I saw CLOSE ENCOUNTERS twelve or thirteen times during its first run, and I don't remember the "ship in the desert" scene being in it.

As for the "inside the Mothership" ending, it's horrible. Everything we imagined is replaced by a clumsily on-the-nose conglomeration of effects. The Dreyfuss we see isn't the same one who played Roy Neary, no matter how much he tries to work up the necessary emotions. And John Williams' scores the scene by smathering it with way too much choir-enhanced wonderfulness. Even worse, all this visual and aural excess renders the now tacked-on exchange between Lacombe and the alien anti-climactic.

I think the Mothership interior scene is a serious blow to the effectiveness of the film. I'd rather have it as an afterthought tucked safely away in the bonus materials section, as it is on my CLOSE ENCOUNTERS disc, than to watch the "Special Edition" again.

Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

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