MovieChat Forums > Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Discussion > WORST ENDING EVER and WORST FATHER EVER

WORST ENDING EVER and WORST FATHER EVER

posted 9 years ago by TheEightiesAreBack
50 replies | jump to latest

Let me get this straight...

...He leaves his 3 kids and wife behind to go with aliens? Really? A father has a responsibility to provide for his children. Spielberg messed up big time. Let's just leave children fatherless and the mother all alone to pay the bills. Great logic.

And for the record, children don't have a choice when their mother drives them away.

I guess when the kids are at their high school graduations and their father is not there... They can tell their friends their pops went crazy and left them.

Either that or those kids are going to have psychological problems from their father abandoning them.

Worst ending ever!

[–] AmeriGirl26 (12299) 5 years ago

If I had a shitty family like his, I'd leave them to go with aliens too. They deserve not to have him around after the way they treated him. Particularly the dumbass wife.

[–] huwdj (4562) 5 years ago

He was compelled. Driven, along with many others, to travel to the meeting place. We were never told how or why some people were affected in this way but many were. Personally I'm not sure I'd be prepared to leave Teri Garr under any circumstances but there you go.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

It's okay. He told them he was going out for a pack of cigarettes and he'd be right back.

[–] Druff (1447) 4 years ago

Seemed to me it was the wife who left him and took the kids with her. Which you yourself acknowledge, so...

I mean, you either take the story on its own terms, or you stubbornly refuse to accept the story as it was told/written. In the story, he and others like him were literally mentally programmed by alien forces to control their behavior. Yeah, shame on him for not being able to withstand and overpower whatever technology the aliens used on his brain. Typical cis het white male.

[–] BourbonKing (5612) 4 years ago

Well, to be honest even Spielberg himself has expressed some level at regret in his retrospect as a filmmaker at this time. He saw a lot of his single self in Roy's character and actions and explained this in the Director's commentary IIRC. He also talked about it in an interview some time ago but I can't remember the specific article. Steven basically says that if he could rewrite the movie he would have made Roy a single man in a rocky relationship instead of a family man.

[–] degree7 (821) 4 years ago

Roy was going to enjoy a long anal-probing by those ETs.

[–] pjl69 (2430) 3 years ago

No its one of the best endings ever. I think it had balls, especially for a soft "family values" director like Spielberg.

[–] AndyKing1967 (33845) 3 years ago

Everybody loves a happy ending.

[–] Who (5146) 3 years ago

The aliens can drop him back two years before they took him, and he can make right by his family.