"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" comes out today in a 30th-anniversary DVD re-release. Britannica Blog remembers when the UFOlogist J. Allen Hynek visited the set of the Spielberg film, and had a short cameo. According to the item, CE3K was the first (major?) film to present aliens from space as benign, not hostile. Hmm. Look, I don't care what their attitude is, as long as they come into this country legally.
Arr, arr. I remember pestering my father to please, please, please, please, please take me to see the movie, and one Saturday after I got finished mowing Aunt Patsy's lawn, he did. I was totally blown away, of course, and couldn't stop thinking about the end -- wondering if I would have done like Richard Dreyfuss, and climbed aboard the mothership and headed to oblivion (it was the Rapture for sci-fi geeks). I wouldn't have then -- I was 10 years old -- and I certainly wouldn't now, but I can understand the impulse. It's what led thousands of men and women to get on ships and leave their homes for the New World, without the realistic possibility of return. The feeling of nothing much to lose, and the thrill of adventure, of going boldly where no man has gone before, of escaping boredom. Of transcendence. The most extreme version imaginable of the geographic cure.
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2001 describes the move to the next level, so to speak.
Well, Clarke couldn't leave well enough alone, and in 3001 he has the same aliens looking to rub us out and start all over again.
OK, evidently me and science fiction just do not click...
Junior High -- I went with a bunch of friends to see Star Wars when it came out.
I fell asleep during the movie.
High School -- When Close Encounters premiered here, I told my (same) friends I had no interest whatsoever in it, and wasn't going.
After being promised free tickets and all the junk food I could handle (lots at that time), I went with them and spent the entire time writing out an outline for a book report I had due that Monday (this was Friday night) on some napkins I got from the concession stand. I never even paid attention to the film.
Good memories :-)
3001 was horrible. Isn't it great that mankind is now mind controlled so that he can't do those "evil" things? Man now lives in space reaching towers because, hey, he doesn't need nature. The future was so sterile that I just kept hoping that mankind would get wiped out due to it's lack of humanity.
I think I was 13 when CE3K came out. I was intrigued by the notion of space aliens, but by then a buddy had introduced me to Star Trek, which already had a fairly benign view of aliens.....well, sort of.
ET, on the other hand, was an entirely different story. I think I was the last person on the planet to see it, and all I remember when leaving the theater was "this squat alien waddles through the entire flick, falling down on his face, and HE CAN FLY!!!
Either way, I think both of these stories (yes, stories), gave a vision to all those folks who want to believe in UFO's, but can produce no evidence whatsoever, other then clinging to the notion that there is plenty o' evidence, the feds are just hiding it. Laughable.
Cheers...Phil
I first saw it in French (Rencontre Du Troisieme Type) when I could barely follow the dialog in that language. It seemed dull. Seeing it in English didn't change my opinion. It was like a bad art film with disjointed scenes that included a lot of people looking up and gaping. Aliens communicating with notes that happened to match Western music scales? Somehow the magic of that moment was lost on me... I must've been distracted by the ELO lightshow. I really wanted to like the movie but never could. Multi-million dollar special effects with a 50 cent plot: Story-wise it couldn't hold a candle to 99% of the Twilight Zone episodes.
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