MISSING SCENES: Roy Neary Turns Into Alien
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Close Encounters of the Third Kind
prisoner-7 — 9 years ago(September 26, 2016 11:40 PM)
Okay so I'm trying to understand why the original release of this film clearly shows Roy walk into the mother ship, and see all the aliens living on board, and then a shower of "energy" washes over him and he is turned into the short alien you see at the end of the movie. This is how we know what happened to Roy and why he was chosen. He becomes the first human to literally experience what it's like to be an alien.
And this whole sequence is MISSING from all subsequent releases of the movie! Why??? Did they think it was too confusing for audiences to understand? -
a_l_i_e_n — 9 years ago(September 27, 2016 09:53 AM)
And this whole sequence is MISSING from all subsequent releases of the movie! Why??? Did they think it was too confusing for audiences to understand?
The scene you're referring to is from the 1980 "Special Edition". The first cut of the film (released in 1977) ends with Roy boarding the Mothership, followed by the moment where the alien shares sign language gestures with Lacombe before also retreating into the ship which then departs. The scenes of the Mothership's interior (added for the 1980 re-release) definitely gave some the unintended impression that Roy had been transformed into one of the extraterrestrials, but the original version makes it clear that Roy is not the tiny alien communicating with the French scientist character.