“Eerie encounter of the third species”

Rolling Stone presents: The most overestimated films ever. In our series we present works that are good, but not as good as most critics find (“Fitzcarraldaldo”); Works that are less clever than expected (“Blade Runner”); As well as works that just hurt (“True Romance”).

Eerie encounter of the third species (Steven Spielberg, 1977)

In his most personal, but also unappealing film to this day, Steven Spielberg tells the story of a addict. Electrician Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) has an encounter with a UFO and has been fixed since then. He has to see the flying saucer again, he neglects the family and, after a vision, produces a huge cardboard pattern phallus in the hobby cellar, a miniature version of the Devils Tower, a mountain worshiped by Indians. As it turns out, which in turn was chosen by the extraterrestrials to the landing platform.

Neary sets off, there is a reception committee on the plateau, and at the end of the film he climbs into the spaceship to the possibly friendly aliens. Neary confidently smiles at the shocked bereaved, the man may not return from his room trip.

Just like him, people would behave blindly of a religion. The film rewards this blindness. Neary remains one -dimensional because he had to experience no doubt over the course of his trip and the “eerie encounter of the third species” is never questioned by him.

The self -centered and uncritical behavior of the dependent neal brought the young Steven Spielberg astonishingly little criticism at the time, even if the director endeavored in interviews by moving to himself from the main character. But it is not just this addiction itself that remains inexplicable to the viewer until the end of the film. For the first and perhaps only time, Spielberg suffers shipwreck in the most important, last act. The huge mother ship of the little UFOs and the aliens, which can be seen for the first time, do not solve the promise that the advanced tension may have done.

The UFO is not worth a trip

In 1977 it was not only the year of “Close Encounters”, it was also the year of “Star Wars”, And even in the B films of the SCI-Fi genre of the 1950s, more happened than here. Aliens and people in the cinema already offered amazing types of interactions, warish or peaceful, here it remains rigidly with mutual fascination, a fascination that does not transmit to the viewer. The saucer appears over people’s minds, it flashes and turns like a chain carousel. The extraterrestrials get out, get Neary, and to John Williams’ room waltz, the UFO flaps into the credits through space. Is that a romantic end? Possibly. Does the end have the necessary punch? Hardly. From year to year, the strip even looks more and more old fashionable.

The matter also didn’t get better when Steven Spielberg, who had worked on various cuts, had the “Special Edition” published in 1980 with the words: “See for the first time what happens in the spaceship”. We see it in it: a flashing road system full of mini spaceships that are amazed at Roy Neary-at least until it can be drizzled by a kind of UFO dust. The highlight of an interstellar journey? I would not rise in any UFO of the universe.