DISCLOSURE DAY: SECOND TRAILER

Since the first full Disclosure Day trailer dropped, I've been trying to separate my own wishful thinking about the movie from what actually appears in the trailers. Trust me, it hasn't been easy. But the second trailer has given me a renewed sense of energy, and a lot more data, to help me set aside my hopes and dreams for the moment.

I think this movie is going to be dark. Very dark. Whatever the secret is, it's likely to be along the lines of the secret in the original Planet of the Apes.

"Don't look for it, Taylor. You may not like what you find," - Dr. Zaeus

So, my thinking is that whatever is going on, you don't want to know it.

And despite whistleblower character's apparent belief in total disclosure worldwide, this philosophical predisposition might well run headlong into the problem that sometimes it serves no good purpose to know the truth. If the truth is both negative and inescapable ("Yes, were captives in a zoo, but, no, you can never escape") and if awareness of it effectively robs you of happiness (don't worry, be happy, while we quietly observe you while munching on ET popcorn) why would anyone want that knowledge? But there's that problematic thing called insatiable human curiousity. We just have to open Pandora's Box, don't we? Split the atom? Sure. Create the possibility of a miniature black hole that engulfs everyone by building the Hadron Collider? But of course! Interbreed humans and chimpanzees? Hmmm... Yes!

To be sure, some few people could handle it, taking on the mission of protecting others from the truth. Guardians of the secret, awful knowledge if you will. And a few others might insist on it learning it despite warnings, although they might collapse under the weight of it. But for the vast majority of humans? What would be the result of disclosure?My guess: some hopeless effort to fight back on the part of some, plus chaos and "anything goes" lawlessness. A lot of it.

Other examples of a "dark truth" beyond the beasts in a zoo revelation: we're software beings of a sort in a matrix but worse as there's no waking up to a corporeal reality -- or we're androids that don't know it and have never had a single original thought; or we're a crop of gourmet delicacies that will eventually be harvested and put on cosmic crackers; or we were created as disposable lab rats in a transient experiment, etc.

Why am I thinking the movie is going to be so dark? Mainly, but not only, from this brief exchange that takes place midway through the second trailer:

What has she become a part of, other than learning some secret? Is he regretting disclosure? Has knowing the truth harmed her? Is he saying he (and she) would have been better off in blissful ignorance? These questions barely align with anything I've previously thought about Disclosure Day. I just didn't think Spielberg had it in him to be so ... negative. Okay, maybe it's because they're going to kill her too, now that she knows. But if the truth is liberating and positive, shouldn't it be worth a little personal risk?

No, ladies and gentlemen, prepare to walk out of the theater like you've just witnessed the death of a friend.

But if we humans are good at anything, it's denial.

Everything's fine!

---

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE SECURITY STATE AND USING SOUNDS TO MAKE CROP CIRCLES

Big Brother Is Watching You. The second trailer begin with a closer look at what appears to be clear evidence that the story takes place in a society with vastly powerful security state, with a hub that appears to be a vast auditorium with wall-to-wall technology dedicated to gathering and reviewing information about its citizens, including in real time. Data, videos, the whole schmear. We can assume this is Earth in the present day or the near future, and perhaps the United States, but it might be none of those things.

The surveillance state appears beyond powerful. Not only only can it see everyone and everything, it can invade our minds. Make us do things. Who are these people? to paraphrase David Mamet, who can create apparitions residing only in our heads?

Maybe the trailers answer that question as well:

So maybe Robert Bigelow and Robert Dean were right: they walk among us. And maybe They Live is closer to the truth than we thought.

How To Create a Crop Circle. The whistleblower is seen standing at the center of a field as the grass/wheat is flattened around him into a mysterious crop circle. It is possible that the crop circle is being created by the sounds coming from the mouth of a possessed weather forecaster that he's watching (and hearing) on his satellite flip phone? Is that what he means when he confides that he understands what those guttural clicks and clucks really mean?