet in the first five minutes of the film, and then just... It was very old-fashioned. Yeah, he's a very old-fashioned kind of storyteller. I also think that he is a director for the American public. He makes movies for the masses, and this is a movie that I argue appeals to the masses.

11:19His throughline in his alien movies tend to be people are mistrustful of each other and want violence, and aliens want peace and harmony, except for War of the Worlds. I guess we can take War of the Worlds out of the equation. But that's not his story. That's not his story. That's the only one that he did not have a story credit on or, you know, wasn't the adapter himself. Right, right. But the ones that he writes all have kind of the same throughline.

11:51And I think as a mature filmmaker, he has really decided that it's empathy is the superpower, which goes against every single thing that we are basically taught in our society. I mean, we give lip service to it, but we're not actually taught that. That's not the lesson that we learn in our society. And he can be very heavy-handed. I think if this is a movie that was sort of made for a more sophisticated audience,

12:23it wouldn't be as heavy-handed. It would definitely be kind of sprinkled in, or it would be done in a different way. But he really hits us over the head thematically because he wants us to get this message, and he wants to get this message out to as many people as possible. Which brings me to the second note that I wrote as I was watching the film. Is it too saccharine sweet? Is it too sentimental? Of course it is. Is it too heavy-handed in its approach to giving us those messages? Because it could be more restrained.

12:53And he has been more restrained in times, but this time he chose not to be. So is it too over-the-top in the saccharine sweetness? I don't think so, partly because there's a little bit of mixed message, mixed mood. They dress as animals to make us feel more comfortable. They dress as a giant freaking moose that would scare the fuck out of me to make us more comfortable. What were they doing to those children? This is kind of getting into spoilery territory. That is the stuff of nightmares. I know that they say, oh, they're trying to help.

13:25But the bad guys might have a point that the aliens are doing stuff for their benefit, not for our benefit. It is just not entirely clear to me. Maybe they're assuming that we saw Close Encounters and that the kid comes back and is just fine. Aliens are great. They're nice. Yes, we could definitely spoil the rest of the other movies here.

Close Encounters Revisited

13:50And I think we should bring Close Encounters into here because I had not seen that for a long, long time. I had never seen it. Oh, my God. Me neither. It was kind of a formative movie for me. Like, I think I really liked it at the time, but it is definitely a film that was made before Star Wars. Yes, yes, yes. So the wonder that you're supposed to have at these effects at the end, like. You don't have it. I don't really have that. There's some chase scenes. Like, I didn't notice the continuity with Disclosure Day and the other two films that there's all chase scenes.

14:25I know, Sarah, you were really emphasizing, I think, in the after talk last time, like, oh, I know families like that. So this Richard Dreyfuss is providing the human element in this, in his struggles with his family and the fact that he's obsessed that he's seen a UFO or, you know, seen evidence. And now he's he's been imbued, much like in Disclosure Day, with these intuitions about something that he has to do, something that he has somewhere he has to go. And he can't put it together and he's driving his family away. And there's some kind of like intense family drama of them seeing him falling apart.

14:59I have mixed feelings about it. I don't want to say any more. Let me hear other people's opinions. Did you see that when it came out or were you a little older? Okay. I didn't see it when it came out. And I think we're about the same age. Well, no, I don't think I saw it when I was six. That seems unlikely, but maybe not too far after that. Like when it was in the theater in a re-release. It probably. And they do re-release it. Yeah, they did re-release. And it was in the movie theater forever, too. Same with E.T. But E.T. felt like it was made more for kids, Close Encounters, on another re-watch.

15:31And I've re-watched it many, many times. But I don't think I saw it for the first time until I was much older. And so it kind of hits differently. But that family in both E.T. and Close Encounters, those families felt so real to me. I remember having that same feeling in the 70s and early 80s. I remember families like that. My family was not like that. I had two parents who stayed together and were very happily married and yada, yada, yada. But I knew so many families who were going through those experiences.

16:02And it felt very, very familiar. And I remember kids going through those experiences with their families and bearing witness to that. But I'm so curious, Alan Lawrence, what you guys thought of your first viewing of this movie. What did you think? Al, you go first, sir. I thought it was wonderful. What really struck me, because I'm a huge fan of Jaws, and what really struck me was it felt like an incredibly obvious and natural halfway point between Jaws and E.T. Exactly. Because it was this really grounded in kind of humanity and emotion and family dynamics like E.T. is and like Jaws is.

16:38And there's all of the same kind of movie-making craft that you see in Jaws, especially as it relates to how they use the special effects. You know, you get glimpses of stuff. There's very artful reveals through the movie until there's the amazing conclusion. It is old. The same thing is true of E.T. They, I don't think, have aged well enough to still recommend either of them as exciting blockbuster movies still. But Closing Camps was a really, really gorgeous experience.

17:09Nowhere near. So I also saw, for the first time not too long ago, 2001 A Space Odyssey, which is a much, much more boring classic sci-fi movie than Closing Camps. Oh, oh, no. But, yeah, we'll have a future episode on this, let's say, just to forestall. Oh, man. Like the original Superman movie. And there's a question of, like, stuff that was amazing at the time. Like, how far is it just, like, a little bit too old to still be as engaging as it was? And I think Closing Counters. I'm still amazed. Closing Counters kind of falls into that bucket for me.

17:42But more than as an experience by itself, it was deeply informative about Spielberg and his journey as a filmmaker, I thought. Mm-hmm. Totally. The tagline to Closing Counters was originally, you will believe that a man can have an intuition about a flat-top mountain. That was, I thought it was a strange marketing. That is very specific and not very appealing at all.

Roy Neary and Family Dynamics

18:04This episode's brought to you by Claude, the AI from Anthropic. So, my car failed its MOT this month. For anyone not in the UK, that's basically your annual vehicle inspection. The thing that decides whether your car's still road legal. Mine flunked on, of all things, a broken door handle. It's getting on a bit, that car. It's a 13-year-old Honda, a slightly daft hybrid coupe that almost nobody bought. Because the car's slightly old and a little bit niche, the quote that landed in my inbox from the garage was a little bit concerning.

18:35And the steep price of the door handle was listed among a bunch of other stuff that I only half understood. A rear caliper, new discs, new brake pads, something ominous about the wheel alignment. Plus that very familiar sinking feeling of being completely at the mercy of someone who knows far more about all this than I ever will. So I did what I now do with pretty much every problem of this kind. I talked it through with Claude. Not to fix the car, it's not much good with the spanner. But to actually get my head around what I was looking at. It helped me hunt down the one obscure part a 13-year-old Honda needs, which is a generally miserable job to do on your own.

19:09And more than anything, it helped me work out the triage. What honestly had to be done right now, what could wait a few months, and what I could happily leave for a year or two. I walked into that shop feeling for once, like I actually knew what I was talking about. And best of all, this annoying bit of life admin was handled quickly and efficiently, and let me get back to using Claude what I most enjoy using it for, which is running my business. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you.

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20:10That's claude.ai.pmp. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. I thought that Close Encounters was a brilliantly made movie. Dated, yes. But I like old movies. I mean, so I'm okay with it. You know, I thought it was a brilliantly made movie. I thought the direction was really good. I saw all the stuff that Spielberg would later be obsessed with in that movie. With the aliens and the empathy and divorce and all that kind of stuff. However, I mean, I don't know if I'm going to offend Sarah or something like that, but I'm just going to say it.

20:45Like, Roy Neary was a freaking asshole, man. Like, that dude was a terrible human being. This is the name of Richard Dreifuss' character. Richard Dreifuss' character. By the end of that movie, he neglects his job. He neglects his family. He chooses to go off and pursue mystery and adventure instead of being a good father. He is erratic and emotionally unavailable. He ignores, essentially, how terrified and frustrated his wife and children are. Like, that dude is a bad guy.

21:16And it was really hard for me by the end of that film to kind of identify with him. Because I like to think of myself as a good father. And it's hard for me to identify with a bad one. But outside of that, lovely movie. Well, I'm so glad, Lawrence, you said that because this was the ambivalence that I was having about this. And I don't know if as a child, I bet I did not connect the dots. You probably didn't know. That I was like, wait a second. He just, like, completely abandoned his family to go on this fucking spaceship.

21:46Absolutely. Well, and Spielberg has said that when he made that movie, he was not married or he did not have children. And he might have made a different choice. But he was a child of divorce. And so, as a child of divorce, you should probably make a better choice, no matter if you're married or not. He keeps writing about his father. Well, it's that they called the other planet that the aliens took him to Mexico with Sally.

22:15Good one. It's an E.T. prequel. Well, we did. Josh and I always, we always talk about opening lines for these things. And one of the lines that Josh came up with was, I'm Sarah Lynn Bruck and I can't believe that Richard Dreyfuss could get a paternity. Terry Garr. Terry Garr. There's no way in hell he's getting Terry Garr. He might have a wonderful personality. You know, at least before he turns into an asshole.

22:46He is a very handsome guy. But yeah, you're right. Is he? Is he a very handsome guy? Okay. Yes. Okay, Sarah. Yeah. Richard Dreyfuss, absolutely. I see your type. I see your type. Okay. Yes. Sarah Lynn's opus to Richard Dreyfuss.

23:02That's another one where he's an asshole, by the way. He plays really good assholes, apparently. He plays good assholes. I love that film, taking away the part that he is, you know, he's a guy who abandons his family. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, time out. Back up, back up, back up, back up. Did you say take away the part where he abandons his family? Like it's not a big deal? It is a big deal, but it is a man obsessed. And I think I already know the answer to this question for you, Lawrence. But if you were given the opportunity to go and explore outer space-

23:36You know my answer. Would you go? I know your answer. No, I wouldn't go. I would write about it. I would be down to go and sit down and put on headphones and like a vision thing where I could see it. But I'm not leaving my- I mean, there are astronauts who do this kind of thing. But I'm not leaving my family forever, essentially. Do you feel like the end of E.T. might have been him second-guessing this ending that Elliot is asked to go- It could have been. And then he's like, of course not. No, stay-

24:06Spoilers for E.T., by the way. But yes, it could be. It could be. What about you, Al? Would you go? I mean, you could- No. But- I'm not good with heights. I love the way you answered that. But it's one of the ways in which the movie is dated. You can make that movie. I'm thinking of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, right by the end. Spoilers for season seven of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. My favorite Star Trek. Oh my gosh, my favorite Star Trek. Definitely arguably the best. But the lead character, Sisko, ends up going and living with some aliens for a while and has to leave his son behind.

24:41But that's a choice that they've spent seven seasons setting up. And that's a relationship that they've spent seven seasons developing. So you can make, you know, you could do that choice. But if you made that movie now, maybe you would make that decision and the weight of that decision the emotional core of the movie rather than making Richard Dreyfuss's need to be believed the emotional core of the movie. I mean, maybe you could have some, right, Doctor Who. Yes, it's a big, am I going to leave my life and go off with the Doctor? But the Doctor can bring you back right now. He can bring you back, yeah.

25:11That's the cheat code that Doctor Who always has, yeah. Time you want me. You'll be older and about to die, but, like, the time will not be different. Yes, but, and Close Encounters, they established that, you know, they're returning these pilots from the 1940s. Sure, their families are dead, but they haven't, so there's at least part of, you still get to live the rest of your life. What were they doing up there? Were they just frozen? It's, you know, it's not clear. They were lying down on tables with crystalline chandeliers shining into their eyes. I mean, but I very much think that that movie is a young Spielberg making that movie.

25:46Correct. And that he would make different choices now. Certainly in 2026, he would not have made that choice because he would have been killed for making that choice now. Or it would not have been received as glowingly now as it was then. And also, it just lets me know that 70s are just a different time, where in the 70s, I'm not saying that this was perfectly acceptable, but it was on some level acceptable for audiences to see a father behave like this. Because it was just, it would not fly today, I don't think.

26:16I mean, think about him as a filmmaker. He has to spend an extraordinary amount of time away from his family. True. And is this just him writing about himself? You know, like, I'm an obsessive person. This is how I work. This is what brings meaning to my life. If it's not an apology, it's an explanation. And to hell with my kids. Is that what we're saying? His heroes are like that. When's the first time he has a good family man as a hero?

26:47Jaws is all about all these, who's the main character in Jaws? Brody. Brody. Brody, who's a good family man. He's a good dad. He's a good father, yeah. He is a good dad, but he risks his life to go and hunt a shark without thinking too much about it. Like, he puts his, you know, his duty and his purpose ahead of his family. And then again, Indiana Jones is another great example. Like, his mission, his quest, his purpose always comes first. And his dad does that too. Indy's dad also. And it drives a wedge between them, yeah.

27:17Sam Nioris in Peace in Jurassic Park. Is exactly like, he literally, he's a hero who literally hates kids, as does Indy, you know. This is the kind of man that are Spielberg's heroes. Yeah. Even Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds. He's a bad father. Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Yeah. He's very divorced in that movie, yeah. You know. Sarah, what's the difference between being divorced and very divorced? Is there a difference there? Well, in that movie, he is really divorced.

27:48Well, divorced. He's not kind of divorced. He's like, legit divorced. No, he's like, really divorced. He's like, well, this is my weekend.

27:59I think Close Encounters now. So I started watching it, the director's cut with my wife, and she left in the first five minutes because the first two scenes, which are quite long, are the most auditorily off-putting things. They're screaming over a sandstorm for the first 10 minutes of the movie, and then let's transfer to a busy air traffic controller, which is a shorter scene, but it is still like 10 people talking at the same time. Can you just get right to Richard Dreyfuss and bypass all this stuff?

28:32And I was thinking, oh, maybe that's the director's cut, but now I'm looking online. Original version in 1977, 135 minutes. Director's cut 1998, 137 minutes. There's no, like, it seems actually the difference was there was a special edition release in August 1980, 132 minutes, featured studio-mandated scenes inside the mothership, which were then removed for the director's cut to match Spielberg's original vision. So this is not a, you know, significant reworking.

29:04I just thought that the flab that I was seeing was because it was the director's cut, but no, apparently it was always there. It was always there. I didn't remember that first scene when we just did a rewatch of it this week. I think you might've watched the original cut instead of the director's cut. So maybe they did add to this, like, extended sandstorm. Or maybe they just move stuff around. Usually what directors do, they, like, trim these things and extend this other kind of stuff. That's what Ridley Scott, for example, does quite a bit.

Re-evaluating E.T.

29:31E.T., Al said you, you said you watched it recently and it did not hold up. I love that movie so much and I, I'm very open to the possibility that I might just be wrong here, but I watched it again a few weeks ago and it didn't hold up for me at all. I've since seen plenty of lists in preparing for this where people put it as his, uh, number one movie. So it could absolutely just be a matter of taste. Al, it's not just you. It's not just you, man. Was it the theatrical or the special edition that sort of, like, made the E.T.

30:02effects a little more slick? I'm not sure. I think the special edition, they tinkered with it. And probably the special edition was the one I watched. Like Star Wars, like, you can't even find the original. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I'm so mad about Star Wars. Like, give me the original. I'm not trying to go down this, but God, give me the original. Go ahead, Al. The pacing was the thing that made it feel a bit off for me. It feels like the movie spends ages getting to what I remember as the good fun bit. Like, all the hijinks with Elliot hiding E.T. in the old rack and everything.

30:36And there are so many things. It is like, it should be a farce, but for some reason it's not played like a farce. The number of times that, like, the mum or some other authority figure just happens to walk past where they're not, uh, just accidentally doesn't see E.T. for some reason. So yeah, it just felt, it felt a bit slow and a lot of the drama felt very contrived, but it is a kid's film and I'm watching it back as an adult that could explain, like, a lot of that. I don't think it was bad by any means, but it's just, you know, old and I hoped that it would stand up better than it did.

31:06I completely agree, Al, and I'm sad to report that I agree because that for many years was my favorite movie of all time. I loved that movie. And thinking back on it, I remembered the fun stuff, but I didn't remember the slow stuff. And going back and watching it, like, that slow stuff is, like, really in front of your face for a very long time before you get to Elliot riding the bike and flying and all the kind of cool stuff that I loved. And I was so disappointed in the actual movie because I was like, I remember it being so

31:37fun and being, like, transported and I was so let down by it. And so it used to be, like, my favorite Spielberg movie. It's not my favorite anymore. It is a product of its time. It is slow, it is deliberate, and it's good in parts. What is it something you would cut out? I wanted the first act to go a bit quicker. I wanted a bit less family drama, even though it was one of the things that is special about the movie is that the first half is just, is basically just a family drama. But I was, I was impatient to get to the, to get to the public. I mean, because I knew it was coming and so I was impatient to get there.

32:10Yeah. I mean, and that was some of the stuff that I really liked in Jaws. That one scene in Jaws where they're making faces at each other, where Brody and his son are making faces at each other. And that is just in, in the scene, we just watched, my daughter and I just watched E.T. again last night. That scene at the dinner table where Elliot is still trying to convince his family that he has seen something. The brother is making fun of him and he calls him, I think, penis breath or something. And Dee Wallace just has the most natural reaction of, you know, she just laughs out loud exactly

32:47like my own mother would. And then says, Elliot, you know, puts her serious face on. I just, I actually really loved those moments. And, and I agree. This is, I, I realized this, this is a movie that it was important to me as a kid and watching it back as an adult and I've seen it several times as, as an adult now and as a parent now. And I really see what you guys are saying about the flaws, but I think because I have such like a Pavlovian response to it, I still cry for the last 45 minutes.

33:20It's embarrassing. No, I cried. No, I still cried. Yeah. But I cry just like I did when I saw it when I was 10. That's not cute. So it's not thug tears. It's like ugly cry. It's like ugly cry. It's just, yes, it is ugly cry. Like Virginia was looking at me last night. Like she was like, are you serious? Like again, you're still crying. I'm like, I know I can't help it. It is such a movie that I think, especially for Gen X, it is, it is absolutely kind of part of our DNA at this point. But I think if I were to rank these movies, I think I would put Close Encounters above just

33:58as, as an objectively better movie than E.T. now. And I think I would have reversed that order 20 years ago. So I watched E.T. a couple nights ago. I have a DVD Deluxe Collector's Edition with the original and the special edition. Wow. You know, because DVDs will last forever. And so I was trying to figure out which of my devices could actually still, still play a DVD. And I was just going to set it up, but I was just engrossed. And I think I'm just not objective because, yeah, that was one of my favorite movies.

34:31Maybe I'd only seen the special edition once or twice, and I noticed too much the things that had been pointed out about it, that they took all the guns out and put in CGI walkie talkies instead. And so South Park made fun of this with people running around holding walkie talkies as if to shoot someone, especially. But like, I didn't notice that at all. I didn't notice one shot that I was like, oh, that's definitely supposed to be a gun. Though I'm sure, you know, the ones with the keys, probably he has a gun that they just took out.

35:02The soundtrack, like I know John Williams did Disclosure Day, but I couldn't home one of the melodies from Disclosure Day. You know, maybe I need to see it five more times. Actually, I still thought it was good, though. But E.T., like, I'm just sold. That music, it just does something to me when I hear that E.T. music. Yeah, and the slow reveal, the lighting at the shed where E.T. is hiding in the shed or he's waiting outside the shed and there's the pizzas on the ground, you know, the various like all that slow build I thought was great. I thought, you know, that is the thing that was done in Jaws, that we're not going to

35:35just reveal this alien right away. We're going to do it. The other thing for the special edition was, again, so you could have, I think maybe the scene where E.T. is under the water wasn't in the original one because it's like a full body E.T. doing things that a puppet can't do. You know, the CGI is a little dated, but like it didn't really bother me. It seemed like it meshed with the puppetry really well. So for the most part, I was just sold on it. I really, I didn't cry. It wasn't as touching as Toy Story to me for some reason. You don't have a heart. You don't have a heart.

36:06That's why you didn't cry. Yeah, Mark. The Toy Story movies made me cry, I'm saying. But these ones did not. In fact, I love the place where Elliot is fake crying, right? E.T. has come back to life and Elliot is like, that's one of the best little acting moments in the film. But the whole thing with the flower, is it dying? Is it alive? Is it? And Drew Barrymore is, how did they coach her to do that? She's so great. She's a really good name. It's the height of her career. Okay, that's too far.

36:37But she's really good, though. Like, she shows a lot of promise. I think all the kids were great in that movie. They were all just felt so real. Spielberg is really good with kids. Like, he really is. And it shows in that film. I was considering it just that this is a different kind of thing than Disclosure Day and Close Encounters, because it is so kid-focused. And it seems like, no, it's the Stranger Things, Skeleton Crew. Like, that's the legacy of this, is those kid ensemble, discovering wonder, whatever kind of things like that.

37:07I think that is the takeaway. But I saw a lot more continuity now, like, with the chase scenes and with the, you always have those government, the government agents are the heart of all these films, all four of these films. They're on the screen different amounts of time, but they're the constant, is how is the government going to deal with aliens? Not well. It's never well. It's never well. They're going to perform experiments. Although in War of the World, they did a good job. They did a good job in that movie. I think it wasn't until I saw it as an adult that, like, okay, Peter Coyote has second

37:39billing in this film. I know. But, you know, that he is revealed to be, as he is in the movie, like, actually a sympathetic character after you've been scared of him and his keys the whole time. Yeah. Well, we don't even see his face until much later. And that's part of the brilliance of the direction, because it's so low, because it's at a kid's level. Yeah. It's brilliant direction. I just wish that the pacing was a little bit faster. I agree. But it's brilliant direction on the part of Steven Spielberg. It's a film that only he could have made.

War of the Worlds Action

38:11I guess we're up to War of the Worlds. I didn't remember this as a Spielberg movie at all. I just remembered that it was a Tom Cruise movie. Spielberg is all over this film, though. I didn't rewatch it, because I watched it once, and I thought it was bad. So, was I wrong? I love this film. I sort of remembered it being bad, but now I, yeah, now I think it, you know, the amount of exploding things right behind him as he's running is, it's quite incredible. I mean, for what it is, it is really good.

38:41Now, I remember watching this, gosh, when it came out, I went to the Dominican Republic, and it was like the only thing that was on, on that television that I could watch. And I remember watching it like back to back to back that year. And it is not deep, it is not profound, but for what it is, it is so good. Like, it is essentially just a chase movie and a series of action pieces. And it's pretty faithful to the original radio drama, and it's just fun.

39:12If you're looking for something deep, you're not going to get it here, but it does what it does very, very well. Like, only like Steven Spielberg could, because the direction, like, I think back to when they're in that basement, and there's that alien kind of, I think it's like a prod or something like that, or thing that's kind of going through and looking for them. And the camera movements and the timing, it reminds me of Minority Report, whenever that little spider is going after Tom Cruise. Like, it's just so brilliantly directed that I turn my brain off when it comes to the story

39:44and just enjoy the ride. Sarah, did you rewatch this one, or did we bring this into the... I did do a rewatch of it, and I'm not as keen on it as you are, Lawrence. And I think it's partly because Spielberg tries to do some of the stuff that I love with family in there, but it is so unsuccessful in this. I think Dakota Fanning... Yeah, that part's not good. I think Dakota Fanning in this movie is actually great. She is good. I didn't think that Tom Cruise was great, which is strange, because I think he's...

40:15This is totally his jam, and I think he was good in Minority Report. But in this movie, I felt like he was miscast. And so I didn't feel like there was the chemistry between the family, and especially between him and the son. It just wasn't there. And all of that family dynamic for me didn't feel urgent. It didn't feel real. And so it felt flat. And so all I had in that movie then were the action sequences, and because... And they were great.

40:46And a lot of them were great. Tim Robbins didn't do anything for you? I didn't care about Tim Robbins. I wasn't very impressed with him. Honestly, I think Sarah's absolutely right. Like, the family stuff doesn't work. Although Dakota Fanning is really good. But the family stuff doesn't work. I'm kind of annoyed by Tom Cruise's character. The little boy's a little asshole. Like, he irritates me as well. But I didn't care. I was enjoying the ride. I had fun. I don't know what to say about that. My problem with War of the Worlds is I think it was fundamentally maladapted. I mean, this is going off my deep memory, but Sarah's point about Tom Cruise being miscast,

41:18I think, speaks to this. And also, the fact that the best thing about it are action scenes also speaks to this. Because a War of the Worlds adaptation should be a horror movie. More like Jaws than like Minority Report. It's about this inexplicable, unexplained, overwhelming threat. And you can express that in a movie in a number of different ways. And I think expressing it as a Tom Cruise action movie is the wrong way to go about it. I kind of read it as a horror movie, actually. And I can't get out of my mind the recent attempt to do War of the Worlds with Ice Cube.

41:52Don't watch it. But it's on Amazon Prime. And it's essentially just him sitting in a room, reacting to the stuff that he's hearing. And it is so bad. And I appreciate the spectacle version of it. Because that, I think, is what attracted Spielberg to it was the opportunity to do spectacle. And after doing many films about sympathetic aliens, he wanted to do a movie about mean aliens. And, I mean, it's kind of terrifying to me, man. Like, if that were to happen in the real world, I'd be terrified.

42:23But this did happen. And the reveal of the aliens. Well, this was inspired by 9-11. This is based on our real, the real terror. Yeah, I know that. But I'm talking about actual aliens. Oh, well, that explains why it felt well adapted. I thought you had information about aliens. I'll tell you, I'll tell you. Was not aware of. I'll tell you all. Waiting for the reveal. Was it just missing Ice Cube narrating? Was that what was going on? That's probably what, yeah, Morgan Freeman wasn't the one.

42:54He needed Ice Cube to do that. Did anyone catch Lisa Ann Walter in this movie? And she's, you know who she is, right? She's an Abbott Elementary. She plays the Italian. Oh, yes, yes. So she was, she had a speaking part in War of the Worlds. And I recognized her immediately. Yeah, she sounded exactly the same. Well, I didn't notice her. And Amy Ryan, there were a number of people that were. Well, apparently Channing Tatum was in this movie. I'm looking, he played the boy in the church. I'm like, I want to go back and see where he was.

43:25Okay. Was there a church? I mean, I guess I remember a church falling down, but I don't remember the inside of a church. I don't think so either. Maybe he was running out. Maybe he was running out. I don't know. Asking, is it better than Minority Report is a great, like, no, it's definitely not. No. And it is a very similar kind of movie. So his teenage son was Justin Chatwin, which I watched all of Shameless. And he sort of starts as the romantic lead in that as an adult. And so like, oh, actually seeing how he aged was interesting.

43:55But yeah, Dakota Fanning is the biggest, like, because she is so scarred and terrified throughout the whole thing. And the movie is really about like, it's like Enemy of the State. It's like these other things where I'm running, running, running from all this stuff. But I want to shield my child's eyes physically from as much of this as possible. And she is just so effectively freaked out that, like, it sells it for me. It would have been just a much, much worse movie if they didn't get somebody who could do that.

44:26I agree. Yeah. You are totally right. And honestly, another thing that's a standout to me, he doesn't do much. Morgan Freeman's narration, holy shit, that guy's a can't talk. Like, his narration, go back and listen to it. His narration there is a master class. Like, that guy is a fucking talker. He is. But it's only, right, it's the beginning and the end. It's not the whole, it's not like, and then Tom Cruise went to Ohio. But he is so good in that movie as his narration.

44:57Is it a weakness of a movie when it needs narration? Yes. Typically, yes. When you feel the need to bring in Morgan Freeman to bookend your movie, I think that tells of some lack of confidence. You know, Al, I'm not getting into this fight with you. I'm not fighting you today. Oh, you're saying Morgan Freeman is the Orson Welles of 2000 cinema, wherever it comes up? No, I'm saying Morgan Freeman is just freaking good. at what he does. And he just bookends it. That's all. It's a tip of the hat to Orson Welles. To the original. To the original is what it is.

45:27So that, you know, so I will forgive it in a way that Blade Runner, you know, that's its own thing. Like, that, is the narration in there? Or is it not in there? Is it in there? Is it not in there? There's different versions of that. Make a choice, Ridley Scott. Well, he chose. Eventually. I guess another problem with the War of the Worlds movie is that it also has to stand up against what is clearly the best adaptation of that story, which is the Jeff Wayne musical extravaganza, which it just doesn't touch at all. I am not familiar.

45:57I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. I have no idea what you're talking about, Al. Well, the audience will know. It does seem like War of the Worlds as a thing, you know, would have been a potential, maybe could be in the future, a potential episode for us to actually, like, go read the original story or look at Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, that kind of really old sci-fi. The Orsumel's radio broadcast used to be one of my nighttime listens when I was a kid, because I was a weird kid. That'd be great. But no, do listen to the Jeff Wayne.

46:28It's incredible. I don't know if I want to listen to a musical about War of the Worlds, man. You think you don't, but that's because you haven't heard it. No. Maybe you're right. This is, here, this is the kind of thing I should say for an after talk, but I'm not going to. I watched it at the end of the TV show, Ted, you know, about the talking teddy bear, Seth MacFarlane's one. And he bridges it to the movies by having Ian McKellen narrate. And so he went and got really, really swole, like scary swole, you know, because Mark Wahlberg played him in the movies.

47:01So yes, that shows that there is something weak about your property. But it was a joke. A grade A narrator. I think you guys are being a little hard. You'd be a little hard on Spielberg. I mean, it is a perfectly fine, fun summer movie. Does the family stuff work? No. Is Tom Cruise great? No. But the spectacle is so well directed and so well executed that I kind of forgive it. I mean, don't watch a Michael Bay movie because if you watch a Michael Bay movie,

47:33you're going to have all of these criticisms. Right. That is essentially what Michael Bay does. That's why I don't watch Michael Bay movies. And you're missing out. You're missing out, Sarah. I am. I have a lot of Michael Bay movies. Wait, you've never seen, wait, wait, wait, you've never seen Bad Boys? Or Bad Boys 2? Bad Boys 2 is good. Oh my gosh. I have not. Okay. Sarah, okay. Okay. I think a Michael Bay episode may be in order. I can't believe you've never seen, you've never seen Armageddon? You've never seen The Rock? I've never seen Armageddon. No. Okay. Mark,

48:03you know what to do, sir. You know what to do. You know what to do.

Ending Disclosure Day

48:06Let's close the loop by bringing back In Disclosure Day because I know it's gotten generally good Rotten Tomatoes reviews. I don't have the percentage in front of me, but it was in the 80s or something like that. But I also have heard a lot of people, at least on some podcasts, crapping on it as, you know, this isn't actually good. Like the, a good connection, The Happening. Everybody liked The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. And so, The Happening, when I was watching it, I thought it was okay. That movie was terrible, man. As we've discussed

48:38in that episode. But, in retrospect, like, wait a second. This is actually very, very bad. And, that is what I was wondering about Disclosure Day and what I've heard some comments, like, I heard a comment, like, the fact that nobody speaks in their real accent. Every single star, like the four stars of this movie are all foreigners, are all British or Australian or whatever and that they're forced to do this unnatural accent for them and maybe this adds to it being

49:08a little silly. I think the comparisons that are happening is deeply unfair because what's, as we, as we talked about at length in the M. Night Shyamalan episode, his problem is trying to be too clever and Disclosure Day is not trying to be too clever. It is a very, very straight down the line, like, action movie, like, sci-fi action movie with a solid premise and it doesn't outstay its welcome, it doesn't do too much chin stroking, it doesn't do anything that it doesn't have to do in order to be the kind of movie that it is. You know, whether it ages as among Spielberg's

49:39top ten, I'm not sure, but it's a really well-delivered type movie and I don't think it makes any, it's not annoying, I'm so easily annoyed, if a movie feels like it's trying to show off too much, I'm very, very sensitive to that. This movie didn't feel like it was trying to do anything, it didn't have to. I think it's a very solid piece of work. Can we talk about the end now? Yes. Yeah. Spoiling everything! Spoiler alert! This is a movie that I really enjoyed a lot and I thought made a lot of sense and I just felt like

50:10just didn't stick the landing because it was so stupid. I thought the ending was so, was so stupid. I did not like it. I did not like that ending. I really liked the ending. So what do you think, because I think, again, this is a place where the film was really disciplined and stopped exactly where it should have and left open everything it needed to leave open, what did you wish it had done differently? I wish it had not trotted out the old alien at the end. I thought that was really dumb. Why was he so handy? Like, just because they're revealing all this,

50:41the bad guys just have him in a truck all the time, why was he on hand?

50:46There are a lot of questions, Mark. I know. Yes, exactly. That's one thing. I thought that was really dumb. I mean, I just, I felt like if they had ended it even before she speaks, that would have been great, you know? But leave out all of that stuff, the way that they disclosed it was on local news was ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, they went to national news eventually. I felt like, I think I heard this on a podcast or something, but, you know, if the aliens really wanted people

51:16to believe that they existed, they would have just landed their spaceship in the middle of New York City, in the middle of Manhattan or something. You know, like, that's the way to, you want people to believe that you exist? That's the way to do it. But this whole, oh, they're going to think it's AI and they yada, yada, yada that, like with two sentences. So, okay, we believe you, it's not a, it's not going, people aren't going to think it's AI. I just thought it was just, the whole end was just so dumb and it almost ruined it for me. I have a couple of points of defense

51:47that I think the movie, the movie set up. So on the news stuff, so Emily Blunt's character, unconsciously her whole life has been trying to get as prestigious as possible the news anchors. That's her, that's her first thing and no one knows what, like her boyfriend is like, why do we have to keep moving around? She's like, I don't know, I just feel like, this isn't it. It was great. But I really loved how that worked out at the end. So yeah, it starts at local news, but that's because the alien's whole disclosure plan revolves around these two people

52:19and that's where she was. And the system, it turns out, is just about robust enough to get that message out there. There is a point where like someone raises just dump it on the internet and then that's brushed away. I think correctly because if you do just dump it on the internet, then it's not going to make the same kind of impact. There was probably room for them to do a little bit more clearing up in the movie about like what was a good way of doing disclosure and what was a bad way of doing disclosure. I liked the indication at the end that this was the alien's plan the whole time.

52:50I thought that was cute, although I can see how it could be annoying because otherwise I feel like you would have left, maybe this would have been fine too, but I feel like you needed that in order to wrap up the stories of the two main characters and like give them some closure for what happened to them when they were kids. I completely see your objections too. Yeah, so what happened to them when they were kids, even though it is literally shown to us, is still profoundly confusing to me in that like, wait, she was having an issue with her father,

53:21but is the father relevant to this? Is this her misremembering the thing and he doesn't remember anything before this point? It just was not clear to me. The problem is in the execution and in the editing, I was annoyed by all the stuff you're saying, but I was kind of wrapped up in the story that kind of went along with it. The problem is when you think back on the film once the film is over. That's the problem with me because when I'm watching it in the moment, I'm good. I'm going along

53:51with it. I'm having fun. It's when I go home or I sit down and have something to eat afterwards and I'm thinking about it and I'm talking about it, I'm beginning to realize, oh, that kind of didn't work. And so that's the problem. It's one of those wonderful movies to enjoy as you're watching it. I like The Happening because the first time I saw The Happening, it was fun to watch it. But then thinking back on it, I was like, holy shit, that don't make any sense. And so it's not even the third act. It's the very end of Disclosure Day. That's where he kind of loses it a little bit. But everything up until that is an A

54:22and it just drops off into like a B minus. And so it ends up being a high B for me. But the criticisms, Sarah, that you're saying are all very valid. One thing, though, I thought was excellent about the end was the New York-based newscaster who was narrating. She was great, actually. And I thought that job as an actor must have been so hard because you're pretending to see these images and pretending as if this is the first time and then having to be the newscaster who is giving

54:53this information like, you know, you're Walter Cronkite or something and bringing this information to the entire country and in this case the entire globe. You know, I thought she did such an excellent job but I really just, trotting out that alien at the end, just, I was like, it just totally took me out of it. I was like, no. He was surprisingly tall, I thought. That's what took me out of it a little bit because they were all very short in all of the flashbacks. I know, I know. And that alien was very tall.

55:23I was also in the moment confused by why all of these highly trained secret agents weren't able to outperform this random dude in a high-speed car chase. But, you know, they got him eventually so that was it. Yeah, there was a lot of suspension of disbelief. He made them think he went off the cliff but he wasn't. He was hiding in the bushes. They wouldn't look in the bushes. It was before the cliff. They were just literally driving through a field and I was like, how can these, like, why did they not bring SUVs? All the government has are SUVs.

55:53I know. Well, we see this in everything. I noticed in the E.T. I know exactly where E.T. is, it takes place and I can tell you there are no cornfields in Tujunga, California and there are no really tall trees, a dense, dense forest up there either. The crop circle, I'm finding things to be humorously annoyed about now. The crop circle reveal I thought was very silly because it's like, Oh, yes, yes, yes. Because it's like, what are you saying here that like this guy has unknowingly been in fields

56:24all over the world? I know, it's like bringing it back to Indiana all over again. It's just the way it happens. This is another thing I thought was like, not annoying, but interesting about the movie is that it turns out that aliens have only ever landed in America. Yeah, well, we're special. They just didn't mention any other, any other place. This sounds like this is after talk stuff. Like, yes, let's move into the after talk. I would invite people to continue with us, patreon.com slash prettymuchpop. And, yeah,

56:55thanks for hanging out. We'll have some more fun summer stuff coming up. More disclosures next episode. But listen, don't forget, they're out there. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Bye, guys.

57:08Pretty Much Pop is part of the Partially Examined Life podcast network. Get more Pretty Much Pop at prettymuchpop.com. Get bonus content for every episode at patreon.com slash prettymuchpop.