Is it possible to make a primer on a subject and preach to the choir simultaneously? Dan Farah’s The Age of Disclosure attempts to solve that quantum superposition, and, predictably, it doesn’t succeed at being either. Normies — people with lives who don’t understand what makes their crazier relatives lose their shit at the mere mention of the words “Varginha” or “Majesty 12” or “galactic federation” — will find themselves intrigued at first before their attention drifts away past the river of monotone talking heads. The UFO obsessives, who shot the trailer for this film up to 18 million views on YouTube and are hoping for the first installment of catastrophic disclosure are, likewise, going to be real frustrated when they realize that this is yet another documentary about Luis Elizondo and his work at AATIP, who, predictably, saved the good shit for whenever Disclosure II: Alien Boogaloo hits shelves at your local Barnes and Noble.
I’m joking. I don’t have any beef with Elizondo, a military man turned government intelligence agent turned would-be John the Baptist for the modern-day UFO movement. Any civil servant put in this situation during the prime of their career would take the book deal to make the mortgage payments the government’s checks are no longer funding (and, as frequently pointed out by the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, no one outside of Hollywood or Boeing is making money off of UFO knowledge). Elizondo quit AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program), the secret investigative program started by Senator Harry Reid in the ‘10s, to help further disclosure in the public sphere, and he was always going to be limited in what he could say.
What he did reveal was incredible: he was partially responsible for bringing to light the most compelling footage of a UAP (“Unidentified Ariel Phenomenon”) captured so far — the “tic-tac” video, filmed by aviators from the USS Nimitz in 2004. The release of that tape and the accompanying expose published in the New York Times convinced many people (myself included) that the strange shapes in the skies were worth paying attention to. No one knows what it is, least of all the public-facing apparatuses of the US Government. But behind that veneer of plausible deniability, Elizondo suggests there is a program — the “Legacy Program” as dubbed here, as the words “Immaculate Constellation” were cited in documents after the film was well into post-production — dedicated to retrieving downed craft and re-engineering it for humanity’s gain. Or, rather, the military-industrial complex’s. He alleges that there are genuinely disruptive discoveries hidden in those Raiders-like warehouses that might change the course of history, being kept from humanity. The reason for this, however, proves to be elusive.
They have some ideas, though. The most apparent reason is national security. Elizondo and his cadre of ex-government men hammer home that US airspace can’t be “secure” if Klaxar and the boys are going cow-tipping in the flying saucer, and it’s an important point. A great example of this would have been the Great Balloon Scare of 2023, in which we scrambled jets to shoot down anything that vaguely resembled a floating orb and usually just burst a surprisingly inexpensive Chinese bubble with very expensive missiles (though, according to some, actually shot down a craft of some kind in Alaska during that time). There’s also a strategic advantage: we’re competing with other countries for access to this tech, as well, which means there are legitimate high stakes to crack this technology before anyone else: If Luxembourg gets anti-gravity technology, who knows what scores they’ll settle.
Motivations are similarly obscure on the side of the aliens. Elizondo thinks the ETs are engaged in some form of reconnaissance, which also feels accurate, based on the number of bizarre sightings glimpsed near Air Force bases and military silos. These encounters are highlighted by Farah’s best assortment of talking heads, a group of highly credible witnesses who served at those bases at the time. One highlights his experience of seeing an enormous craft during his stint in the military with an awe and excitement that feels out of place in a documentary so heavily geared towards ensuring that the viewer takes this subject seriously. As stated by several of the interviewees, the stigma against UFO research has destroyed plenty of promising leads and ended careers, and maintaining a consistent serious tone essentially establishes the doc as a safe space for free thought.
Yet the approach taken here is heavy-handed to the point of being po-faced. It’s an odd tactic, pairing this tone with a fair amount of benign condescension, as Farah nearly patronizes every viewer. Even the histrionic sensationalism of a standard History Channel special has the good sense to keep their subjects away from blackboards, and my eyes almost rolled out of my skull when Elizondo grabs a piece of chalk and walks the viewer through the “six observables” of any true UAP. This is a failure of imagination on an almost ludicrous scale, given that there’s plenty of footage (even if it’s fake!) that better illustrates what Elizondo is talking about than a fucking checklist on a blackboard! Farah uses a clip from Top Gun: Maverick to illustrate how wide a turn a man-made aircraft would have to make (the width of Ohio!) at a fraction of the speeds these objects were going at — why not use something from Project Blue Book or Taken (the miniseries, not Liam Neeson)? Couple that with the talking heads (Hal Puthoff has had a fascinating career, but he can only say so much), the limited pool of footage (prepare to see the Gimbal video about twenty times), a heavy emphasis on location-shot recreations (most of which feature Elizondo looking pensively into the distance at a collection of monuments in Washington), and one gets a documentary that makes the most interesting strain of High Strangeness permeating culture into quality audio-visual Sleepytime Tea.
I think I’ve peppered this piece with enough breadcrumbs to show that I pay attention to UFO discourse (it’s fun!). I’m not trying to say that any of the claims presented are bullshit, at least from the interviewees currently outside of government (and to Farah’s credit, he tries to stress this is a bipartisan concern). One goes to war with the army they have, not the one they want, but seeing the assembled assortment of politicians interviewed here will make anybody wish they had a better fighting force. It’s remarkable to get the current Secretary of State on camera saying this knowledge keeps him up at night. Still, I think crediting him as such, even though the interview was conducted while he was a senator, is just a tad disingenuous. Yet, hearing from everyone from the Big Names in the trailer to minor figures in government tangentially related to the process can’t fill the David Grusch-shaped hole at the center of the project. Grusch, a whistleblower who gave genuinely astonishing testimony to Congress in 2023 (the government having “non-human biologics,” crash retrieval, and black-budget concealment of the money used to fund the “Legacy Program”) is a late-film reveal when he should, by all means, be a central player in the storyline.
Then again, ending The Age of Disclosure would always be a difficult task. With the failure of a bill — authored and sponsored by then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — that, had it passed, would have dramatically altered the framework of Farah’s documentary (and our cultural discourse as a whole), there’s not a good note to conclude on. Instead, Farah reverts to the tried-and-true “just wait, our movement is gaining momentum and there ain’t no stopping us now” inspirational chord, which is as familiar to the UFO nut as water is to a fish. We thrive in the murky depths of intrigue, where most of the entertainment comes from, and dream of the day we’ll finally be out of that dirty water. Truth is, once we’re on the dock, the above-ground world made known to us, we’ll be flipping and flopping, just like everybody else.
The sad thing is, there is better bait: documentaries of a similar ethos, like the ones that James Fox and others make at least focus on relatively self-contained narratives or pull in enough disparate anecdotes and accounts from around the world (the American-centric nature of Farah’s film is almost myopic in its limited vision, despite all of the talking heads stressing that this is an existential threat) that one will either be entertained or learn something they might not have known. Perhaps Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film inspired by these events — entirely fictionalized, full of that Industrial Light and Magic that the Beard brings to his projects, not limited to what information can escape redaction — may be the ultimate lure for audiences, one that genuinely raises awareness and interest as his projects often do. He’s always pulled from topical strains of UFO thought — Jacques Vallee famously inspired Truffaut’s character in Close Encounters — and it’s little wonder that Farah, who got this made trading on his experience as a producer on other Spielberg films, will be similarly credited there. It’s just that it’s a bit weird that the tie-in documentary will hit screens years before that currently-untitled feature will premiere.