Spielberg's Optimism: An Astronomer Reacts to Close Encounter and E.T.

It's the second installment of our Alienfest! And today we take in two of Steven Spielberg's most popular films: 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1982's mega-blockbuster E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial. Is this the way first contact might unfold? Do the scientists in both movies respond the way real scientists might? When the movies venture real science, do they get it right? Can E.T. still make curmudgeonly Doctor Mike cry after all this time? Let's find out.
Bookmarks:
00:00 - Introduction
2:27 - Flight 19
6:03 - Close Encounters
11:42 - An Alien Signal
16:05 - Photography
20:23 - Devil's Tower
23:13 - Musical Language
25:48 - Einstein Was Right
31:37 - Memories of E.T.
33:20 - About an Alien
39:03 - Phone Home
43:29 - Keys
45:54 - Death and Life
50:35 - Movie Review
54:05 - Some Science

[@IanM-id8or]

To this day, I cannot eat mashed potatoes without unconsciously shaping them to look like Devil's Tower, Wyoming

[@jayabramson6702]

I read the novelization of E.T. before I saw the movie, and while it took a lot, I was strong and didn’t shed a tear even with E.T. And Elliott saying goodbye. The next time I saw it and every time since, I blubbered like a child. And I’m not ashamed to say it. Even at 70 years old! Hell I even choked up while Mike was choking up talking about it😢

[@Ptaaruonn]

According to Star Wars the Phantom Menace the ET species is part of the Galactic Senate ;)

[@sciencecompliance235]

Yeah.. eff that.

[@toddhensley880]

28:03 OMG dude this part was so good. I haven’t heard anyone explain it quite like that!

[@LogistiQbunnik]

Happy to have cried together there! I think ET might have been the very first movie i ever saw in the theatre!

[@fredleggett923]

I've experienced dream paralysis, where you're lucid dreaming, but can't wake up. I've never experienced sleep paralysis, but if it's anything similar, it's damned terrifying. Close Encounters really messed with me when I first saw it. Spielberg had a tremendously effective edge back then that, IMO, he's since lost. To my young brain at the time, CE3K seemed horrifyingly real, injected with gobs of verisimilitude (looking at Robert Meyer Burnett). The lost squadron in the beginning without the pilots, the airline near-miss dramatized by real air traffic controllers, Roy's wild encounter on the road, the mass encounter in India revealing the "five tones", the police chase leading to the one cop launching off the road, the much-too realistic military evacuation based on a bogus gas leak story, driving to Devil's Tower past barriers and destroyed livestock, Barry's abduction - Spielberg kept throwing these terrifying sequences at the audience and could've EASILY turned the film into a genuine "Watch the Skies" horror film. Even E.T. has some really unnerving stuff, like the relentless chase of the feds and the alien faux-dying and almost taking Elliott with him. And John Williams' scores for both cannot be overstated, as they're masterpieces.

[@mattwuk]

20:23 I've watched this film many times over the decades, it's in my top 10 of all time, and this moment still sends a shiver up my spine every time.

[@pnwmeditations]

Both films are top-tier Spielberg for me. You're right about the scene between Elliot and Keys - you got me all choked up watching it again (in the best possible way!). And somehow it feels more and more resonant with age. And god ... Henry Thomas's audition tape for E.T. was astonishing. What an incredibly gifted child actor.

[@wightrrong4905]

I saw the movie ET in Finland (1982) at age of 12 with my friends, and I still remember how we (my friends and I) denied how strongly the movie effected on us emotionally. Hence thank you Michael for crying so that finally I'm allowed to cry too :)

[@bodan1196]

"ET phone home..." "ET puhelin kotiin..." fin "ET telefon do domu..." pol "ET teléfono a casa..." esp "ET telefono a casa..." ita "ET nach house telefonieren..." ger "ET téléphoner à la maison..." fra

[@mattwuk]

In Close Encounters, obviously to achieve the effect the truck was physically turned over but I never assumed the truck turned over and it was some weird gravity effect from the ship above.

[@davegaracci1043]

Yup - probably a graviton beam from thier phaser array ;)

[@user-ek2ll7ni7n]

This is one of the best videos I have seen. Both from the film review side and the science side. Spielberg get the details soo right.

[@goodheartmedia]

In Close Encounters the government storylines - and especially the air traffic control scenes - feel so real - almost like you are watching a documentary. Yet they merge with the Richard Dreyfus storyline so well. Spielberg is such a visionary. I also had the Bermuda Triangle board game! If I remember how it worked - it was a rotating cloud piece with magnets that would pick up your game pieces depending on how you moved it.

[@DirtyHairy1]

I absolutely can feel the emotions now when E.T. dies ;) But when I saw this in theater at the age of 6 (yes), I remember that I gave a shit about other kids crying. I was more interested in the skin texture of the alien :) I remember this because after the movie, my Mom was worried if she took me into a film that's too heavy for my age, and she was a bit shocked that I said that I was fine, but would have liked to see more of the space ship.

[@francoislacombe9071]

The one thing I like the best about those two movies is that they have no sequels, a state of affair Hollywood really should aim for more often.

[@Funnysterste]

One of the best channels on KZbin.

[@SaturnCanuck]

Another great essay, Michael. Darn I didn’t realize I was 10 years your senior. At any rate, you mention of humans adapting to aliens and/or alien technology and I agree with you. Just read (Sir) Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End” and they deal with this. You mention John Williams’ music, and in CE3K his best is over the end credits where the Mothership sails off. Also shot by the genius of Dennis Muren, the winner of more Academy Awards for SPFX than anyone else.

[@davegaracci1043]

Great video as usual. The truck in close encounters did not not turn etc - it was a gravimetric :) disturbance causing weightlessness in a confined space. Of course the truck was turned while filming 😅 Have had sleep paralysis, have had weird images and sounds and can't move - eventually the neurons reconnect and it's all good. I've been looking for aliens ufos etc for many years, grew up with a large telescope access, stayed up late to watch meteor showers, but still looking... like to stay positive about aliens - just because humans are jerks doesn't mean aliens would be...

[@mattwuk]

I was also 10 in 1982 and the first time I saw a photo of ET was in a newspaper (probably a promo piece for the films release) and I remember thinking 'Wow, this is it aliens are real!' 😂 strange thing is, I wasn't actually horrified or concerned, just a bit excited, and remember I'm 10 years old and think it's an actual photo of an alien.

[@hadtopicausername]

Another thing about sleep paralysis is that it can be accompanied by some pretty vivid hallucinations. I've only experienced the hallucinations bit twice myself, but every so often, I find myself semi awake, and unable to even open my eyes. It's dreadfully uncomfortable.

[@sweetlowsounds]

An outdoor screening with a proper sound system is the only way to see this film. I saw it at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. The ground shuddered so much that I am surprised the dead didn't complain.

[@RealBLAlley]

The fact they have a solid idea about what happened to Flight 19 yet still can't find them is interesting. I don't believe they were abducted, but something unusual happened that led them off course in a way not thought of by those who searched for them. There have been some plausible explanations regarding why so many vessels and places disappear, including mass methane emissions, but we still can't find many that were lost.

[@reinhard8053]

The ocean is wide. And searching at sea is expensive. Finding a small airplane which hit on the water after all those years will be next to impossible. Many wrecks were only found if they are in shallow water and fishermen lost nets there.

[@IanM-id8or]

Speaking of Star Wars, I saw it 7 times in the cinema on it's first run - before it was "Episode 4: A New Hope"

[@Zippee2020]

You need to do Arrival next 🤓👌

[@alecity4877]

I wish I had watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind way before I did, it took me until the pandemic to see it, I think my parents never put it up because they didn't think it'd be of my or my brother's liking, but when I watched it I knew I would have loved even when I was a kid. It is a fantastic movie in terms of handling alien encounters, way better in my opinion than more recent examples that have been praised so much, such as Arrival. The way communication is stablished with the aliens just makes thousands of times more sense, besides the fantasy aspect of Arrival I mean. 24:04 also, have all your videos in this room been above a piano? or

[@IanM-id8or]

I'm old. I saw it in the cinema on it's first run

[@alecity4877]

@@IanM-id8or well yeah we all are born at a different time, different oportunities. I am 22, to me before watching it was just a classic, but something from the past that I didn't really have a context that aimed me at it, in the end it was just by chance, like many other classics I could have watched instead, many I have not watched. I am glad I watched it, it was good stuff.

[@daveb1964]

If aliens are seeing these kind of movies it's no wonder they don't want to make contact.

[@perttisuorsa4678]

It would be very interesting to hear your review of the movie Arrival, doctor Siegel. I find Arrival much more interesting and thought provoking than Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

[@MichaelSiegel14]

I did talk about Arrival in my "best movies" video but might do one on its own.

[@LuDux]

Here's band called Frekpower with song "Freak Power" which starts with those 5 notes from Close Encounters: kzbin.info/www/bejne/epStp3mhZs6qe9k (One of members of Freakpower later become famous as Fatboy Slim, who had song with music video where Shaddam IV quotes Dune) This is mashup of Close Encounters and Number 1 by duo Goldfrapp: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oom6lWBtqdJ1kJY And this is random musical video with musical aliens kzbin.info/www/bejne/nmeUgnpqqJV8abc

[@maximusdraco2199]

🎉🎉

[@IanM-id8or]

ET was originally intended as a sequel to CE3K

[@KelebrimbearX]

Ironically, the ET and CE3K beings hate each others' guts...

[@leevester6924]

Can an ion engine really produce a specific impulse as high as a chemical rocket?

[@TheFalconerNZ]

49:07 'Scaling that up to a massive creature..'; we are thinking about (maybe even experimenting in very limited fashion) with introducing non-human DNA to give us abilities we don't currently have, (like limb regeneration or additional tooth regrowth), I know we are 100's of years from this now both due to regulations limiting this research & the knowledge we would need but AI could greatly accelerate this research IF we want it at all. But wouldn't it be possible for a greatly advanced civilisation to have already done this DNA manipulation to give themselves Tardigrade abilities? You mentioned tardigrades but there is also a jellyfish that can "Revert" to an infant stage giving it a sort of immortality.

[@michaelburke750]

I’m wondering, where does sleep paralysis enter into the story lines of E.T. or Close Encounters?

[@samjam8044]

Because I’m topic of aliens the next movie you need to review is independence Day.

[@sonofcolossus7766]

What ppl see (UFO), is based on their knowledge

[@arlenesobhani8739]

You might like the You Tube commentary on the Bermuda Triangle by the historian Sean Munger, who blows apart the myth.

[@RealBLAlley]

If the aliens only picked up people in the 40's, flew home, then back and then abducted more in the days before they revealed themselves and stayed in the area, that would account for the discrepancy in aging.

[@Scimarad]

It would be fun if some of the bizzare actions of the aliens in CE3K are down to the old abductees being allowed to use the controls and thinking it would be hilarious to mess with the normies. "Hey Ralph! Get offa that doohickey, ya makin' us look like boobs!!"

[@ivarwind]

The music sequence in Close Encounters always annoyed me, because they're not learning a language. You can't learn a language that way. No meaning is attached to the notes or the sequences of notes - or more accurately, no associated meaning is conveyed. I went for a walk with my niece the other day at the supermarket, and 80% of the conversation consisted of exchanges of "What's that?" answered by "That's ..." (insert whatever). Why? Because that is the foundation of learning language, associating the tokens of a language with concepts in the real physical world. Without that connection, all you have is grammar, and while ChatGPT will happily generate millions of pages of text based on nothing but (very advanced) grammar, there is no meaning in it. Just as an LLM understands nothing of what it generates (or of anything else), the scientists in Close Encounters understand exactly nothing at all of whatever meaning the aliens might be trying to convey with the intense streams of harmonies. If they had been able to associate even a single sequence of notes with... well, *anything* non-musical, that would have been the beginning of "learning a new language," and a far greater achievement than just being able to mindlessly copy a few hundred symphonies' worth of notes and harmonies, but they never even get to recognize the musical sequence for "that's bus," placing them still at a lower stage than even the slowest present-day toddler who just learned their first words. (There is of course maths in the musical sequences, but that changes nothing - despite what you will sometimes hear, maths is *not* a language, neither universal nor any other). Indeed much of the past couple of hundred years of fundamental developments in mathematics have been concerned with ensuring that maths is cleaned of any residual associations with the concepts of language, making it purely about the strictly regulated manipulation of symbols without a direct connection to our physical world)

[@perttisuorsa4678]

It would be interesting to know how many irrational UFO cults "Close encounters of the third kind" has started. I would say that it is a very religious movie. Benevolent aliens instead of angels. It is interesting that people who believe that the Earth is visited by alien beings can get their beliefs confirmed by a movie like this despite the fact that they know very well that the movie is fiction.

[@TheFalconerNZ]

18:58 'One people think this would cause a disruption,' I tend to think these people are less likely to be the common person, yes some would lose their grasp of reality of a while (as in believe in God) but most are more concerned about getting on with their life to really freak out for long if it didn't affect them directly. The ones that would really care about 'Disruptions' would businesses & governments (IMO) more concerned about loss of profit from workers not turning up for work or lawlessness & violence from people no longer following the laws of government. It would be this disruption of control over the population & the end of the economy if everything was suddenly free due to new technology that would be the real fear.

[@GorgieGus]

I'm a fan of many scifi films, but I never wanted to watch these two examples. ET was too childish, and Close Encounters looked to be too deliberately emotional: both major turn offs for me. Thanks for the video though, and the science therein.

[@fredleggett923]

You are REALLY missing out, especially wrt Close Encounters.