Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Lance Henriksen, Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr
Continuity mistake: While the first UFO is blinding Roy, he protects his face. The distance between his hand and his face, and the expression on his face, keep swapping back and forth depending on the angle.
Continuity mistake: When Roy leans towards the steering wheel to watch the UFO, the position of his hands over the wheel changes between shots.
Continuity mistake: The mashed potato that Roy serves himself swaps from stiff to creamy between one shot and the other.
Factual error: The aliens broadcast a series of pulses which are decoded by the scientists to be a longitude and latitude. In degrees:minutes:seconds, the longitude is 104:44:30 and the latitude is 40:36:10. These numbers are what the computer display shows and are what the scientists say (except for one slip-up in the hallway early in the scene where 104:40:30 is said). The scientists grab a globe and declare these coordinates are in Wyoming. Everybody and his brother (and the aliens) then proceed to show up at Devils Tower, Wyoming. However, Devils Tower is at around longitude 104 deg 44 min and latitude *44* deg 36min, not the *40* deg 36 min pulsed out by the aliens. If everyone had gone to 40 deg 36 min, they would have ended up in Colorado, more than a couple hundred miles south of Devils Tower, Wyoming. (00:46:23)
David Laughlin: We didn't choose this place! We didn't choose these people! They were invited!
Claude Lacombe: They belong here more than we.
Trivia: The aliens that come out of the ship at the end of the movie were played by 7 year old girls and the scene had to keep being re-shot because their fake alien heads weighed 5 pounds each.
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Answer: It wasn't definitively answered, but it appears the aliens took people in order to learn more about humans. It's unclear if all those who were returned had originally gone willingly, but the intent was not to keep them indefinitely or harm them, and they were returned to Earth, albeit many decades later. At the end, after the aliens had made contact, a new group of humans, including Roy, went with them voluntarily.
raywest ★