Steven Spielberg’s 1977 science fiction classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is definitely in my Top 5 favorite movies. It led me on a decades-long pilgrimage to the Devils Tower in Wyoming, which culminated with me reaching the magical place in 2017. It is an almost perfect movie, with only two things about it that bother me. A minor thing: Roy Neary’s incredibly annoying family. A not-so-minor thing: well, that’s what this post is about.
FLIGHT 19—IT REALLY HAPPENED
Last week I wrote about the mystery of Flight 19, five Navy planes—TBM Avenger torpedo bombers—that left NAS Fort Lauderdale in 1945 on a routine training exercise, never to be seen again. Spielberg, who wrote and directed Close Encounters, opened the film with those planes, sans pilots and crew, suddenly appearing in the Sonoran Desert of Mexico. No problem there; it was a great teaser.
But near the end of the film, in the climactic scene where the Mother Ship comes down by the Devils Tower and begins disgorging men, women, and children it had zapped up over decades, or even longer, that’s where I have a problem. Not with three-year-old Barry Guiler, who had been taken only a few days earlier and is now reunited with his mom, Jillian, in an emotional scene. I’m talking about the first group of men to stagger off the ship: the entire crew of Flight 19.
Researchers await the lost crewmen of Flight 19.
So what’s the problem? These men and their planes had been zapped up in 1945, and the story takes place in 1977. By my (crummy) math that’s 32 years. But they hadn’t aged! (One staffer makes note of this and says, “Einstein was right.” Another guy comments, “Einstein was probably one of them.”)
THIS WAS JUST…WRONG
So all of the warm fuzzies of welcoming them back will soon be replaced by the fact that those who were married in 1945 will likely find that their wives, now that much older, had moved on and wed others. Young children back then will likely not even know their fathers, except from old photos. Parents and other beloved older family members will have passed away. These 14 crewmen will be traumatized beyond belief. The aliens—and Spielberg—did these men no favors by returning them to Earth over three decades since their disappearance.
I made it!
Do you recall the scene in Aliens where Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), now rescued after a hyper-sleep of nearly six decades, is told that her daughter, a pre-teen when Ripley first left, has aged and passed away? Her anguish was palpable. Multiply that by those crewmen and their families. I would not want to be a fly on any of those walls.
Anyway, you know what they say about opinions. I’ll leave it at that. If you want to know more about Flight 19, check out my post, “Myths and Legends: The Mystery Of Flight 19.” For more about my pilgrimage to Wyoming, have a look at, “Touching The Magical Tower.”