Goofs for
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) More at IMDbPro »

• Crew or equipment visible: Shadow of camera on the screen door of the farm.
  
  
• Continuity: License plate(s) on the station wagon as Roy and Jillian drive through roadblocks.
  
  
• Continuity: When Roy is stalled at the railroad track, the mailboxes fly open and their contents are expelled (close shot of the mailboxes). When seen from the inside of Roy's truck, the mailboxes are closed. This repeats with successive shots from the inside of the truck (closed) and the outside view (open).
  
  

• Errors in geography: The latitude/longitude received by the scientists (104 degrees 44 minutes 30 seconds West 40 degrees 36 minutes 10 seconds North) isn't very close to Devils Tower at all. The coordinates are very close to Stage Colorado, east of Ft. Collins, Colorado, almost 300 miles away from the monument.
  
  
• Continuity: As the 12 people in red selected by the government head for the mothership, the blond woman is two people in front of Roy, and not wearing her sunglasses. In the next shot, she has her sunglasses on, and is now in immediately in front of him.
  
  
• Continuity: Spielberg and producers wanted Walter Cronkite as newsreader for the broadcast that Neary ignores in the "living room sculpture" scene. However, Cronkite's network would not allow him to take the role, so the producers settled on ABC's Howard K. Smith. Unfortunately, the news footage of the Wyoming reporter was filmed before this decision; as a result, the reporter says "Order your steak well-done, Walter."
  
  
• Continuity: When Roy is in his truck, the maps and papers get blown off of his dashboard and then he speeds away. When he stops his truck upon meeting Jillian and her son, everything is stacked very neatly on top of the dashboard.
  
  
• Factual errors: The insignia worn by some of the Navy fliers do not correspond to their ranks.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: (or audible, at least) When Roy and Ronnie argue in their bedroom, Toby closes his bedroom door. Just before he closes the door, you can faintly hear Steven Spielberg saying, "Close the door now."
  
  
• Errors in geography: One of the Air Traffic Controllers at the Indianapolis Center asks the Air Force if they have any tests going on in Restricted area 2508. R-2508 is in California and Nevada. It would be controlled out of Los Angeles Center.
  
  
• Errors in geography: In the scenes at the air traffic control center, the aircraft encountering the UFO are under control of Indianapolis Center, but the controllers check for activity in restricted area 2508. Restricted area 2508 is in the Mohave Desert and includes Edwards Air Force Base, and is nowhere near the area under control of Indianapolis Center, a thousand miles to the east.
  
  
• Factual errors: The solfege hand signals Lacombe and the alien use at the end of the film to "talk" to each other are in the wrong order. The first and second notes are switched and while it should be "re-mi-do-do-so", what is signaled is "mi-re-do-do-so".
  
  
• Anachronisms: The calendar from 1945 is set in the Helvetica typeface, which was not designed until 1954.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The wrong camels appear in the Gobi desert scene. The camels used were Dromedaryand they should have been Bactrian. And, anyway, horses, not camels, are used for transportation in Mongolia.
  
  
• Continuity: When Roy's family are leaving him, his wife locks all of the car doors except her own door. In the very next shot, her door is already locked.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Roy is building the clay mountain in his living room, you can see the cut in the clay where he will later pull off the top of the mountain.
  
  
• Continuity: Since Walter Cronkite was not allowed to do the film, he was replaced with Howard K Smith. But the first time Roy is interviewed, he mentions the newscast with Walter Cronkite.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Shortly before Barry Guiler is abducted from his house by aliens, we see electrical appliances moving and powering themselves. In the kitchen, the stove rings are meant to be glowing, however they cast a shadow on the rear panel of the stove - indicating that the rings are actually cold, and being lit from underneath with red lights.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After one of the police cars runs off the side of the road chasing the four smaller UFOs, Roy's truck and two police cars skid to a halt. All three vehicles skid at equally 45 degree angles. (\ \ \) In the next shot, which overlooks the greater Muncie area, you see the UFOs disappearing in the mountains while the city grids start to light up again. Roy's truck is now parked at a -45 degree angle. (/ \ \)
  
  
• Continuity: In the first scene in the desert, although it appears to be around noon at the beginning, by the end of the scene the sun is clearly on the horizon and setting, even though only a short amount of script-time has passed.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the "mother ship" appears over the mountain at the end, it casts a shadow over those staring up at it, even though it must surely be above the light source.
  
  
• Continuity: Toward the end of the movie, when Jillian and Roy are at Devils Tower and the mother ship is descending, Jillian has her jacket tied around her waist. The jacket is present the whole time she is hiding in the rocks, watching what is going on the landing field. But in the next scene that she is in, when she is walking across the field to reach Barry, the jacket is gone.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The scene where the Muncie police cars are chasing the UFOs shows them driving in mountains and through tunnels, and cross into the state of Ohio. Muncie has no mountains, no tunnels, and is not that close to Ohio. There is another county between Muncie and the Ohio state line. The Indiana Toll Road is about 200 miles north of Muncie, paralleling the Michigan state line.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jillian has caught up to Barry on the highway and almost gets hit by Roy, the three stars in a row which appear to be Orion's belt that are visible above a tree to the right of the screen repeatedly change position between shots.
  
  
• Factual errors: While preparing for the evacuation, the military speaks of clearing 360 square miles, which would involve from 35,000 to 50,000 people. Later, a news report states that 200 square miles are being evacuated. Devils Tower is centrally located in Crook County, with an area of 2858 sq. miles and a population of 5887, and is over 15 miles from the nearest city. 200 sq. miles would be a circle of 8 miles radius. 360 sq. miles would be a radius of 11.5 miles. The actual population of the evacuated area would likely be less than a few hundred people, not 35 to 50 thousand.
  
  
• Continuity: The Huey that the "contactees" are to be flown out of the Devils Tower area on is a single engine version from the rear but a twin engine version from the front and on take off.
  
  
• Continuity: Roy's sunburn changes it's degree of redness between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: The size of the mother ship is incompatible in different shots. When it arrives it's behind the mountain and a lot bigger than the mountain. When it's in front of the mountain it's no longer bigger than the mountain but smaller or at best about the same.
  
  
• Factual errors: At least two of the Navy fliers returned by the aliens at Devils Tower give their rank as "Captain, U.S. Navy Reserve." It's unlikely men that young at the time of their abduction would hold that rank; the filmmakers may have been intending to portray them as Marine or USAAF Captains, the equivalent Navy rank being Lieutenant.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the 1940s-era abducted military personnel are coming off the mothership, they have 1970s-style haircuts and sideburns.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Roy looks out the window of his service truck stalled on the track. The right side of his face is exposed to the powerful light from the ship above him. Later in the film the left side of his face is burned and it should be the right side. However, as Roy was sitting on the left side of the truck, the left side of his face would be more exposed to the burning rays and the right side more protected.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The helicopter used to evacuate the civilians from Devils Tower was a Bell 412, a model not used by any branch of the US military and is (or was at that time) produced strictly for civilian use. However, the entire UFO program was not a military operation. They only used their contacts to bring in military people, but the helicopter should still be civilian.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Jillian has caught up to Barry on the highway and almost gets hit by Roy, the three stars in a row which appear to be Orion's belt that are visible above a tree to the right of the screen repeatedly change position between shots. In the book, however, the alien visitors are, in fact, described as being from the Orion constellation, so those "stars" could very well be alien ships, as, in the book, they use the ships to show where they came from.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the massive mother ship first appears and passes over Devils Tower, stars are visible through hull of the ship in some of the shots from underneath the ship.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The newspaper headline describing Barry's abduction reads "Cosmic Kidnaping" rather than "Kidnapping". This is not a misspelling but a now-uncommon variant that some publications still used in the 1970s (Time Magazine used it well into the '90s).
  
  
• Continuity: During the Howard K. Smith Devils Tower newscast an additional piece of Jillian's artwork appears on the wall above the bed and the artwork becomes rearranged.
  
  
• Continuity: During the dinner table scene differing quantities of mashed potatoes are on Roy's hands with it disappearing totally from his left hand.
  
  
• Continuity: During the the first public forum meeting Roy picks up a pencil and "doodles" on a newspaper with his right hand. However, before and after that he is left handed.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): During the ABC newscast, a reporter states that the Devil's Tower National Monument was created by Theodore Roosevelt in 1915. Roosevelt was President from 1901 to 1909 and the Monument was created in 1906.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Roy is first shown with his living room creation (model of Devil's Tower made with trash/bricks/chicken wire), looking through the porch door it is clearly raining (most noticeable by the rain dripping onto the can that's on the ground just outside the door). The TV is playing an episode of Days Of Our Lives. As DOOL goes to commercial (Budweiser commercial plays) Roy looks out the window. He looks out at people outside in their yards, and it is bright and sunny out.
  
  
• Plot holes: In the climatic ending the first alien, a tall and spindly creature, crawls out of the huge "mother" ship's opening then stands up spreading it's long arms out wide. A very memorable and dramatic cinematic entrance with the film's score adding to the grandeur. The smaller aliens come out and stand in line then greet the humans. We do not see the first tall alien again in the film and in all released versions of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. What happens to the first creature?
  
  
• Errors in geography: When the numbers sent by the aliens are interpreted as geographic coordinates, there is no indication of the hemispheres of the latitudes nor longitudes. The coordinates as they are sent - 104°44'30" 44°36'10" - actually describe a point in north-central China.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The American flag patch on the uniforms of the volunteers at the end of the film are backwards. The camera pans down the row of volunteers in their jumpsuits and each has a flag patch on their right shoulder with the stars on the left side of the flag. When a flag patch is worn on the right shoulder, the stars should be on the right side of the flag with the stripes pointing to the left.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The Mexican officers who appear in the Sonora Desert sequence wear Federal Army uniforms. Those uniforms were used during early the 20th century but not anymore by the 70s.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: When the Mothership opens and abducted people come out, the first ones are apparently the missing pilots from, Flight 19, the training flight in 1945 whose planes were found in the opening scene. The names of the crewmen do not match the actual names. The closest is "Frank Taylor", actual crewman was Charles Taylor. Also named in the movie was Robert F. Landham, actual crewman was Robert F. Gallivan. Others named in the movie that have no close actual counterparts were Harry Ward Craig, Matthew McMichael and David Erickson.
  
  

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