Stop and be friendly

August 26, 2017 10:32 AM

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 movie, written and directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Julia Philips and Michael Philips. The story concerns UFO sightings and encounters, alien abductions, a large mothership, and... It starred Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, François Truffaut, Cary Guffey and Richard Dreyfuss, with a cameo by Jerry Garcia. A digitally remastered 4K version will be shown briefly in the US in September (in the UK on the 19th for a day, other countries from the 15th); here is arguably the best place to watch it. [Lights up, and post title]

At the 50th academy awards, the movie was nominated in eight categories but picked up only two awards (Best Cinematography for Vilmos Zsigmond and a special achievement award for Best Sounds Effects Editing for Frank E. Warner). Annie Hall won several of the other Oscars, while Richard Dreyfuss won Best Actor, though for a different movie.

Trailers
* Long 1977 film background trailer.
* A 1977 TV spot.
* The Special Edition Theatrical Trailer (does not contain scenes from inside the mothership).

The air traffic control scene (alternative link).

The five tone motif
The simple tune (midi, YouTube) which recurs through the film (broadcast, India scenes) is relatively easy to play and is part of popular culture (cat food ad, James Bond, Family Guy). The tune was played on an ARP 2500 synthesizer. Each note is accompanied by a Curwen hand sign.

Deleted scene: Air East 31 is met on the ramp by "agents" after a close encounter of the second kind at 35,000 feet over Indianapolis.

Devils Tower
The distinctive rock formation recently known as Devils Tower (also Bear Lodge Butte), 265 metres from base to summit, was the first declared United States National Monument, established on September 24, 1906, by President Theodore Roosevelt. It stands in northeastern Wyoming and is sacred to American Indians (more and respecting).

The abduction of Barry Guiler. The child actor, Cary Guffey, is reacting to a gorilla and a clown at one point.

Miscellaneous
* The term “third kind”, meaning physical contact with extraterrestrials, comes from J. Allen Hynek’s book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry - some background.
* When the mothership arrives at Devils Tower, an upside down character - from a minor sci-fi film released in the same year - can be seen on the rim of the vessel.
* Spielberg's pet cocker spaniel Elmer appeared in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws and several more of his films.
* Spielberg interviewed 30 years after the film (part 1, part 2).

posted by Wordshore (59 comments total)

from a minor sci-fi film released in the same year

The director of this film had a bet with the director of that film over which one would be more successful. Each agreed to pay the other 2.5% of the net profits of their films.
posted by radwolf76 at 10:39 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

This means something
posted by y2karl at 10:47 AM on August 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

As a 10 year old in 1977, this film was seriously huge. As a 30 year old in 1997, I realized that Man, Roy treated his family like shit. Turns out it's a Spielberg flaw that he just doesn't get the Happy Family dynamic.
posted by mikelieman at 10:48 AM on August 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

The director of this film had a bet with the director of that film over which one would be more successful.

The one with Ter Garr, obviously.
posted by y2karl at 10:50 AM on August 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

In a just world.
posted by y2karl at 10:51 AM on August 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

The abduction scene spooked and thrilled me. I was 10.
posted by doctornemo at 10:52 AM on August 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

The abduction scene spooked and thrilled me.

Same. I was 8. The scene with the screws turning was the occasional stuff of nightmares for years afterwards.
posted by Wordshore at 10:56 AM on August 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

François Truffaut: "Look at this." shows him drawing of Devil's Tower.
Richard Dreyfuss: "Yea, I've got one just like it in my living room."

Best line in the movie.
posted by Marky at 11:04 AM on August 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

Gotta build a mountain in your living room.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:11 AM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

The scene with the screws turning was the occasional stuff of nightmares for years afterwards.

I always check my stovetop burners before leaving my apartment because of that movie.
posted by y2karl at 11:12 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Turns out it's a Spielberg flaw that he just doesn't get the Happy Family dynamic.

The rows of awestruck faces staring in the same direction dynamic, on the other hand...
posted by y2karl at 11:15 AM on August 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

What I found interesting is that despite the title, from Hynek's book, the film turned away from the "nuts and bolts" Flying Saucers from Outer Space theory of UFOs towards the non-Extraterrestrial Hypothesis approach championed by Jacques Vallée and other writers. (The character Lacombe is modeled on Vallée.) Hence the gallimaufry of UFOs and the incomprehensible behavior of the visitors. Quite a daring departure from the expectations of the audience.
posted by SPrintF at 11:17 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Saw it again last year as a prelude to watching Midnight Special and while I have quite a few issues with the screenplay now as an adult it's still a heck of a movie. There are a lot of things I could say that I don't have time for right now but I want to say how blown away I was by John Williams' score for this. It might be my favorite of his and that's a tough choice given how much amazing work he was doing around that time.
posted by octothorpe at 11:22 AM on August 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

As a 30 year old in 1997, I realized that Man, Roy treated his family like shit.

You have to wonder about his family after the film. Dad goes crazy, and then he disappears. Nothing is ever heard of from him again. Or worse- the house gets swarmed by Federal agents and all assets are seized. The government gives contradictory answers, and the family lives in poverty, while constantly being watched: clicks on the phone, stuff like that.

You could do an interesting story from the kids perspective- a good childhood turned into a nightmare, years of struggle to put it behind them. Eventually mom dies, and the kids make peace with their life....then 40 years later, dad shows up again, the same age as he was when he left.
posted by happyroach at 11:30 AM on August 26, 2017 [34 favorites]

Saw it again last year as a prelude to watching Midnight Special and while I have quite a few issues with the screenplay now as an adult it's still a heck of a movie.

Me too. I probably hadn't seen it since it was in theaters when I watched it a couple years ago and man, the movie just moves. From a pure technique standpoint, there's really not a dull moment.
posted by rhizome at 11:34 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Saw it in the theater at 15. Loved it.

Saw it for the second time last year. Still loved it.
posted by freakazoid at 12:17 PM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

My mom is an extra in the train station scene!
posted by RolandOfEld at 12:19 PM on August 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

I cannot believe I am seeing Cary Guffey's name again. We went to the same elementary school. People in Douglasville did not know what to make of his fame; I don't remember much about him, but I do remember someone talking to me and *whispering* his name because he was famous and possibly entering the room. I, however, wasn't allowed to see the scary movie he was in at that time -- my parents thought I was too young.

Now that I think of it, how the heck did a kid from Douglasville wind up in a that movie? I am perplexed.
posted by amtho at 12:28 PM on August 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

Bob Balaban has a great little speech towards the end that I wish I could find on YouTube.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 12:32 PM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Somewhere I still have a 45 of the disco verson of the Close Encounters theme.
posted by mogget at 12:34 PM on August 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

Cary Guffey was recently on the I Was There Too podcast.
posted by cazoo at 12:34 PM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Now that I think of it, how the heck did a kid from Douglasville wind up in a that movie? I am perplexed.

Weirdly from PNC Bank's website:

As a preschooler in Douglasville, Ga., Guffey was classmates with the niece of the Close Encounters casting director Shari Rhodes. As Guffey tells it, the casting director spotted him one day in the classroom and said, “That’s him – the kid I want for the role.”

posted by octothorpe at 12:35 PM on August 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Bob Balaban has a great little speech towards the end that I wish I could find on YouTube.

He also got to cap off the Weird 70s with some of the best lines in Altered States.
posted by mubba at 12:41 PM on August 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

I really love this movie. One of my favorite things about it, is something that I wish I could see more often these days: not everything is explained. It doesn't talk at you all the time, heaping on the "as you know, Bob" or making the characters repeat the scene objective aloud a lot because they don't think you're paying attention. Close Encounters has scenes with room in them, room to breathe, room to have silence or to have the dialogue not be explanatory. Room to have the hand gestures be important and even moving at the end, while never telling us specifically what they are/what they mean.

I also like that Roy's not a great husband & father (while also not being a cartoonishly abusive one). I like having more texture to the characters and situations, where no one is all good or all bad. It's like the role of the US government in the story as well--the government cover up is very ominous and frightening, the dead animals, the evacuees herded and scared and tranqued; but the group of people meeting the aliens are peaceful and hopeful and knowledgeable and open. The movie contains multitudes, and doesn't try to tip the scales one way or the other into something flat and predictable.

I think Barry's storyline is a good microcosm of that: the abduction is really scary, relentless, chaotic, terrorizing to Jillian--but, Barry himself is not scared, and he comes back fine and happy (and sad to see the ship leave). Both of those aspects of the story are true, and erasing either one would remove a lot of the movie's depth.
posted by theatro at 12:59 PM on August 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

FWIW, there really is a Cornbread Road in Muncie, IN. No large hills or toll plazas, though.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:04 PM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I first saw this in the base theater at Andrews Barracks in Berlin, in late 77 or early 78. The abduction scene with Melinda Dillon's terror and the innocence of Cary Guffey made my skin crawl- I was seriously kind of mindfucked by that whole thing.

It still holds up for me, modulo the horrible geographic errors (Tunnels in Indiana? Really?). I too, wish for a sequel of some kind. Maybe the family tells the story of how Grandpa was abducted by the Aliens back in '77, and was never seen again. So one day this stranger shows up....
posted by pjern at 1:21 PM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I saw that film in a theater in Caracas, Venezuela, just a few years after this experience.

The entire family stayed up that night, talking about the movie until sunrise.

Trivia: the Truffaut character is based on Jacques Vallee, who served as a consultant on the project. J. Allen Hynek also has a cameo as one of the workers staring up at the mothership in awe during the end sequence.
posted by dbiedny at 1:57 PM on August 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

I had an extremely startling prophetic dream in late July of 1974, perhaps my very first one.
posted by jamjam at 2:40 PM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Altered States: haven't seen that for years. I wonder how it holds up.
posted by doctornemo at 2:45 PM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

According to Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt, Vilmos Zsigmond, cinematographer on Close Encounters, also worked (apparently uncredited), on The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies, covered on MST3K episode 812. I don't know if this is true (I mentioned it as such on the MST Fanfare page but now I'm unsure), but he worked on a lot of movies early in his career, possibly to make ends meet as an immigrant from Hungary.
posted by JHarris at 3:11 PM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I saw both "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters" at the time and liked both, but thought "Close Encounters" was the better movie (that soundtrack!). I guess it's time to see it again.
posted by acrasis at 3:13 PM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I won a ticket on the local radio station to go and see this; I was 13, a regular call-in competitor, and this was my major source of cinema tickets (and LPs; I had a large collection of really bad 'NOT FOR RESALE' promo records...).

Blew. Me. Away. When I got home, I picked out the five note theme on the piano in my father's study, and was instantly too terrified to look behind me out of the window overlooking the garden, because I was SURE that I'd just summoned an alien ship that was even now hovering just behind the honeysuckle. (I hadn't.)

I only recently learned what in retrospect was very obvious, that a lot of the SFX were reused in Blade Runner - all those swooping little flying lightships, for example. And so many of the effects were so memorable - my friends and I referred to certain weather conditions as 'Spielberg clouds' for some time afterwards (sorry, Douglas, we were young and didn't know... but I've watched all your online lectures in penance and joy). But it was the relentless drumbeat of new scenes - the opening ATC/returned ghost flight, the 'wave the truck past oops it's going up' shot that had the cinema in hysterics, the abduction scene (OMG) - that really got me.

I've rewatched it a couple of times since, and I've been a bit puzzled by some lines I remember from the version I saw in the cinema that weren't there on subsequent viewings - there's a "No CBs" line when the trucks are preparing to haul the gear out to the final encounter, and 'The only gas here is you guys farting around' just after the caged birds are knocked out, so I don't know what I've been watching. I did once try the extended 'Inside the Mothership' version, but that was so pointless that I forget.

Also, TIL that Jerry Garcia was in this movie. So, thanks Metafilter! Thanks, Wordshore!
posted by Devonian at 3:16 PM on August 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

There's at least three different versions of CE3K and I'm not sure that any of the currently available ones are the original theatrical cut.
posted by octothorpe at 4:01 PM on August 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

So, would you have gone away with the aliens? A surprising amount of people I know would (mostly with close family).
posted by antiwiggle at 4:16 PM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I saw it for the first time many months after it premiered, but I was somewhat jaded by an Isaac Asimov review I had previously read, noting at least two of these things that I still remember him complaining about:
• In the abduction scene, the aliens were able to turn on electronic toys and unscrew screws. but they were unable to turn the knob on a deadbolt to unlock a door?
• The pilots from Flight 19 that appear unaged when leaving the UFO; what exactly were the aliens doing with them? If they hadn't aged it means the aliens were flying around near the speed of light, slowing the passage of time. Which also meant that the aliens hadn't had any time to study them.

In general I remember Asimov's review complained about a number of dramatic events that made no sense when you gave it any thought (hmm... something like this Vox article about 27 things that didn’t make sense about Game of Thrones’ White Walker battle in “Beyond the Wall”)

My memory of is was being in a monthly magazine with "Science" in the title, printed on pulp paper in a small digest format. And with a little google-fu, it was in the February 1978 edition (Volume 83) of "Science Digest". Unfortunately, Google Books is only showing tiny portions of it, with the best transcription I can get being:

how receive the vague impression that they must pain, sculpt, or otherwise produce a peculiar object which is actually the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Our hero (if I may call him that) tries to build it out of bedclothes, mashed potatoes, and so on. He finally goes about it in so an insane a way that his family very ra-…
...latitude and longitude give the location of Devil’s Tower.
If extraterrestrials can influence minds and emotions, why not do so efficiently? Why not just send their quarry to to the Devil’s Tower instead of forcing them to draw pictures and model it out of mashed potatoes to no avail? If they can’t do efficiently, why bother since...
posted by ShooBoo at 5:29 PM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I only saw this once at some young age and reading the above, the movie I rememeber is much different. I remember the mountain, and a wordless pull to replicate and find it (with lots of aimless driving scenes in the vein of Manos: The Hands of Fate), and the notes, and the alien ship only briefly at the end. But none of the other stuff, nothing inside the ship, no aliens, no tunnels, no abductions.

That movie I misremember was a hell of a trip. Wonder if I should watch it again.
posted by joeyh at 7:30 PM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Roy's family were pretty horrible. He was basically traumatized by his first encounter, struggles to make sense of the impulses implanted in him by the aliens, tries to reach out to Ronnie who rebuffs him and leaves with the kids.
posted by um at 7:47 PM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

If extraterrestrials can influence minds and emotions, why not do so efficiently? Why not just send their quarry to to the Devil’s Tower instead of forcing them to draw pictures and model it out of mashed potatoes to no avail? If they can’t do efficiently, why bother since...

I get the fun of nit picking plot points and the like in tv shows and movies. It's enjoyable to find flaws of logic or fact and ask questions of the characters or show because of that, but it really does miss the point in any relatively decent work of fiction, even more so perhaps in one so clearly fantastic as this one.

Picking apart the logic of the movie makes best sense in trying to find why something doesn't work, in this case, the movie, according to me and many, many others works well, so the more useful activity would be to ask why it does work rather than seeking ways it shouldn't.

For the quoted example, I guess I might ask why the God of the bible felt it necessary to test humans so, even to the point, if one is Christian, of sending Himself in surrogate human form down to be tormented and killed. Surely an all powerful entity could have just made humans complaint to his wishes or sent clear proof to each and every one of us of His existence and laid bare His plans. That He didn't is used by atheists as a kind of gotcha moment, which is fair enough if one wants to argue the logic of Supreme beings from our human perspective, but makes little sense in a more literary critique of the bible and how it "works".

In Close Encounters then, one can question the logic of fictional alien beings in the implausible scenario presented, but the point is dulled by the effect of the film and the actions presented. Roy getting a clear message and road map may be more logical under some set of imagined rules, but the movie stops working if he does. The tension is gone, his involvement becomes routine, and the mystery largely vanishes. That the aliens, echo the bible in calling Roy to the mountain has dramatic and metaphoric purpose, even if it is doesn't have an explicitly clear single "message" connected to it. It's the resonance of the echo and the involvement in, along with Roy, figuring out what it all might suggest that makes the movie work as it does. It's a question about belief, not facts, in this way.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:06 PM on August 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

what exactly were the aliens doing with them?

Obviously they eaten them a long time ago, but not before storing copies of them in the pattern buffers, and then recreating them using the Heisenberg Compensators just in time for them to dis-embark. They were the apertif for a meal that day, but then the ETs decided they were just too bored eating the same chow and decided to leave their menu items behind because they just'd just got a whole new range of spicy novelties to snack on,
posted by meehawl at 8:15 PM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

So which version is being re-released? (I have the Criterion Laserdisc of the theatrical version and you don't).
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 8:33 PM on August 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

The thing that always messed with me is the volunteers getting last rites before going out to meet the aliens. It just seemed so malevolent.

P.S. Outstanding post, Wordshore. Thanks.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:05 PM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

9 year old me was all hey, obviously, the answer is join the Air Force and be Colonel or something, because when the aliens come, only the Air Force Colonels and above will be in on it. You don't want to be mashed potatoes guy.
posted by notyou at 10:39 PM on August 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

To the dismay of my family, not a Thanksgiving goes by that I don't shape my mashed potatoes into a small mountain and say, "This is important. This means something."

I also cry when I hear the notes. I have no idea why this movie affects me so much.
posted by greermahoney at 11:01 PM on August 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

So, would you have gone away with the aliens?

Abso-fucking-lutely. Can I bring my cat? I mean, I guess I'd leave her behind if I had to, but I'd rather not.
posted by greermahoney at 11:05 PM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Love CE3K, always have.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:45 AM on August 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

which is fair enough if one wants to argue the logic of Supreme beings from our human perspective,

This, in every way. I know why people do it, but analyzing non human behavior by comparing to human behavior makes no sense. I mean humans don't even act like humans half the time!
posted by Literaryhero at 1:09 AM on August 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Oh and Close Encounters is one of my favorite movies, I don't feel the need to pick it apart. The movie just works for me.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:10 AM on August 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

So, would you have gone away with the aliens? A surprising amount of people I know would (mostly with close family).

!!! The chance to meet and communicate with non-humans, and learn about their technologies and worlds, and travel with them and see the universe? Compared to {makes wavey hand signs in direction of people, social media, politics, the general state of things caused by the failings of humanity}? I'm running up the ramp into the mothership, pushing others out the way, while I type this...
posted by Wordshore at 1:26 AM on August 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Saw it in one of those big cinemas on the Champs-Elysées when it came out. Lasting memory? The audience erupting in patriotic cheer and applause when François Truffaut cracked some code or other.
posted by Mister Bijou at 1:54 AM on August 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

The whole theme of 'would you go with the aliens and leave your family?' has curious resonances with the experience of many in NASA in the 1960s - not just the astronauts, who clearly were going into space with a considerable chance of not coming back, but the engineers, ops, managers, etc, who might as well have gone to Alpha Centauri for all their families saw them. The divorce rate was stupendous.

I have no idea whether that actually inspired aspects of the script, but it was in the air at the time.
posted by Devonian at 5:22 AM on August 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

My answer to this question has always been yes, and it has a lot to do with this movie. And 2001. And, well, Koyaanisqatsi because counterpoint.
posted by loquacious at 10:10 AM on August 27, 2017

And there isn't really anything noble about answering yes to this question. It really means you might just be a selfish and unreliable jerk. And, honestly, any ETs that asked another sentient life to abandon their families and social fabrics without saying goodbye or making arrangements are probably jerks, too.
posted by loquacious at 10:14 AM on August 27, 2017

Yeah, but nature takes a lot of people away from their families like that too. As does war, as do the despot's secret police. I made peace a while back with the idea that when I think a separation from my loved ones is temporary, the universe has a veto.

So yes, it may be a jerk thing to do, and I most certainly can be that bastard sometimes (not often, deo volente), and I would do it like a shot, but it's not outwith the normal outrageous slings and/or arrows.

Because what wouldn't I sacrifice to see those great mysteries?
posted by Devonian at 10:37 AM on August 27, 2017

Counterpoint: don't get on the mothership. Watch others get on. Watch it fly off into the night sky and the universe beyond. Spend the rest of your life, which now seems less fun, exciting, rewarding in comparison, consumed by regret, and wondering "What if?" Probably say that as the last thing you ever say on your deathbed.
posted by Wordshore at 11:22 AM on August 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Have you all forgotten that To Serve Man is a cookbook?
posted by ShooBoo at 9:18 PM on August 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Here's a contrary question: You're a Neanderthal hunter, making a decent living in the paleolithic. Some 20th century humans give you the opportunity leave everyone you know behind, and come live in 20th century New York.

Of course since this is an Outside Context Problem, you don't even have the right vocabulary to ask what they are going to do, whether you are going to live in the Bronx Zoo, or be a subject for genetic and cognitive testing at Columbia U, or just set free to wander the streets- and how long will you live in that case?

Of course it's also worth pointing out that the Neanderthals probably don't have much choice as to whethr they offer up some of their tribe to the moderns. Just as the Humans in CE3K probably don't have much choice about their offerings.

If extraterrestrials can influence minds and emotions, why not do so efficiently? Why not just send their quarry to to the Devil’s Tower instead of forcing them to draw pictures and model it out of mashed potatoes to no avail?

Two answers:
One, they can't communicate with humans more effectively. In which case, the offerings are fucked.
Two, Why don't psychologists just give the rats the cheese, instead of doing experiments? In which case, the offerings are fucked.

In the abduction scene, the aliens were able to turn on electronic toys and unscrew screws. but they were unable to turn the knob on a deadbolt to unlock a door?

Obviously the aliens were playing games. Or maybe they're just used to doors that dialate.

The pilots from Flight 19 that appear unaged when leaving the UFO; what exactly were the aliens doing with them? If they hadn't aged it means the aliens were flying around near the speed of light, slowing the passage of time. Which also meant that the aliens hadn't had any time to study them.

People don't age in fairyland.
posted by happyroach at 9:55 PM on August 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Close Encounters is my favorite movie of all time. It absolutely nails the sense of first contact in a way that would not be equaled until Arrival.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 6:57 AM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Put me in the "It terrified the crap out of me because I was too young for it" category. Also, I'm someone who is big on plots and not so big on special effects; even at the end, at eight years old, when I was able to start breathing again, I was like, that's IT? He just goes into the ship, that's all that happens? All that suffering for ... he leaves his family? Ah well, different strokes for different folks.
posted by Melismata at 8:09 AM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also as an 11-year old in '77, I found this movie to be scary, beautiful and more way more adult than my other main sci-fi love, "Star Wars." The relationships are difficult, and the government shouldn't be trusted.

My absolute favorite scene is the air traffic controller. So much to love.

Watching this movie now, it feels so ancient in that there isn't immediate communication all over the globe. There are distant places where you have to pack in cameras and mics, and you can't punch up a map coordinate to get an instantaneous location.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 8:15 PM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]