I’ve always found Roy boarding the mothership to make perfect sense in the context of the film.
When Jillian can’t find her son at the landing zone she knows that what she is serching for isn’t present so she can withstand the lure of the ‘obsession’ (or call - it’s pretty clear that the aliens have planted some kind of compulsion in people to get them to Devil’s Tower.)
But for Roy: he’s lost his job, his wife & kids have left him and the whole affair has just about sent him nuts. Set against all that I can see why he would board the ship.
I didn’t mean to insult your taste or anything, its just I often see people complain BR is boring and well it IS if you don’t give a crap about the world. Like I said there is nothing wrong with that, a lot of people don’t care about set design and blah blah so with that removed it is a pretty empty film.
First saw it in the cinema when it was released in 1977. Except for the “Flight 19” element (I’d just finished reading a couple of books debunking the Bermuda Triangle “mystery”), the film was a real masterpiece of SFX and entertaining plot for the times.
Just saw it on one of the cable channels for the first time since the release. Somewhat dated, seems slow at some points, but still worth watching. But one part of the film startled me: when the Mothership is putting on the Ritz, they kept doing shots of the bureaucrats, engineers, admins, techs staring in wonder.
Then it hit me: you don’t see any woman professionals (except for the flight crew, IIRC).
I prefer sci-fi that explores an interesting premise and there wasn’t a lot of thought provoking material in this movie. There were endless scenes with Richard Dreyfuss obsessing over Devil’s Tower. (How does he know about Devil’s Tower? Is he psychic?) Spielberg also gives us lots of pointless encounters where stuff gets bathed in “magical” white light.
After an incredibly long, 2+ hour build up, the aliens come out of their ship and you finally get to see them. This should be the big payoff. Instead the aliens look cheesy and lame and this big budget, spectacle limps to a close. Leaving me to wonder, “So what?”
They didn’t need to show the inside (in the SE), though. (If you’re talking about ‘it makes sense that he left his family’, OK. I’m just saying that showing him enter was better than showing him floating around agog.)
That’s the point. He hadn’t seen Devil’s Tower. If he had, he would have said ‘Weird. I keep seeing Devil’s Tower in my mind’s eye.’ He doesn’t know about it at all. He just has the basic shape in his head, which he keeps trying to create (unsuccessfully at first), as a result of being in proximity to the alien ships. He isn’t psychic, but he has a ‘psychic connection’ to the aliens. We don’t see most of the people who don’t. In any case, he doesn’t know about Devil’s Tower until he sees in on TV.
I was (and still am) greatly amused by the scene were he is stopped by a railroad crossing, and a UFO comes up behind him, and he waves it around. It goes up instead of around, and he doesn’t notice.
Now we have hand-held electronic gadgets that you can watch movies on while you’re riding the bus. A movie is just an entertainment product, like a game, something to while away your spare minutes with. I wonder if there are directors (especially older directors) who just fume.
The aliens implanted the image into his mind as well as the others. They wanted those specific people to come. Why? Who knows, they’re aliens. Their motives are…well…alien to us.
Absolutely. I can’t point to any rants off-hand, but plenty of musicians and record producers are pissed off about music being listened to via crappy heavily compressed music delivered via ear-buds.
Kathryn Bigelow created a movie that put the viewer into the world of these soldiers. Every element worked together to convey the stress of this job, and watching it on a 4" screen is not being fair to it. As I said, I had a huge, perfect quality image and thousands of watts that completely enveloped me. I sat there for the entire length of the movie…I didn’t pause it, I wasn’t looking around for my bus stop, etc.
I watch movies on my laptop screen, but I tend to stick with either comedies or dramas that don’t build an environment.
FWIW I never got into Blade Runner either. Some of the futuristic stuff is too '80s (as were the Mad Max movies, but they weren’t taking themselves so seriously) and too bleak. And the plot is this very slow mystery about a guy who might be falling in love with a cold, aloof woman who might not even be a human being. I hate movies where the guy is just mesmerized by a woman I find unremarkable. But she’s so fascinating. No, she’s not. She’s aloof and unfriendly. And she smokes!
We don’t know that these specific people were ‘selected’. The aliens could have used their ‘magic’ (3) to contact people that were able to receive it. For example, I could have a dozen radios tuned to different frequencies. I send a signal to all of them, but only one receives it. This is different from choosing a radio, tuning it to the frequency I want, and then sending a signal. In the former case, the radio with the attribute I want (the ability to receive my broadcast) is the one I select. In the latter, I select the radio first.
Why do the aliens want to attract people who are able to receive their ‘broadcast’? We don’t know. (Though SF is full of stories of people who are more evolved or whatever, that aliens take interest in.)
This does not make the characters ‘psychic’. It’s just a common SF meme that aliens can ‘reach’ some people who possess a certain attribute.
The opening of Close Encounters was something to see when released in theaters.
It opens with a black screen and a very quiet orchestral hum that slowly builds.
Everyone is sitting in a dark theatre and by now their pupils have dialated to adjust. Still black screen and you’re waiting to see something in the dark and try to squint for something in the field of black that isn’t there. The music builds for what seems like an eternity and suddenly “BAM!” the theatre is bathed in bright white light and a burst of dolby sound to make you jump out of your seat and cover your eyes.
It worked great and got a reaction out of the audience every time.
Nowdays somebody watching it on their laptop in a well lit room with the 1" speakers is wondering “What the hell was that all about? Stupid.”
I agree, the whole sequence based around the interior of the mothership wasn’t needed.
I picked up the BluRay a few months ago and it looks like a mix of the best of both versions. It excluded the interior shots.
I’m not sure if I’ve even seen he original version now. We seem to get odd cuts of films in Australia - the first time I saw* Jaws *was on TV and it had scenes in it that now only appear in the special features section of DVD’s.
I’ve never understood the Dreyfuss character’s obsession about recreating the Devil’s Tower. Even before the Internet, it was a famous thing. If a vision of it haunted him, couldn’t he have just gone to the library to look up mountains until he found one that looks the part? It’s tedious and irritating, as is the entire movie, as far as I’m concerned, except for the cool special effects and musical notes used as universal communication.
I didn’t know about Devil’s Tower until I saw Close Encounters. It’s famous NOW mostly because of the movie. Melinda Dillon’s character didn’t know about it. There’s a scene in her hotel room where she’s been trying to draw/paint what she’s been visualizing. In different parts of the country she and Neary both see the same news report of the “anthrax outbreak” near Devil’s Tower. Finally they both see the real thing of what’s been haunting them and they know they’re not crazy. They also know they have to go there (Jillian because she believes that’s where she’s most likely to find her son).
I remember thinking how cool it was that one of the astronauts was a woman. There weren’t any in real life back then.
