Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Complete Edition

As CE3K is my all-time favorite film ever, to read about Fan Edits and then to find this “complete” version made me as excited as I was back in the 70’s, every time I climbed through the toilet windows at the cinema to watch it over and over again. We didn’t have a VHS, so I had to get into the cinema to watch this truly amazing film.

I’m so happy that I stumbled across Wraith’s masterpiece of an edit, we finally have the definitive version that this film deserves.

Wraith’s edit just brings it all to life again, every scene that was ever released, and also carefully crafted to provide the big screen “film” effect.

Long story short, Wraith has nailed this seamless edit and I want to thank him for making an old man very happy.

To me this film means something, it’s important and Wraith has expanded my enjoyment of it. Thank you Wraith.

I'll start by saying this is one of my favorite movies of all time.
Even as a kid, I would watch my VHS copy over and over. Then I acquired the DVD copy that had all 3 official versions of the movie and would watch each version in succession to see all the different scenes. Even at that age, I knew how much nicer it would be to have a version that combined all the scenes together and could not understand why one had never been released.
After long waiting, I finally have that version and it's everything I ever wanted.

Thank you Wraith for the fantastic edit!!!

Wraith has put together a unifying one stop shop for those for whom this film touches a deep nostalgic note. The grading overall feels like cinema - Like film indeed, and the little fixes made along the way smooth out even the bolted on Special Edition finale. The coalition of all scenes not in common with each release stops you wondering what to expect - "which version were we watching again?". I don't favor the SE ending personally, but it needs to be included here. The grading used to add vibrancy to the closing scenes are very in keeping with 35mm film projection as it looks in an auditorium. In places it was a little bright and grainy for me, but it was the editors passion to emulate his experience in the cinema and it is certainly an improvement on the trend for fogged highlight detail in hi def releases these days. The re-introduction of contrast for this edit was a net gain all round.

The world Speilberg created back then stands up as a world I wish still existed, even if it didn't reflect the real world in the first place - it is the vibe cinema is capable of and brings me back for more, just for the details and cultural references, the timbre and atmosphere.

The inclusion of the workprint is a welcome luxury, but the tidiness and ...well completeness of the Complete Edition makes it a very worthwhile go to.

Absolutely blown away by the work done here.

Excuse me if I ramble in this review, but this film means a lot to me. 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' is one of the first films I remember seeing at the cinema with my family as a kid. From subsequent viewings, I believe I saw the later edition with the extended Mother ship scene, although I've seen both versions so many times since, I can't be completely sure. What I do recall is how deeply this film resonated within me. More than any other, this film gave me my love for the cinema, and for sci-fi films in particular.

I've owned this film so many times - I have the DVD, the Anniversary Edition blu-ray with the light-up case, and the 4K. So why did I spend part of my day off and watch an SD version of this film on a 4k TV? Because Wraith has cobbled together the most complete version of my favourite film I am ever likely to see.

Taking off my nostalgic glasses for a moment, I can see that 'CEot3K' in any of its iterations is not a perfect film. Spielberg admits that it's a film that dates him, and that he would not have a father leaving his children behind were he a father himself back when he made it. It is an odd inclusion, especially as Spielberg captures childhood so well in many of his films, and this one in particular. (The child actors are extraordinary here across the board.) The ships themselves are still amazing to my eyes, but the aliens - particularly the spindly one - don't hold up so well anymore.

This edit, too, is not perfect either, but it's as near as dammit. The deleted scenes are necessarily & noticeably lower quality than the rest of the film, which are beyond the scope of improvement even with Wraith's skills, but I would have liked to have seen some more of the red tint removed from many of them. What does work on the whole, though, is the transitions from a deleted scene to a theatrical one, especially with a seamless and, I assume, added soundtrack (the edit from Roy on the roof to the evening meal is a good example of the skill on display here). The deleted scenes are inserted in logical places on all counts except one, where we see Roy buy gas followed by a theatrical scene which ends with him stating they need some. They are a couple of audio anomalies - two back-to-back scenes early on (Gillian searching for Barry in the woods and Roy getting lost on the road) had very noticeable echo, and there were occasional volume changes in the soundtrack in places (just before Neary enters the ship at the end is one I remember).

Overall, though, this edit took me right back to my childhood and why I left the cinema wide-eyed and, yes, staring up at the skies, wondering what was up there. For that, I thank you.