MovieChat Forums > Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Discussion > Bad father? Seriously?

Bad father? Seriously?

posted 9 years ago by grybop
64 replies | jump to latest

I'm disgusted by all the housewives in this forum moaning that no, Roy shouldn't have left his family, he was such a bad father for abandoning his wife and casting upon her the burden pf paying the bills and so on and so on...

Really people?! It's not like he went on a vacation with his mates to Honolulu, neither did he leave everything behind to live a new life with his mistress! HE MET EXTRATERRESTRIAL BEINGS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! THIS WAS HIS DREAM, HIS OBSESSION! Get that inside your petty bourgeois minds if you can! This is bigger than anything he had ever lived or wished for so far. Imagine him pondering "well, yeah, I could follow that alien, but what about my family life in Indiana? Yeah, scrap that UFO stuff, I got a predestined middle class life to live!" OF COURSE HE'D GET ON THAT SHIP, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Nothing but pity for you people.

[–] fede_4488 8 years ago

Right on!

If I don't reply, you're probably on my ignore list for something I forgot already

[–] wilsonandrewc 8 years ago

Roy's increasingly erratic behavior caused Ronnie and the kids to move out.

[–] fluffset 8 years ago

maybe because he kiss that woman make some audience pissed-off, he's cheating.

THRILLER IS MY FOOD!

[–] WildFire78 (59) 4 years ago

People just don't understand. It was a calling for him. It's something you cannot ignore. Just like parents who take on jobs that are life threatening like being a combat soldier, police, firefighter, etc.

And, this calling was making him go nuts. If he never followed up, he would have truly gone psychotic. Him leaving Earth was the best thing he could have done, for all parties.

[–] Owlwise (1513) 4 years ago

This is it exactly. It's indeed a calling, practically a spiritual one, certainly an existential one. Roy HAD to follow it in order to be true to himself. If he hadn't, he would have become a tortured shell of a man for the rest of his life, and in no way a useful or meaningful father or husband. He would have brought them far more pain by staying than by leaving.

[–] Boromir (9724) 2 years ago

I am not agree. He did something worse than just leaving them. He left them confused. Without any closure. All their life they will wonder "why my father left me?". At least said goodbye, give some explain, even bad one, just don't disappear without warning .

[–] lolkatz (481) 4 years ago

Women think men's role is to work his ass off to support them. They hide behind the kids, but in fact it's all for the wife, so she may enjoy material well-being. Even kids are reared so that eventually they may take over the father's role, after the overworked bastard dies at, like, 56, from a heart attack, and so she may be further provided for.