Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 3 Other Sci-Fi Movies Inspired by Real Events
The fantastic stories that are hard to believe.
The phrase "based on real events", so popular among filmmakers, often attracts the viewer's attention, but it does not mean that the events are reproduced with documentary accuracy.
Many stories may be inspired by real events, but most of them are pure fantasies of the creator of the movie or series.
1. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977
Steven Spielberg's iconic sci-fi film Close Encounters of the Third Kind is not based on a single real-life event; rather, the movie covers several separate incidents.
Another aspect adds to the realism of the movie: Spielberg was able to enlist Joseph Allen Hynek, an astronomer and ufologist who developed a classification scale for alien encounters, with the third kind representing direct communication with representatives of an extraterrestrial race.
2. Communion, 1989
Alien abduction is a common plot device in science fiction movies. Director Philippe Mora's film Communion also follows this well-worn path, with the slight difference that the movie depicts events that many believe actually happened.
The movie is based on the book by author Whitley Strieber, who claims to have been abducted by aliens in December 1985. According to Strieber, he woke up one day in 1985 in his country house and felt the presence of an alien in the bedroom.
The man then apparently fell asleep and forgot about the alarming incident the next morning, but over time suppressed memories began to return to him of being taken somewhere by so-called "visitors" that fateful night.
3. The Blob, 1958
One of the most famous science fiction horror films, The Blob, has a very real background-a mysterious event recorded in the reports and logs of the Philadelphia Police Department.
On September 26, 1950, two patrol officers noticed a strange glow in the sky, an unidentified object that passed over the officers' heads and disappeared into the nearby woods.
Believing the incident to be unusual, the patrolmen went to the site of the alleged UFO landing, and on a country road they discovered a jelly-like pulsating substance of purple color that was nearly human-sized.
4. Roswell, 1994
The Roswell incident is one of the most famous events involving possible extraterrestrials, and it is what actually launched ufology as a movement that has embraced enthusiasts from all over the world.
The discovery by a farmer of mysterious silver debris, which many now believe to be the wreckage of an alien ship that crashed on Earth, and the attempts by authorities to explain the incident as a weapons test or a weather balloon, gave rise to many rumors, some of which have been confirmed to varying degrees by retired military personnel.