For most of Steven Spielberg’s 1977 classic, the audience watches a group of people affected by their encounters (close, of course) with alien spaceships. We see bright lights through windows and doorways, we see tiny, mosquito-quick craft, but we don’t see the big mama until the very end. And when that mother ship — seemingly as big as Devil’s Tower itself — comes floating onto the screen, it’s truly an awe-inspiring moment. So when Spielberg wanted to release a director’s cut (what eventually became the 1980 “Special Edition”) execs agreed on the condition that he include scenes filmed inside the mother ship, a condition that Spielberg came to regret. Apparently some things are better left to the imagination, and he was able to rectify the mistake in the 1998 “Collector’s Edition.”
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