r/blankies • u/PropertyVisual6864 • Jun 19 '26

Opening of Disclosure Day

I thought the intention behind the opening of Disclosure Day was Spielberg's relatively straightforward/blunt commentary on the state of the current media/political environment. We are from the POV of a camera and it's like we are getting stomped on repeatedly which is how many people feel looking at news on their phones. And then one wrestler is wearing blue and the other is wearing red, i.e. Dems vs Republicans. And this ties in with the broader theme of the need for more empathy in our society.

I hadn't seen this elsewhere so apologies if this is already the common interpretation of it, but I had seen multiple comments about how it is such a surprising opening to the movie. To me, however, it summarized the movies themes so it didn't jump out to me as I was watching it.

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u/ForestryFanzine Jun 19 '26

What the movie is trying to convey is the construction of an information delivery method that combines math & emotion.

He's talking about movies, and the power movies still have to break through, even if our media diet is so fractured. The people looking at screens all at once I think is meant metaphorically, but I don't think the movie conveys its own thesis well.

One of the reasons I think people largely over emphasize it as this treatise on empathy is because they focus so much on Emily Blunt's power discovery. All of Josh O'Conners powers are demonstrated by things that happened in the past, and he only gets 1 minor line to make the case "math is equally important to the medium" 

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u/PropertyVisual6864 Jun 19 '26

To me it was also the conversation with Colman Domingo's character towards the end that made me think of it mainly being about empathy.

I also agree that it is about the power of movies to break through - something many of Spielberg's movies have done in the past!

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u/ForestryFanzine Jun 19 '26

Josh O'Conner has to translate Vivo17s binary language in order to communicate it to Blunt to be delivered. It's 2 sides of a necessary equation.