Protagonist

Character Role Analysis

Roy Neary

Roy's our boy for the protagonist slot of Close Encounters. Like any good protagonist, he's the character we root for and the one we follow as he tries to navigate the conflict in his life. For Roy, that conflict is an attempt to uncover the truth about his mysterious close encounter with an alien UFO while trying to keep his family together. We want to see him learn the truth and come out okay.

He's also the character we can identify most with. Most of us probably wouldn't experience UFOs like Lacombe, a brilliant scientist tracking them down across the globe in an adventure funded by the governments of the world. Instead, we'd experience it like Roy, just trying to figure out what's going on without losing our marbles.