Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Revealing mistake: When the UN team arrives in the Gobi desert, there's one shot where the helicopters and trucks are parked. They're supposed to be moving, but you can tell from the way the flags are moving that the wind is only coming from the helicopters.

Dr Wilson

Revealing mistake: In the scene where Ronnie cuts out a newspaper article about the UFO sightings, the night after Roy's first glimpse of the UFOs, two identical articles on Star Wars (1977) are on either side of the UFO article.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: The articles aren't identical, they are continuous. I read them. Only the title, "wars" is identical.

Revealing mistake: The morning after Ronnie and Roy's big fight, Roy starts cleaning up his clay "sculpture." Before he pulls its upper portion off, you can see the pre-made seam (which is poorly disguised by the clay) where the top is attached to the bottom. When he tears it off, the lower portion is perfectly smooth and flat on top (simulating Devil's Tower) where it was obviously pre-cut.

raywest

Revealing mistake: When the gigantic mother ship appears and sweeps over the rendezvous base at Devil's Tower, the camera cuts to look straight up at the advancing craft as it blocks out the starry night sky. Watch carefully to see some stars passing right through the leading edge of the mother ship, revealing a flaw in the traveling matte effect.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: The huge UFO opens its door and a brilliant light comes out, but from the opposite angle, the reflection on the people's glasses is a black landscape and a tiny spot of light.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: The film starts in Muncie Indiana. There is a scene in the hills near the town. There are NO hills near Muncie, it's flat as a board. (00:24:30)

More mistakes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind

David Laughlin: We didn't choose this place! We didn't choose these people! They were invited!
Claude Lacombe: They belong here more than we.

More quotes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Trivia: The aliens that come out of the ship at the end of the movie were played by 7 year old girls and the scene had to keep being re-shot because their fake alien heads weighed 5 pounds each.

Leonard Hassen

More trivia for Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Question: Why were the aliens abducting people and why did they bring them back?

Answer: It wasn't definitively answered, but it appears the aliens took people in order to learn more about humans. It's unclear if all those who were returned had originally gone willingly, but the intent was not to keep them indefinitely or harm them, and they were returned to Earth, albeit many decades later. At the end, after the aliens had made contact, a new group of humans, including Roy, went with them voluntarily.

raywest

More questions & answers from Close Encounters of the Third Kind

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