Project Hail Mary And Disclosure Day Have One Thing In Common (And It Makes Both Movies Better)

Don't make contact with any extraterrestrial beings if you haven't seen "Disclosure Day" or "Project Hail Mary" — full spoilers for both films ahead!

Two of 2026's best movies so far — Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's literary adaptation "Project Hail Mary" and Steven Spielberg's charming original concept "Disclosure Day" — say basically the same thing about aliens. Specifically, both movies present aliens as potential friends and allies for humans rather than destructive forces hell-bent on wrecking the entire Earth.

In many ways, "Project Hail Mary" and "Disclosure Day" couldn't be more different. "Project Hail Mary" imagines a world where only a scientist and middle school teacher, Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), can possibly prevent drought and famine on Earth by traveling to the far-flung reaches of the solar system and investigating a phenomenon called astrophage that threatens to block out the sun; while he's on his journey, Ryland meets a small anthropomorphic alien named Rocky (puppeteered and voiced by James Ortiz), and the two work together. "Disclosure Day" centers around whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor), his girlfriend Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), his mentor and ally Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), and unsuspecting weatherwoman Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), who has a connection to Daniel ... and this group's attempt to reveal the truth about extraterrestrial life. 

Still, the shared DNA between these two movies — movies about truth, communication, and acceptance — is important, and it's what makes both of them really, really good. Ultimately, "Project Hail Mary" and "Disclosure Day" are both big-hearted and unabashedly earnest films about the good that can come from working with something that you perceive as your enemy ... and the importance of those bonds. So how is that expressed across both of these films?

Let's look at these movies by chronological release date and chat about "Project Hail Mary," an adaptation of Andy Weir's best-selling novel of the same name and a box office smash for co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. This charming, winning, tear-jerking story focuses, again, around Ryan Gosling's Dr. Ryland Grace, who's essentially forced to board a spacecraft only to wake up months into a mission to solve the astrophage issue to discover his crew is dead. Alone and despondent, Ryland tries to accomplish his goal anyway ... and when he meets Rocky, he's understandably a bit freaked out at first, largely because Rocky is a rock-shaped alien who speaks a different language and can't survive in Ryland's human climate. After they build Rocky a portable habitat and create a computer program to translate between them, though, Rocky and Ryland become friends ... and the most touching part of the entire story is when Ryland, ostensibly returning to Earth with a substance that can stop the astrophage from dimming the sun, sends that substance to his team instead and stays with his new best friend Rocky.

"Disclosure Day" takes place on Earth, but as we learn more about this film's aliens — an unknown species that's being actively hidden by WARDEX, a corporation working with the United States government — we discover that they're benevolent, kind, and even disguise themselves as animals so as to not scare any potential human friends. More than that, both Daniel and Margaret, as children, were chosen by these gentle aliens and given psychic gifts and powers of intelligence so that they could help reveal the aliens' existence later on. Aliens, in these movies, aren't our sworn enemy. They're our friends, if we'll let them be.

It's not really about the aliens in "Disclosure Day," but how we approach and treat them — and, as is the case with WARDEX. The same is true of "Project Hail Mary," in which Rocky is technically a means help stop the spread of astrophage, but his character is so fully developed that the movie becomes a buddy comedy rather than a movie that's about a guy dealing with an alien.

In an age where division is everywhere — from bitter political divides to vast ideological chasms to "stan" wars in the pop culture sphere — "Project Hail Mary" and "Disclosure Day" do something vital. They remind us that we are stronger together than apart, and that accepting friendship from someone who's different — even in a way that's different enough to scare us — is the only way to mend any of this. Instead of looking at a different being and encouraging hatred or fear, both "Project Hail Mary" and "Disclosure Day" ask a vital question: what if you just tried to communicate with this being instead?

I don't mean to get too "kumbaya" about all of this, and I also think both movies show us what can happen if evil forces — especially WARDEX in "Disclosure Day" — take full control of a given situation, as well as why we can't simply submit to said evil forces (no matter how much power they may yield). Yes, these are sci-fi movies about aliens, but they're about acceptance, harmony, and even love ... and considering they're two of the summer's biggest blockbusters, that's pretty damn striking.

You can watch "Project Hail Mary" on VOD or MGM+, and "Disclosure Day" is in theaters now.