Midweek Mention... Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Close Encounters

Sidey: Close encounters of the third kind Yeah Never contemplated what that actually means before.

Reegs: Okay. Well, enlighten us inside It is...

Sidey: that sets, right? I did 'cause Dan told me, and I thought I would Google it just to make sure. So there's the first... Obviously, this is the third kind- Yeah ... which implies there's at least- At

Reegs: At least

Sidey: and a

Reegs: one or two. There's

Dan: at least two other kinds

Sidey: at least two other kinds. The first kind, you see a UFO in the sky at close range, but it leaves behind no physical changes or evidence.

Reegs: evidence at all

Dan: the environment

Sidey: Okay. Second kind, you see a UFO at close range, and it leaves physical proof. This can include burnt ground, broken trees, stopped car engines perhaps. Yeah. Third kind, you see a UFO and an animate being, alien pilot, or occupant at the same location

Reegs: Okay

Sidey: So this was a guy, this came from a guy-

Reegs: Well, there's more kinds though as well.

Dan: isn't there?

Sidey: So this came from a guy called J. Allen Hynek.

Dan: The Hynek maneuver.

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. He had the maneuver as well. And then subsequently, a fourth and a fifth kind, but these were added later. The fourth kind, which kind of should be the name of this film- Yeah ... is where a person is taken inside the spacecraft. Yeah. Which obviously,

Reegs: spoiler

Sidey: spoiler alert.

Dan: even the fifth kind, it kinda connects with-

Sidey: Direct conscious two-way communication. So that's the no, no, no, no, no. Yeah

Dan: and also, Between humans ... you know, telepathic contact is something- Yeah ... which our hero in this our main character, Ray, has plenty of that going on. So yeah, goes to show there were more kinds to, to come, but the third kind

Reegs: Yeah, that's the one we're interested in is absolutely- We're not interested in the first or the second No. We're interested-

Dan: the first or the second. No, it's boring. No. We're only interested in-

Sidey: he starts off with this, I suppose... We obviously get stuff at the start, but is his name Roy? It's...

Reegs: It's... No. It's the cold open is in

Sidey: Roy's first one is the second kind, I think, because he gets the spacecraft- Oh, I see. Yes ... burning him. He doesn't- Yeah ... go aboard. But yeah, like you say, the first one is the French dude, Claude ... Claude, Claude Lacombe and his team, and they're in a desert, aren't they? Yeah.

Reegs: They're in a desert, aren't they? Yeah. They're in the Sonoran Desent- Desert, and they find, like, a bunch of fighter planes- Yeah ... out in the middle of nowhere, which they say is aircraft that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle, I think- Right ... in 1945. They're able to-

Sidey: Again,

Dan: based on a true story of a squadron of five aeroplanes that went missing around the Bermuda Triangle back in the day. Still around ... and- Yeah ... were never found.

Reegs: And you get... It's all typical, even though this is 1977 Spielberg, but so many trademarks of his where you get those sequences of often people following tools as it... Like, from one person to another as, as it, like, moves around and you, you know, see what's going on. And we see this... They... There's an old guy there, isn't it? A Spa- A guy who's talking in Spanish. Yeah. He's got the sort of sunburn that we'll see later on Roy. And he tells them, "The sun came out last night." He says it sang to him. But we don't get the titles up on screen. We have it relayed via an interpreter, and it's important because that's gonna establish the theme of interpretation and having to listen to other vocabularies and all that sort of thing. So, yeah. Then after that, I think we go to, there's a great scene at, an air traffic control center- And there's a load of guys, like, there's-

Sidey: Or something's really fast

Reegs: planes. They're saying, "There's something here and it's moving fast," and it's, and they have to move them all out the way, and it, it's only the guys huddled around the display. Yeah. And they're sort of saying, "Well, do you wanna call it in as a UFO?" And everybody's like, "Nah, nah." So they just sort of leave it

Dan: sort of- No, they'd, they'd lose their license or they'll lose- Yeah ... you know, credibility within their organization. So nobody wanted to actually officially put these, "You're a crackpot. You seeing what?"

Reegs: Even though there was multiple pilots who saw it at the same time. And then I think after that it goes to the-

Sidey: W- there's a power out, and this is where we meet Roy Neary.

Reegs: Yeah

Dan: and

Sidey: he's called out to investigate a power outage.

Dan: or Ray? Roy. Roy.

Sidey: or Ray? Roy. Roy.

Dan: Roy. Yeah.

Reegs: Is it not, do we not see the the kid getting abducted first?

Dan: he- Barry. Do you

Reegs: Or the, like all the toys that come out. Do you remember all the toys that

Sidey: I think Roy goes out first and then we see Barry and the toys. I- in any case, there's a couple of encounters. Roy sees some lights on a kind of like a hilltop, isn't he, when he's in his, his ute-type of vehicle. Yeah. And then they eventually stop, I think immediately over, overhead and beam a massive, you know, spotlight on his car. I think everything starts to shake and go a bit crazy, and the radio goes off and-

Reegs: he's an electrical engineer, isn't he? That's why he's been sent out to find the source of... Because the craft have gone over this town in Indiana and have turn- taken all the lights out as they've

Sidey: a EMP type sitch. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a-- he looks out of the window and he gets the sunburn-type effect on him.

Reegs: It's quite an intense sequence. He gets stopped on a, a train

Sidey: Yeah. Everything goes kind of haywire ... you know, everything

Reegs: goes out, and then it's ... There's a strange bit where it looks like he's almost falling.

Sidey: It's sort of almost like it's hover. Yeah. Everything's going a bit just- It's almost like hovering and floating out of the- ... in the cab. Yeah ... really quite unsettling.

Dan: Th-th-there was another interesting bit right at the beginning, just a little bit before this, where they find the SS Cotopaxi as well, which is after the boats. Yeah. After the the planes, they found this, That's

Reegs: That's right, yeah

Sidey: missing

Dan: ship. And actually, they, Spielberg was clever. He kinda leaned into that because it had never been found, but it did subsequently get found by this deep sea diver. But for like 30 years, 40 years, he'd used aliens as a

Reegs: used aliens as

Dan: kind of potential- Cover ...cover f-for this. But it was found in I think off Florida or Miami or something- Right ...in, in the end. But, That's interesting. Yeah.

Sidey: So then we're gonna, then we're gonna meet Jillian and her son, Barry. He's

Reegs: already had a weird sequence before that, before thingy goes out, where all his toys come to life. Yeah. And it's done through ... Because the kid is really fucking young, and it's

Dan: three years old.

Reegs: Three years old. How

Dan: Three years old, the kid.

Reegs: So it's done through, like, method acting. The boy's mother is off screen basically. So every time all these,

Sidey: Excuse me. Sorry

Reegs: these terrifying things are happening, like all these toys starting up eerily, and the dog barking, and weird shit happening, he's looking off screen with this, like, l- look of love and happiness on his face.

Dan: Well, Spielberg was opening a present on one of them. Oh, right. He was like unwrapping a, a present just so the kid's w-eyes of wonder was there, like.

Reegs: It's, like, jarring- Yeah ... from what's happening on screen.

Dan: And then, like for the scary moments, he was in a gorilla suit or a clown mask, and then, then he would like reveal his face- Yeah ...and somebody he knew, and he would smile and laugh, like. But yeah, they, the kid w-apparently was amazing. Well, he was amazing. He was, yeah. But like in one take as well. It was like one take. Cary, I think his name was. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Well, that's all you get really, I think, with a

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: So anyway, yeah. Roy has this close encounter of the second kind. It's left physical evidence.

Sidey: Yeah, he hasn't met an alien yet.

Reegs: So and then is obviously, like, immediately obsessed basically by the ... Like, some ... It'll become clear that this thing has imprinted something on

Sidey: we say that Barry gets abducted?

Reegs: Not at this point though, is it?

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, it's really early in, in the movie,

Sidey: that same sequence with the toys, isn't it? It's just, he just, he just goes out into the woods and fucks off.

Dan: into the, the, Yeah, I mean this isn't

Reegs: Yeah, it's just that's where he meets the woman, isn't it? Yeah. So the kid just goes off and gets

Sidey: Terry Garr, isn't it?

Reegs: In the car, isn't it? ... by the aliens, running off gleefully through the cat flap or dog flap or something, was it?

Sidey: his

Dan: his mum's pulling him back. Yeah. And actually his real-life mum's on the

Reegs: the other

Dan: It's like the other side. Yeah ... pulling him. But,

Reegs: other side, pulling him back.

Sidey: The

Dan: yeah, the, the alien force- Yeah ... actually wins, and she's running out. And in our house, 'cause I watched this when I was young it was one of those bits where we for years, even now, like I can go, "Barry."

Sidey: like,

Dan: Like, you know? And we all know what it, it means. Just it really tickled us in our house that the the mother would just scream and shout this this name like she

Reegs: Barry ... you wouldn't normally hear. It's not a name you come across a lot. Yeah.

Sidey: a kid

Reegs: too many three-year-old called

Dan: Yeah. Ba-a-arry.

Reegs: So yeah, he's, he's abducted, and it leads to them meeting as she goes off out the house. Well, doesn't it... Th- thing is, that's why I thought, 'cause doesn't he nearly kill the kid as he's coming... He's, he's chasing the UFO. He comes around that bend, and the kid's just out in the middle of the road, 'cause she comes and saves him. And that's when she's, he's taken after that. But so yeah, he's taken, and they've seen this thing- Yeah and- They have a ship

Sidey: have a shared experience of some fucking weird shit going on. Yeah. Roy clearly becomes...

Dan: But he's

Sidey: not the same after this experience. No. And also, he's affected it in a way that we've seen parody, the parodies of this now down the years, especially in The Simpsons of some form that he doesn't really understand or know what it is. Yeah. I think he does it in shaving foam first. Yeah. And then later on he's gonna do it in his mashed potato. Yeah. Which Homer does the big top one. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Which is

Sidey: Which is great. But we don't, you know, even as the viewer, we don't know what it is. It's some, something that's-

Reegs: until he makes that incredible model

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: just unbelievable model that he makes.

Sidey: Well,

Dan: he, he starts f- first out with, like, mashed potato, doesn't he? He's like,

Reegs: just said that, yeah.

Dan: yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then it comes the big- Yeah ... kind of model.

Sidey: Because he's, it- it's obviously becoming an issue for home life. He's just completely,

Reegs: like- Well, he ba- pretty much abandons his family almost straight away. Yeah. It's not hard to see like seeds of what he'd later explore in The Fabelmans about his own father, 'cause his father obviously was the engineer, and in this case, Roy just abandons his family. The woman, the mother take... She doesn't have a lot to do. She just kinda takes the kids off to the sister's, doesn't she? Yeah. And they exit out the movie. And it's quite hard to

Sidey: like...

Reegs: It's difficult in some ways to relate to Roy. Like, or well, you have to think about what's happened to him-

Sidey: it was- Well, they, they have... they must have something, something in their appearance, 'cause it's really attracted Barry, who's been drawn to it- Mm. t- as a, as a kid, you know. He's gone... And obviously Roy has become obsessed- Yeah ... like instantly. So there's something that they do, something, some ability that they have that draws people in. Yes. And did

Dan: everybody make the, the same kind of mountain when they next had mashed potato? Sure ... it was just one of the, one of the things. Like, just more. Yeah. Just give me more mashed potato. Yeah. I wanna, I wanna sorta spread it on and, and start using your fork to make the, the mountain that eventually is where the aliens is gonna turn up. Yeah. So

Reegs: While all this is going on, we've also got the kind of world response, which at this point is led by the UN and this guy Lacombe. Yeah. And there's various things happening around the world, isn't there? There's the ship that you- Yeah ... were talking about. There's-

Sidey: Francois Truffaut who plays

Reegs: Yeah, the director, yeah. And there's like a really cool scene set out in India where they the communication now is much more overt, and there's thousands of people chanting this kind of thing, and it's leading them through to understand that their method of communication with the aliens is gonna be via music. It's the start of that- Yeah ... whole

Sidey: journey.

Reegs: Hmm.

Dan: journey. It's

Sidey: never in the film- put in a, an encounter that we're sort of under threat.

Dan: No.

Sidey: the way you get something really basic like in your Independence Day where you- Yeah ... obviously know you're under attack. It's never, it's never really made like that. No. No. There's weird stuff going on, but I don't think anyone's sort of feeling-

Reegs: It doesn't feel like somebody's there to attack you straight away. No. No. It's, it feels they could be

Sidey: It's more sciencey, it's more explorative.

Reegs: They don't know what our reaction's gonna be. It's,

Sidey: Yeah. It, it's, it's

Dan: it's something strange to-

Sidey: In your neighborhood ... like go

Dan: away with and learn from rather

Reegs: as we'll see, they've been doing this for many years, right? Yeah. So, they've come to understand a few things about us.

Dan: And they do return people. Yeah.

Reegs: We'll get that at the end, won't we? Yeah. You can think about how weird that is.

Sidey: When you've been probed within an inch of your life. Yeah.

Reegs: and then you come back and everybody's dead that you knew. Yeah. So, but yeah, we get all that stuff going on, and what else do we get? We get,

Sidey: Well, it's the, the, the model that he's building i- 'cause there's a crossover between just like drilling it down onto him and the Jillian, the B- Barry's mother, the, the sort of the impact on a smaller family thing to, like you say, the sort of more governmental- Yeah bigger thing, and eventually it crosses over because this model, this thing that he, this vision he has is the site of where they're gonna do this meetup.

Reegs: Devil's Tower, Wyoming. Yeah, they've deduced from the musical notes that they've been hearing that it's pointing to Cartesian coordinates, as he calls it, coordinates on a map. And simultaneously, they're

Sidey: sort of-

Reegs: of, trying to hide this from the public by like staging a sort of viral outbreak. Yeah. Then they, they've actually gassed a load of animals and- A load of them, yeah. And it, it's, it's interesting how that media response starts 'cause this was the '70s. For the first time they, they wheel a guy out in front of them, and they're all asking questions 'cause now by this point, loads of people have seen these

Sidey: things

Reegs: now. Yeah. And they're like, "We want some answers." And they get a guy out, and he's like, "Well, I'd love it to be a UFO as well, but it wasn't. I don't know what it was," and all that sort of stuff. And then the se- the next time Roy's like, "Nah, I'm not having that bullshit," when they close off this part of the land. This was

Sidey: and pre like f- 4chan, so there wasn't- Yeah ... enough conspiracy theorists around to

Reegs: debunk all that. Yeah.

Sidey: one would believe anything these days.

Reegs: Exactly, yeah.

Dan: Just buy it.

Reegs: it. So yeah. He heads off to essentially the epicenter of what's been closed off, and he realizes... And then they actually see it in the distance, There's,

Sidey: quite a strong military presence, isn't there? Mm. To kind of like keep people away you have to sneak around up, up the sort of-

Reegs: They've got these two doves, I think.

Sidey: Oh, like the old canary trick from the,

Reegs: they're in, in the little thing, and they've got ... They purchased gas masks because they're still not sure,

Dan: atmosphere and what they might release in, in kind of that first contact.

Reegs: Where they see Devil's Tower, and then they do e- eventually get accosted by just a group, like a security team all in hazmat suits and gas masks, and they're separated and bundled off to the facility where Roy is sort of, Put in front of Lacombe, and their whole interview is done, even though he does speak English, it seems. Yeah. But their whole interview is done via the translator. And he tries to ask him all these questions, doesn't he? And it, he doesn't ... It's interesting, 'cause he doesn't try and deny it. He's actually more interested in, like, what ... almost more interested in, like, you've been drawn here. This actually belongs to you more than it belong- Yeah it, he'll actually say that towards the end, "It belongs to these people more than it belongs to us, the scientists."

Sidey: Yeah, because they've actually

Dan: people more than it belongs to us, the scientists." Yeah. Yeah, because they've actually connected, and they're probably the reason they're coming, right? Yeah. You know, it's not for all the scientists and everything who have been drawn there to learn from it. He's had these telepathic kind of interactions, these messages and this, this longing to get to a particular place that's come to his dreams and into his sort of daydreams, his night dreams, and it's just been...

Reegs: it's just been ...

Dan: It, it was Spielberg wrote this when he was quite young, so what, what you said earlier about

Sidey: Roy

Dan: kind of abandoning his family and everything. Spielberg had said, "It's not anything after I had children that I would've written about." And all his films afterwards, you know, they all end up with, you know, Tom Cruise in, in was it "Day After Tomorrow" or, or whatever the,

Reegs: no,

Sidey: world Ends" or- "The World At War."

Reegs: War of

Dan: War of the Worlds. C- Wo- War of the Worlds. Becomes a better father. Even Indiana Jones doesn't go off with his, after the crystal skull ki- you know, he, he writes in family parts.

Reegs: Yeah, the kids just, the kids and wife just fuck off about a third of the movie in, and that's basically it, isn't it? We never see them again.

Dan: And, and, you know, as Ray goes through- Roy as well ... roy, sorry, Roy and Ray they go through he's, You know, he goes with them, doesn't he? Yeah. I mean, that's what happens. He,

Sidey: you- Well, yeah, but so he's, he's kind of selected to be Roy as one of the civilians to sort of make contact. Yeah. And Gillian- Well,

Reegs: w- hey, that's, that's way, way, way, way ... 'cause they, we haven't met them yet. E- that's afterwards. So- That's

Sidey: No, 'cause when they're captured.

Reegs: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're all- They're captured ... no, they're all bundled, they're all bundled off on a helicopter, aren't they? Trying to send them all

Sidey: That's when Lucan interviews him and- Yeah he, he's like, "Oh, you've had a, an encounter." Yeah. Okay. Well, okay, you can, you can go.

Reegs: So close to doing a ti- a title drop

Sidey: But yeah. And Gillian just manages to, like, escape- Yeah ... and hide behind a rock and watch. 'Cause then-

Reegs: Well, doesn't it... They come off the... They've got gas masks, they're on the helicopter, and they run away from it, don't they? Yeah. I think there's... Is there another guy with them as well?

Sidey: I think so, yeah.

Reegs: There's three of them, so, on the helicopters, and they're gonna bus everybody out. They're still sticking to the story, and the helicopter goes off. They run off, don't they? And then, as the helicopter goes off, they just take off all the gas masks, and they're like, "Obviously there is... It's all bullshit." Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. So we're g- building up towards the big reveal, I guess. Yeah. Because there's, there is this massive site. There's all kinds of fucking equipment there. And they're playing the tune. They're ready to, you know, "Nah, nah." Yeah. And I think that it's coordinated with a light show as well. Yeah. So then we do get some spacecraft arrive. It starts off with a couple of little ones, and they- Yeah ... fly around, do a little show. And it builds up, and you get a few bigger ones, and then y- you end up with the big

Dan: you get a few bigger ones, and then you, you end up with the big fucking- You get the mothership yeah. You

Reegs: get about 45 minutes of that, of the tune going backwards and forwards, and the craft sort of reacting and doing their own versions.

Sidey: really fucking loud.

Reegs: Yeah, loud enough to break all the glass.

Sidey: it's quite reckless, I thought.

Dan: for.

Reegs: but they realize they're being taught some sort of, you know, language, and this is how they're gonna communicate. Yeah. And like I say, it does go on for ages, but the, it climaxes with, like, just this moment of awe, really, as this thing comes out of the sky, this sort of city-sized-

Sidey: I think isn't it in

Dan: the,

Sidey: the, one of the special editions, director's cuts or whatever, there's an R2-D2 on the bottom of it

Reegs: Yeah. And a Volkswagen bus

Sidey: Oh, is there? There

Dan: also a shark with jaws. Is there? Oh, really? Yeah, they've got, Yeah, yeah. On the actual model you can go and see they've got yeah, little nods to all those kind of films. And,

Reegs: they had it at the BFI, I think,

Dan: George L- yeah, George, George Lucas he came in and he was making Star Wars

Sidey: year. Same, both '77,

Dan: it, yeah. About the same time ... the, the, the same time, and he came into the set and he was like, "Wow." And he was sure this was gonna be a massive hit, and his was gonna be a flop. And he agreed to, He said, "I'll tell you what. Give me 2.5% of this and you can have 2.5% of Star Wars." And he goes, "All right, yeah, okay." And this one made, like, 300 million. That made up, like, a billion or, or, you know, whatever. So, Spielberg come out trumps with that handshake. But yeah, there was on the model plane, and I think at one point as it goes up, there's an inverted R2-D2- Yeah ... you can see on the bottom- Yeah ... of of the ship as it goes away. But

Sidey: Well, first of all, it does, it does settle, you know,

Dan: Yeah, it settles

Sidey: and boots some freeloaders out- Yeah ... some passengers. A

Reegs: Passengers. So a bunch of people come off, like the airline pi- the,

Sidey: Pilots of Flight

Reegs: pilots that we saw, and the crew from the-

Sidey: Like you say, they've not aged.

Reegs: No, they've not aged, and they're

Sidey: just reading- Fairly disorientated, I'd imagine.

Reegs: the moment ... I know. And they're just reading out their names and, like-

Sidey: Yeah

Reegs: Yeah ... over the tannoy, which I thought was really weird, 'cause... Anyway,

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: They did that in what was the, Oh, the- Cl- the other one is, like, in a silver bullet,

Sidey: of the Navigator?

Dan: Flight of the Navigator. He goes back to the same p- time period, doesn't he? Because he's gotta go back before he's abducted, so it's all kinda new to him. Although he would've been... If they'd been delivered at that time that he should've been, it was, like, 25 years into the future, but they had to run him through-

Reegs: doesn't he, at the beginning of the movie- Yeah and

Dan: trips a- and he's, they've got to put him back. They say, "Oh, your, your little feeble body won't be able to take that kind of, then he goes, "Look, I can't go back after my parents have already, you know, got old and my brother's, my younger brother's older than me. I need to go back at that time." So we know aliens have that technology, Rigs,

Reegs: do.

Dan: saying.

Reegs: Yeah, it's a true story. So they come off Barry Chuckle comes off. So the kids reunited. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah, so that she gets her happy ending.

Reegs: Yeah. And they've already had a big kiss as well, Roy and Harry. They've only known each

Sidey: I think he fingered her.

Reegs: think he fingered her, yeah, I think you're right.

Sidey: Now he needs to go ... He needs somebody to wash his hands, so he volunteers to go on board.

Reegs: go on board. They close it all up first, don't they, the aliens, and you're like, "Oh, right, is that it?" And then

Sidey: do see an alien, don't we?

Reegs: We see some ridiculous ones. The first one is that really spindly one. Yeah. It looks like

Dan: with the really long arms? Yeah. Yeah. And then there's another one that they made Pac, they called it, and that's the one that kind of looks like... And he's, he's meant to be based on the little boy's face. But actually Spielberg looked at that and he goes, "I wonder if that little guy never got back on the ship." And that was the basis of him thinking about making E.T. as well,

Reegs: Ah ... you

Dan: coming, you know, five years later he, he'd made E.T. But yeah,

Reegs: so the spindly guy comes out and then there's a whole gaggle of, like, basically toddlers dressed in,

Sidey: he do the hand signal as the-

Reegs: yeah, which is related to the tonal vocabulary that they've already established. And he does it back to him, doesn't he? Yeah. It's li- a bit like Rimmer's salute in,

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: Red Dwarf. And then, yeah, so then Roy just fucks his kids and wife off,

Dan: He's not thinking straight, is he? I mean, we, we, we know for a little while- Something's happened

Reegs: to them

Sidey: have to go though, wouldn't you?

Reegs: Yeah. You see- I think a phone call first, but-

Sidey: Yeah, just, well, he could text

Dan: You can't pick up... It's, you know, didn't have an iPhone then. He couldn't just call up the ph- he's just gotta go with it. And you imagine that the telecommunications is a little bit defunct at the time because, And

Sidey: be the same age when he comes back, so it's fine.

Dan: It'll be fine. It'll be fine. He gets on, and it's a mystery what's on the ship unless you watch the alternate ending and the,

Reegs: you s- and what do you see? ... the

Dan: a 1980s... I think they re-released it. But to re-release it, they said, "Look, you're gonna have to..." So they shot the inside of the, Did they really? Yeah. I've never seen

Reegs: seen

Dan: Yeah. It's on the DVD, like extra release one that they put out five

Reegs: they put out a few years ago. And what, a-and you, what does it look like? Is it...

Dan: Lots of lights Like a

Sidey: a 1970s version of the future probably. No. Yeah. Like, like the

Dan: lots of- The Expo Center ... lots of lights and sort of, you know,

Sidey: know, We'll have a look maybe after- ... spectacular ... see if we can find it.

Dan: But he just... You see him go in, in, you know, in his in his kind of clothes. Didn't know

Reegs: That's, and also that's the, the other movie that we're reviewing this week has two endings as well. So there you go. Mm.

Dan: Mm.

Sidey: You- Double ending ... you mentioned a potential box office target, Dan, and you were fucking nearly bang on. This was made for, let's say, $20 million. And it did take, it took 306 million. You said 300,

Dan: Yeah. Right. Okay. Well, that's, that's, that's what good guessing and research does. Yeah, it, it's, That's a huge return, isn't it? Yeah.

Sidey: bigger than that. And also, you know something's good when it becomes absorbed in so many other cultural, so many references around other things. Yeah. I mean-

Dan: This kind of- S-

Sidey: Simpsons references. Do you remember in Moonraker, James Bond, the key- Yeah ... key pad to one of the rooms is the, and they had to get permission to use the-

Reegs: that tone. Yeah.

Dan: And the, the, the you know, just the, the genre of sci-fi- Mm ... was meeting the special effects that were possible with the directors that could do... And it suddenly really just pushed it. I mean, we'd had

Sidey: It doesn't do-

Dan: so much ... alien films and space- So many visual

Sidey: obviously alien intelligence, space travel as ambitious that dates it really badly. Yeah. So the, the ship is obviously bits of, it's like, you know, like the same thing they would've done for Star Wars, model kits and whatever.

Reegs: whatever. No there was all kinds of crazy shit though, wasn't it? One of them was a gas mask. One of

Sidey: But what I mean is it's not, it's not like shitty CGI. Oh,

Reegs: yeah. No, it's practical,

Sidey: No, it is practical, yeah. So it just, it hasn't aged poorly. I think it stands up. It

Dan: it s- stands up pretty well. They do stand up better, practical effects than the- Yeah ... the CGI ones.

Reegs: And it's Spielberg as well, man, so. It was quite interesting to watch this reasonably closely to watching Disclosure Day.

Sidey: Oh, have you seen it? Yeah. Okay.

Reegs: is- Oh, I haven't seen this. I have seen that,

Sidey: What'd you think?

Reegs: I thought it was quite good. It's Steven Spielberg, so it's always really, you know, good. But

Dan: It's got a level

Reegs: it's, I wouldn't say rush out and watch it for, for most people, but it was just interesting because that's... This one's quite a hopeful version in some ways- Yeah ... of what might an alien encounter might be like, and the government's reaction to it. And Disclosure Day is a little bit more cynical in that it's mostly about emergent technology and h- how it shouldn't be necessarily being used for profit and warfare. Right. And and that empathy is the power to, to kind of get through all that, which is a bit more of a message for our time. So it was interesting to compare those two things together, maybe the optimistic Spielberg of his youth and the slightly more cynical one now. But yeah, this was really good. I did

Dan: But yeah, this was- S- s- somebody put it to Spielberg afterwards, and he didn't even realize that he was doing it. But I think his mum was... His mum and dad divorced when they-- he was quite young Spielberg, as you know, in The Fabelmans and- Yeah and things like that. But they... I think he worked in computers, and his mum was- Yes ... a teacher or she was another academic, and basically they, the way that... Or music, I

Reegs: was, yeah. The, the, the way it's painted in The Fabelmans is he's the engineer and she's the artist,

Dan: the artist. And then the way that they were able to communicate was through the computer and through music in this. Yeah. Like, you know, and he was saying- Yeah ... "I don't even know. I've actually,

Sidey: like-

Dan: you know, if that was just such a deep-set kind of,

Reegs: well, it's stuff that he comes back to time and time again in his work. Yeah. It always has fragmented families, and fathers who are struggling, and that sort of thing, so. And that relationship between the engineer and the artist, like you were saying, so. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. I think

Sidey: we can put Roy Neary in a definite bad dad category. Yes,

Reegs: I agree

Sidey: the-

Dan: I don't He's... Let's be honest, his mind has been- Mind altered ... altered. Yeah. It, it's it's easily done through-

Sidey: pass then.

Dan: Yeah, I think so. I think he's not a terrible dad. I

Reegs: fairly, like, rocky at the beginning. There's that weird stuff. He's, like, almost fucking manic when he's talking about going to the cinema to see Pinocchio with them. Do you

Dan: Again, Pinocchio's another one that goes through this as a, as a theme, like-

Reegs: Oh, well, there's all the religious stuff as well- Yeah because the, it looks like Mount Sinai basically, and, you know, the alien's a god, and obviously he's Moses. And the, the Ten Commandments is even playing at one point in the background on the telly, so- Right ... there's that all going on as well. But yeah, it's interesting.

Sidey: It's a strong recommend, is what it is.

Reegs: is a strong recommend.

Dan: 1977, so that's nearly 50 years old it's an incredible film to be still, still today, you know? As you say, the, the story holds up. The, the special effects still strong enough and certainly don't detract from the fi- the enjoyment of, of watching it. And I love these kind of films anyway.

Reegs: And what about aliens? Yes or no? Into them?

Dan: Into them? Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: Where are they? That's what I would say. Where are they?

Dan: This is

Sidey: vast distances, isn't it?

Dan: it? Yeah.

Reegs: Could be too big. Yeah. Could just be too big, the

Dan: big. It, it might, it may be that they're, they're here. I mean, if I was an alien, I'd probably be- In here ... like the Abyss, you know? You'd be under the water because we're two thirds water, this planet. And we haven't really even explored that,

Sidey: so. There was some discovery of a planet with atmosphere the other day, wasn't there? A couple of weeks ago. Ooh,

Reegs: Ooh, that's interesting.

Sidey: it was, like-

Reegs: We should build a data center there.

Sidey: Yeah. Leave it to Elon. Anyway one, two, strong recommend. Dan?

Dan: A third. Yeah, unanimous. A third encounter