The movie ET-Extra Terrestrial was directed by the infamous Steven Spielberg and was released in 1982. This movie saw huge numbers in the box office and was digitally remastered in 2002. The Special Edition that was released 20 years later had improved animatronics because Spielberg was not impressed with the originals from 1982. The Special Edition also included extra scenes that were not shown in the original screenplay.

It’s 1982 in suburban California, when we first meet ET. The film begins panning a starry sky. We soon come across a group of beings from outer space collecting plants, or so it seems, when suddenly several cars show up and men start running towards them. Unfortunately, ET had traveled far away from the group and was unable to make it back to his spaceship before it took off. The men continue to hunt down ET until ET makes a quick escape out of the forest and down into the suburb.

Next we meet Elliott, his older brother Mike, his younger sister, Gertie, and his mother, Mary. Elliott is attempting to hang out with his brother and his friends but they make him go get the pizza from the delivery driver in the driveway. On his way back in, Elliott hears a sound coming from the shed outside and has his first encounter with ET. Rushing back inside, he tries to tell everyone what he saw but no one believes him. At 2 am he awakens to hear sounds coming from the cornfield in his backyard. Being the curious kid that he is he goes out to see what the noise is. ET and Elliott have their first face to face encounter. They both get scared and run away. The next day Elliott fakes sick so he can go searching for ET. He went out to the forest and left a trail of Reese’s Pieces in hopes that ET would eat them and he was right! Reese’s Pieces sales skyrocketed 65% just two weeks after the premier of the film according to an article about product placement on mentalfloss.com

Elliott earned ET’S trust and soon became his friend. The film continues with ET learning about human ways such as toys, food, television, and even beer! Elliott and ET have a very strong connection to the point where Elliott can feel what ET feels. When ET gets drunk, Elliott feels drunk. When ET gets sick, Elliott get sick as well. Their connection is how Elliott knows that ET has to go home.

During the movie, the suspicious men from the beginning of the film are tracking down ET. It seems as if they are the “bad guys” in the film. This could be because we never see their faces until the last quarter of the movie. Elliott fears that people are going to want ET to do such things as lobotomy’s on him. The men eventually track ET to Elliott’s home. ET is sick and is in no shape to run away from the men, but Elliott is sick as well. The men, who end up being from NASA, do not want ET to die. They probably do want to do tests on him. I feel that ET split his connection with Elliott so that Elliott would get better even if it meant he had to die.

The end of the film was much more sad than I expected. Roger Ebert had said, “and still it inspires genuine laughter and tears.” I agree with this because there wasn’t a dry eye in my house while watching the end of this film. While talking about Elliott’s acting in the film Ebert said, “He is played by Henry Thomas in what has to be the best little boy performance I’ve ever seen in an American film. ” This is from a review he wrote in 2002. I have to disagree with this statement. Yes, his acting was very good, especially because he was working with an inanimate object, but I have seen better acting in movies such as “Radio Flyer” and “The Goonies.”

I enjoyed how other Steven Spielberg movies had cameos throughout this film. This was pointed out by Philip French in his review, “The world E.T. has come to is a violent, threatening place. Elliott torments his goldfish with a plastic head of Bruce the shark from Spielberg’s Jaws on the end of a stick. His brother wears a T-shirt with a Space Invaders screen emblazoned on it. ” There was also the scene while trick-or-treating where ET sees a Yoda and wants to go with him. These little acts of ET were very funny, which kept the movie interesting. 

There has been a lot of comparison between this film and other films such as “Encounters of the Third Kind” and “The Wizard of Oz.” According to Vincent Canby, a writer for The New York Times, “taken the tale of Dorothy and her frantic search for the unreliable Wizard of Oz and turned it around, to tell it from the point of view of the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Woodman. Dorothy has become E.T., Kansas is outer space, and Oz is a modern, middle-class real-estate development in California. ” I found this to be a very good analogy. It is interesting how stories with the same overall theme (a lost being trying to find their way home) can be portrayed so differently.

ET was actually created based off an imaginary friend that Steven Spielberg created as a child when his parents were going through a divorce. I wonder if this is why Elliott’s mother was going through a separation during the film. Her preoccupied self never realized there was an alien living in her home. I wonder if Spielberg felt this way while he was a child. The final goodbye in this film made it out to be not only a scary monster movie, but a movie with suspense, laughter, and love.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/et-the-extra-terrestrial-2002

https://www.theguardian.com/film/1982/dec/12/features.philipfrench