EMI!? Huh?
Oh man… I think I saw this in a cinema when I was like 11? Can that be correct? And then I saw it again on VHS in the mid 80s.
But more than anything, all I remember from this movie is probably from the Mad Magazine parody of the movie, which I remember reading a bunch of times… like, the guy making the replica of the mountain in mashed potatoes? That was in there… I remember… the movie being really slow? And… the little ditty at the end?
I’m not really a Spielberg fan, but I’m looking forward to watching this again.
Business the modern movie making mind can’t comprehend. So many great details…
This movie just looks so good… the mix of models and matte paintings and practical effects… and the colours! You can’t imagine something looking this good could be made today.
They’d just CGI in all the chairs.
This had a $20M budget, which apparently is $110M in 2026 money… so, I mean, it’s a huge budget, but why can’t they make movies that look this good today with a $300M budget?
(It grossed $300M in 1977, which I guess made it one of the highest grossing movies ever? It’s like $1.5B in 2026 money?) Oh, there’s always Gone With the Wind with $4.5B inflation adjusted bucks.
Here’s the scene! “Mashed potatoes”! That’s the gloopiest, most horrible-looking mashed potatoes I’ve ever seen, though.
Total sausage fest.
It’s such a zeitgeisty movie. Sure, the gummint here is overbearing and overprotective, but it’s basically competent and well-meaning. And everybody’s working together and there’s no nazis using the UFOs to talk about chemtrails. I.e., total science fiction.
But more than that, it’s an odd movie — there’s no real villain here, and there’s very few of familiar plot threads — instead it’s just this situation that’s presented to us an lasts for over two hours. And it’s not boring! It’s very exciting!
How did Spielberg convince the studio to give him All The Money? Had Star Wars already been released? This is kinda the opposite of that, but…
Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Steven Spielberg. 1977. ⚄
(The version I watched was the 1998 “Director’s Cut” version.)