A 40th anniversary theatrical showing of ‘E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial’ makes us wonder at the enduring power of a big little movie about spaceships, friendships and family.
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E.T. Turns Forty: The Enduring Wonder of a Big Little Movie about Spaceship and Friendship
15 replies on “E.T. Turns Forty: The Enduring Wonder of a Big Little Movie about Spaceship and Friendship”
Greatly enjoyed — thanks, guys! Especially the observation about parts being shot from a kid’s eye level.
I honestly don’t understand what Spielberg hoped to accomplish by going back and removing guns that weren’t even used or referenced in the story. Guns carried exclusively by government agents, I might add. If anything, I’d think their presence might have given audiences pause to think how defenseless unarmed people are against a state that wields force, and some doubt about whether armed men ought to be barging into the homes of innocent suburban families. But then, I guess I’m thinking like “Us”, not like “Them”. 🙂
I’ve never understood the adulation of “ET.” To me, it’s painfully and unwatchably mawkish. Particularly annoying is its dumb Hollywood trope of the children being depicted as wiser, better, and more clever in every way than the adults. I love Bill, Scott, and Steven, but we’re gonna hafta agree to disagree on this one.
My greatest moment in the film was where the comic strip of BUCK ROGERS creating a beacon gave ET the idea to ‘Phone Home’!
You have to have been someone who had enjoyed years of Sci-Fi Adventure strips, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon to appreciate the homage to the era of Sci-Fi Adventure that preceded ALL Sci-Fi Movies, even those of the 50s. The stories that movies have provided have nothing on the SAGAS that were shown kids of the earlier generations.
Close Encounters intrigued me, but I hated that stupid man for abandoning his family. Peak selfishness has no place in a proper hero.
I don’t recall many details from either movie, but given the recent Covid pandemic, the thought that came to my mind was:
Did the human adults even seem to have any concern at all about alien microbes, vs. alien pilots, ambassadors, or soldiers?
As I vaguely recall, our microbes killed off the alien attackers in Invasion From Mars. How could a more recent story line not take that issue into consideration?
It’s science fiction, which means it is speculative. There is no basis for drawing conclusions from non-fact based speculation. There are no E.T.s that we know of, we are merely speculating that they may exist and there’s no facts to base an E.T. on.
OK, now that we’ve defined the situation, we can move on to speculation as it affects fiction. The speculation is often that microbes which have developed in other star systems are not likely to have evolved to attack human beings. The chemistry is not likely to be close enough to work.
Or not.
The whole premise of The Andromeda Strain was that something micro-biotic could feed on, or attack, human beings.
In the Star Trek universe there are microbial and other diseases that can infect the various races of the Federation and other groups so that’s dealt with by filters, anti-transmission protocols and matter transport system selectivity.
It all depends on the story. It’s not dependent on anything but the story.
So it’s an arbitrary matter of choice how and if so whether such a thing will be addressed in any work of speculative fiction. Either is plausible in the universe the speculation describes.
In either case, because this is pure speculative fiction, there may be microbes capable of living on human beings or not. Likely the author of E.T. The Extraterrestrial simply ignored microbes with the assumption that an extraterrestrial race capable of FTL (Faster Than Light) travel between star systems was advanced enough to negate any microbial transmission from host to host.
So the idea of our microbes infecting aliens or vice-versa is purely a matter of how it applies, or not, to the story line.
Obviously E.T. The Extraterrestrial is pure fiction and had nothing to do with reality so trying to find an answer to what impact microbes might have is not part of the story line and thus not a concern. If the story doesn’t make it a concern then the concern does not exist in that story.
One thing that is becoming more rare as people view most of their entertainment at home is the added dimension of crowd reaction in the theater. One of the best movie experiences I ever had was with one of the stupidest movies I’ll ever see, “Halloween”. I went to a sold-out theater full of underage kids (it was R-rated, I think, so they were there by hook and crook). The screams of the young girls from the opening, dread-inducing theme song to the end was unforgettable. I took a med school classmate to the movie years later (he had never seen it) in a near empty theater and was embarrassed to have dragged him along.
A lot of the best movies of my generation were improved by the audience. Some are cringe-inducingly bad without an involved, over-the-top audience there only for participation – think “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Saw “Rocky Horror Picture Show” at a theater, and the audience participation made it worthwhile. (And yes, I brought an umbrella and squirt gun,) Otherwise it was dreck.
Excuse me. I did not mean to demean dreck by linking it with that movie. I beg pardon.
Close Encounters- Leaving Teri Garr is beyond my ability to comprehend.
One of my favorite lines in the movie is when one of the kids asks Elliott if E.T. can’t just beam himself up. Ellott says, “This is reality, Greg.”
Bill, I have a copy of the Limited Edition Star Ward DVD. On the two disc set, disc one has the SpecEd edition of A New Hope. But on disc two is the original theatrical cut of Star Wars.
I have the 1st edition VHS THX widescreen original’s. Priceless. Also have them uploaded to DVD. 😉
We have also found that the further back in years we go, the better the movies seem to be.
Largely as Bill said is they have good stories.
Now we have crappy or re-booted (or both) stories with CGI.
Have to admit, I had never thought about the end of Close Encounters and the Dreyfus character abandoning his family; maybe because he already had.
Dee Wallace (also the mom in Cujo) was lovely.
ET and Close Encounters are not on my list of favorites, but obviously we all have our different taste in movies. I agree with Bill regarding directors going back and changing their “art”. I cannot imagine William Wyler changing anything in “The Best Years of Our Lives” years later because he becomes an antiwar activist or Frank Capra adding or changing It’s a Wonderful life or any of his classic movies. I don’t “get” the reason for Spielberg changing his original creation????
Given the similar reasonings for ET and Star Wars’ edits, I would label it as a gun syndrome… early versions of the directors getting woke and needing to remove “problematic” parts of their art now that they realize those ideas were “bad”.
Other attempts have been made to airbrush out cigarettes from older movies and correct some language in others.