10 Classic Movies The Directors Won't Stop Changing

Close Encounters is not the 1977 sci-fi classic that first comes to mind when you think of directors who can't leave their work alone (we'll get to that), but Spielberg can be every bit as bad as his old pal Lucas when it comes to reworking his classic movies (witness the guns-to-walkie-talkies edits for E.T. that Spielberg later regretted changing).

Spielberg has been upfront about how he was forced by studio Columbia Pictures's financial troubles to release Close Encounters before he was satisfied with it. Once the movie became a huge earner for Columbia, though, they were only too happy to give him an extra $1.5 million to make a new cut, released in 1980 as the "Special Edition".

Spielberg added around seven minutes for the Special Edition, including most famously a shot of the inside of the mothership, but trimmed or removed a lot of other scenes, meaning that this version actually came in a couple of minutes shorter than the original. It was well received at the time and for years was the only cut of Close Encounters available.

For the 1990 laserdisc release, however, the Special Edition was released alongside a version of the original cut which had once more been lightly tweaked by the director.

In the 1990s, Spielberg had come to regret showing the mothership, which he felt had only featured in the Special Edition to give the marketing something to focus on. So, he went back to the original theatrical cut and re-edited a new "Director's Cut" (sometimes called the "Collector's Edition"), which added some scenes from the 1980 reshoots but removed the mothership.

The Director's Cut is the longest version of all, but there's only a couple of minutes in it, and doesn't significantly improve on or lessen the impact of the original. It's fine but needless.