Following in Lucas's footsteps with his release of the original Star Wars as it was first presented. Spielberg does his sci-fi epic the same way with this excellent release of the 1977 UFO Classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When it was first released on video back in the early 80's it was the Special Edition version which was released to theaters in 1980 with new end footage with the interiors of the Mother Ship as well as other scenes edited out entirely and replaced with other scenes or alternate versions of other scenes. In fact, the only way to ever see the original was when it aired on TV as a movie and even then the two versions were combined to fill a 3 hour time slot. In the 1990's Laserdisc owners were the first to be able to own the original version thanks to Criterion Collection laserdiscs, except that the end credits were from the 1980 version. Then in 2001, the Collector's edition came out and it was more of a marriage of the two versions as it still eliminated key scenes from the original version, yet restored the original