Following the blockbuster success of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Columbia Pictures demanded a sequel. Spielberg wasn’t interested but, weary of the studio moving on without him the way Universal did with “Jaws 2,” proposed a compromise. “Night Skies” would be a spiritual successor to “Close Encounters,” a big budget horror movie inspired by the Hopkinsville Goblins incident in which hostile extraterrestrials attack a rural family. John Sayles wrote a script and Rick Baker designed the alien antagonists. Yet, while making “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Spielberg became uncertain about the project. He read the script to Harrison Ford’s girlfriend, screenwriter Melissa Mathison, who was touched by a subplot in which the sole friendly alien befriended the family's autistic son. Combined with Spielberg's memories of his own lonely childhood – which he was already developing as a project called "Growing Up" – "Night Skies" mutated into a new, more sentimental story. Mathison wrote a first draft called "E.T. And Me," which eventually became "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial." Columbia doubted the project could be successful, prompting Spielberg to take it to Universal, where the director would create another pop culture phenomenon.
Visitors from another world come to Earth to study our plant life. One of the scientists is left behind when the ship, following detection by the U.S. government, has to make an emergency exit. The alien is discovered by Elliot, a young boy living in the San Fernando Valley with his recently divorced mother, older brother, and younger sister. Elliot quickly forms a psychic bond with the creature, who displays extraordinary abilities. The visitor wishes to return home, building a device to contact his ship. Yet as Elliot and E.T. start to grow sick together, scientists from NASA intervene, threatening both the boy and his special friend from beyond the stars.
"E.T." is the first truly sentimental film that Spielberg – who previously specialized in thrillers and blockbuster spectacle, least we forget – would make, forever changing the course of his career. It's among the most nostalgic of the director's movies, looking back on the adventure of childhood. Yet "E.T.'s" relationship with childhood is more complicated than that. Elliot's world is a lonely one. He can't relate to his jock older brother and his mischievous little sister doesn't seem to grasp his feelings yet. His family mocks him when he first mentions the "goblin." Elliot often lives in his own little universe, telling elaborate stories with his "Star Wars" action figures and holding secret crushes on the tall girl in his class. When E.T. comes into his life, he keeps the alien secret from his family at first. It's the most extraordinary part of his little world, a fantastical friend that might as well have sprung from his dream. "E.T." so subtly takes us into the secret world of childhood, exploring the often-unspoken loneliness young boys feel and the escape that imagination can provide for them.
Needing something in his life that's missing is partly why Elliot latches onto E.T. so desperately. The most underexplained element of the film is Elliot and E.T.'s psychic bond. How it's forged, how it works, and even the role it plays in the alien's eventual resurrection are never elaborated upon. It's the most spiritual aspect of the story and functions entirely on an emotional level. When you were a kid, did you ever love something so much that it became a part of you? Was there a person, a pet, a toy or anything else that you wanted, needed, so desperately that it started to live in your heart as much as anywhere else? Of course, you did. Every kid in the world went through that. This is all you need to understand why Elliot and E.T. become empathetically linked. It is the most intrinsic, intuitive element of the film.
We wouldn't understand why Elliot loves E.T. so much if the character wasn't appealing to the audience as well. Arising out of the unused designs Rick Baker created for "Night Skies," Italian effects master Carlo Rambaldi would perfect the character's appearance. E.T., as a visual effect, walks a very careful line. The design, in a slightly different light, would be creepy. His body is squat, his skin wrinkly and hairless, arms and neck gangly. When combined with a muted, earthy coloration, it brings some sort of deflated organ to mind. The arched brows, pig-like nose and slopping, lipless mouth is similarly odd. Yet it all comes together to create something charming. Part of this is in the character's warm blue eyes and its soft smile. A lot of it has to do with how E.T., created through a combination of advanced puppetry and short actors in suits, moves. He waddles around, in a way that's clearly harmless. His movements are slow and considered, thought and care being put into every motion he makes. E.T.'s design, like a pug, straddles the line between ugly and cute. Yet everything about how he acts projects no malevolent intent at all. The audience finds the awkward little alien exactly as charming and lovable as the characters do.
In the forty years since "E.T.'s" release, a term – maybe you'd even call it a subgenre – has started to crystallize. That would be the "kids on bikes" adventures, stories that combine coming-of-age drama and comedy with a feeling of nostalgia and usually extraordinarily elements of fantasy or danger. Obviously, this concept would not exist without "E.T." The film's last act is quite literally devoted to kids on their bikes, having an adventure full of danger and enchantment. And it's easy to see why this sequence would influence so many stories that came afterwards. With all the precision staging and editing that he showed off in "Duel" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," Spielberg creates an impressively tense, exciting, and coordinated chase scene. Individual moments, of a bike sailing over a cop car and landing on the concrete with a thud, are so perfectly cut. When Elliot and his gang of buddies fly over the police barricade, it shouldn't be such a huge moment. We already know E.T. can make bikes float. Yet it's so well executed that it becomes another massively crowd-pleasing pay-off. Even if this film couldn't be more different if it did feature Indiana Jones or a giant shark, Spielberg's ability to engineer a mouth-dropping action scene remains intact.
That climatic moment also represents the perfect conclusion to Elliot's journey. He's gone from flying through the sky with just his alien best friend to doing it with a whole crowd of people. E.T. has helped him grow from a lonely kid to a young adventurer. While this simple coming-of-age arc is perhaps the film's most potent theme, it's not the only one people have sought to read into this story. Some see a messianic element to the narrative. E.T. comes from the stars. He can heal with a touch, gathers a group of followers, and is persecuted by the state. The visitor then dies before being wondrously resurrected. His time on Earth ends with him ascending back up into the heavens, though his message – that he lives in our hearts – will always stay with the people whose life he's touched. The film undeniably seems to be courting this Christ-like subtext at times, in images like E.T. glowing while wrapped in a white robe. Or the main poster, which intentionally invoked Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam." Spielberg, who is very Jewish after all, has always denied this reading. Yet it speaks to the spiritual emotions the film summons that observing an element like this in a children's movie about a goofy looking alien doesn't come off like a joke.
While you can most clearly see Spielberg's hallmarks in the film's narrative of a broken family or the miraculous intervening on a mundane life, "E.T." continues the director's uncertain relationship with authority figures. The government enforcers in "E.T." are perceived the same way a kid would. One assumes they seek to study the alien to make sure he's not spreading any extraterrestrial germs to the human population. Yet the kids don't understand that. They just see anonymous people breaking into their home to steal their best friend away. That's why the scene of the agents, in face-concealing astronaut suits, breaking into the home is shot like a horror film. The doctors who attempt to resuscitate the unconscious E.T. seem unfeeling, untouched by the wonder of seeing a real-life alien. As much as the movie paints the government as an intimidating, unsympathetic force, there's also a friendly voice among the scientist. The mission to capture E.T. is led by Keys, a man who admits that he has dreamed of meeting otherworldly life since his own childhood. One imagines he was a lonely kid very much like Elliot. He ultimately helps the boy. "E.T." continues the same thesis that occurred through "Sugarland Express," "Jaws," and "Close Encounters:" That the system is cold and distant, maybe even corrupt, but that individuals within seek to do the right thing.
One of the big questions I found myself asking during this re-watch of "E.T." is: How the hell did Spielberg get such great performances out of these kids? Henry Thomas gives a truly extraordinary experience. He never mugs or comes off as flat. He seems utterly in-tune with the story's emotional needs, while appearing totally natural in the part. The sequence where he tells the unconscious E.T. that he's going to think about him every day for the rest of his life is the best acting I've ever seen out of a young actor. Drew Barrymore, as younger sister Gertie, is adorable and energetic. Robert MacNaughton, as older brother Michael, strikes the ideal balance between teasing his siblings and clearly caring about them. Spielberg cultivated a family-like atmosphere with the kids, which is probably how he managed to direct their chaotic youthful energies into such committed performances.
Another indispensable element in “E.T.'s” success is another immediately iconic score from John Williams. The Flying Theme has a sweeping, playful melody that conveys a youthful exuberance, a sense of adventure and wonderment. Its striking string section recalling the spinning wheels of a bicycle. Other moments of the score, such as the impressively quiet opening scene, provides feelings of isolation and mystery but also curiosity. Yet other moments are full of bombast, such as the closing melody that ends the film on a feeling of triumphant but also overwhelming emotions. This captures everything the characters are experiencing in that moment, transferring it right to the viewer. It's impossible to separate “E.T.” from Williams' score and one would not be anywhere near as successful without the other.
In the pantheon of director's cuts or alternate versions of Spielberg's various films, most are fairly well regarded... With the 20th anniversary edition of “E.T.” being a notable exception. You'd think Steve would've known better too, considering the critical pummeling that greeted his buddy George's “Special Editions” of the “Star Wars” trilogy. While nothing in the re-release of “E.T.” is half as bad as the CGI tinkering Lucas made to his sci-fi classics, it's still an inferior version. Changing shotguns out for walkie-talkies somehow became the most notorious alteration, which is so odd to me. The CGI version of E.T. that replaces the original puppet in several scenes is far more distracting. The movie is great in any form but the anniversary edition of “E.T.” is inessential, to say the least. Unlike Lucas, Spielberg learned his lesson and has more-or-less buried that cut in recent years. The original 1982 version of “E.T.” is the widely available print now, while the altered cut can only be found on old DVD releases.
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