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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

7/27/2016

14 Comments

 

B
​3.00

A stranded alien is taken in by a 10-year-old boy.

Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton, and Drew Barrymore
​Initial Review by Jon Kissel

Picture
​In his first 8 movies, Steven Spielberg made two of those about aliens.  The first, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, has only been seen by two of us, at least as far as the spreadsheet is concerned, and in comparison to E.T., that film is very different.  The aliens don't show up until the end in Close Encounters, where they're present at frame one of E.T., and the endings of each film present the protagonist with a choice of whether or not to go with the aliens.  Most importantly, Close Encounters is told from an adult's perspective, while E.T. is told through a kid's.  That contributes to a much darker film, perfect for the decade in which it was released.  E.T., however, is released several years later in the more optimistic 80's, and reflects the lighter, more frivolous era of its consumption.  In exchanging adult fascination for childlike wonder and changing the protagonists' relationship with the aliens from one of obsession to one of companionship, Spielberg is making a less interesting film, albeit a more emotional one.  

I doubt anyone would call Spielberg's tale of a boy and a friendly alien one of his best films.  This is Spielberg at his cutesiest, a level he would revisit with one of his worst films, Hook.  E.T.'s demeanor is that of a small child, something that seems out of the norm for a space-faring species, but if it allows the Elliot-E.T. relationship to click, so much the better.  Spielberg can also make up the rules as he goes, pulling whatever powers E.T. needs at any moment out and having them save the day.  Telekinetic levitation can be busted out when it's most dramatically effective, and his heart light apparently functions as a defibrillator unless he's brought back to life by a human's love.  The government forces are ultra-competent until the movie needs them to not be so great at their jobs.  Everything's conspiring to make a light romp that can hit emotional nerves when necessary.  This is a movie for the heart first, and the head further down the list.
​
E.T.'s not the tightest script that Spielberg's worked with on a plot level, but I do think writer Melissa Mathison is getting the oft-more important emotion right.  We're introduced to Elliot as he begs to be let into his big brother's game of Dungeons and Dragons, as succinct an exploration of their relationship and personalities as any.  I expect this film to play very well with our members that come from parents who have been divorced, especially if they were kids when it happened.  Spielberg himself is a child of divorce and I would imagine he and Mathison collaborated tightly on subtler scenes in this movie about an alien with a stretchy neck.  The way the kids have to walk on eggshells around their mom, their capacity to really hurt her feelings, the way they step up without being told to, it all paints a picture of something that has been broken and E.T. functions as a uniting factor, or at worst, a distraction.  The line between character and plot loses its tautness as the film goes on, as talk of the divorce effectively vanishes after E.T. falls ill, but as far as emotionally contextualizing the story, Spielberg and Mathison do effective work.

Spielberg's films contain dozens of iconic shots, and E.T. might contain some of the most memorable.  Spielberg chose the image of E.T. and Elliot flying their bike across the moon as the symbol of Amblin Entertainment, his production studio, so every subsequent Spielberg film has been christened by this one.  Away from the big moments, Spielberg and DP Allen Daviau aren't shirking their duties.  The early shot of Elliot investigating his tool shed, with the dark house on the left and the bright shed on the right with a vast expanse of lawn separating the two is particularly striking, as is the later shot of a frail Elliot reflected in a biohazard mask.  Spielberg's constant musical collaborator, John Williams, however, isn't doing his best work here.  I would call E.T. overscored, even with its memorable theme.  Movie music doesn't need to be playing, loudly, over every scene.  I get what's happening, and don't need a harp to emotionally inform me.

On the acting front, Spielberg's giving himself a high degree of difficulty.  He's placing most of the burden on child actors and that's always a tough proposition, but this is a mode he finds himself comfortable in.  It's the rare, non-WWII related film of his that excludes children from the call sheet, and while young Christian Bale has probably given the best child performance in a Spielberg film, the young actors here are pretty good.  The teen cronies mug a little bit at the end when they're flying, but the main trio of child actors each avoid that most unpardonable of sins, and they each communicate big emotions when they have to.  The most important thing they have to sell is that I buy them as a unit, and I do.

E.T. has plenty of moments that work on me, and it holds up as a crowd-pleasing example of pop cinema from the burgeoning era of the blockbuster.  I do wish E.T. acted more like the most advanced being on Earth that he is, but that would likely have been a very different movie.  This is a pleasant, if disposable, film, and a B.
14 Comments
Admin
7/27/2016 09:08:09 am

Replies to initial review.

Reply
Bryan
7/27/2016 09:20:31 am

ET falls into the same category as Princess Bride. It's a cute story, but doesn't do anything spectacular.

The best part of ET were the three siblings and their acting. Each was entirely believable. The eldest son played the part of ugly, emotional teenager that modern movies seem to be forgoing in favor of teenager who is beautiful and knows everything.

The general mystery was well done. I was never 100% sure of where this was going, and when ET bit it - I was a bit shocked.

There were a few things which were incredible distracting...

The government (or whoever) was chasing ET was a major distraction. At first they seem like rednecks on Jeeps making too much noise with their keys. Then they're experts, despite the guy with the zoom lens taking pictures of seemingly nothing, who track ET down to one house. They're expert doctors, but terrible at security and they wear space suits for the effect I guess.

The school bus scene of kids seemingly doing whatever they want is such an awful movie trope. Sure kids aren't great on the bus, but I can't imagine seeing what we saw in ET of everyone going berserk.

It seemed like the whole movie used the same music on repeat.

Final thought, Is ET the origin of the awful phrase of calling someone a douchebag?

Same grade as Princess Bride. B

Reply
Jon
7/27/2016 09:51:32 am

Sick burn on Robert MacNaughton. I strongly cosign on the Princess Bride comparison.

Reply
Jon
7/27/2016 09:52:43 am

Al Swearengen was calling people 'priggish fucking douchebags' in 1876 and that series mostly used transcripts from the period.

Reply
Drew
8/1/2016 09:14:18 pm

Too many problems exist in E.T. to even remotely compare it to Princess Bride. I understand trying to get a discussion going but this is comparing a High - A baseball club (E.T.) to its Major League club (Princess Bride). Does not work.

Reply
Sean
7/27/2016 09:40:16 am

I feel like I saw ET when I was 5 but didn't remember anything about it. On rewatch this week I think I figured out why. Just about every scene I remembered as I watched but thats about it. I came to realize that in 25-30 years I wont remember much of this movie again because the plot was so damn shaky and disjointed.

Spielberg seemed like he couldn't decide which of 2 stories to tell in ET. Would he tell the story of emotional connection between an alien and a child and how that connection uplifted a broken family or would he tell an adventure story of an alien and a child escaping a government agency hellbent on finding and studying the alien species despite any collateral damage they would inflict. He tried telling both and to me that made him tell neither.

Now I'll list shit that stood out as weird to me.
-Early Dungeons and Dragons game- the room is smoky as hell are these teenagers all smoking for D&D like movies normally show smoking poker games? Wait mom's there? What's up with that?
-Keys, ok government boss guy wears his keys on the outside of his pants. It jingles so not smart when trying to do any covert tracking in the woods. p.s. IMDB lists Peter Coyote as Keys on the cast list. I didn't even realize he didn't have a name. I feel like this was victim of a rewrite. In the scary government version of this movie Keys is a badass with no endgame soft side/new stepdad potential. In the emotional uplifting family version of this movie, Keys is Elliot's actual father who reunites with the family thanks to ET. In this version he is a watered down nothing with no name.
-Space suits- why the hell do the agents enter the house in NASA space walk suits. Hazmat suits have been invented if they are worried about pathogens. These are the wrong kind of suits. Furthermore, when they bubble the house into a "sterile" environment they are wearing more typical suits for the environment only to rip them off when ET goes code blue. So much for safety. Fuck that was distractingly bad.
-Dirt bike jumps. The escape was probably the best part of the movie but not without some weird stuff. Good job making the crew wear hoodies and masks so when the professional BMX riders are doing jumps on the conveniently located construction site we don't notice it's not them. All other than the fact Elliot is now an adult riding a bike.
-Drunk Elliot- comic relief ET drinks beer and the kid gets drunk and saves frogs. Chuckle chuckle smile, hey is that Erika Eleniak Elliot is kissing? Yep. She's got range.


Overall, cute but not good. Iconic Amblin shot and nostalgia be damned. C+. The kids didn't suck as actors so it could've been worse.

Reply
Bryan
7/27/2016 09:55:35 am

Good call on drunk Elliot. I would have liked the physical/emotional connection between ET and Elliot to have an origin and more use.

Reply
Lane
7/29/2016 08:46:23 pm

There’s not much “E.T.” love here in the MMC, so let me offer a correction. It’s true that “E.T.” isn’t Spielberg’s best movie, but it is nonetheless a great movie.

Spielberg invented the summer blockbuster with “Jaws” and with “E.T.” he expands what that kind of movie can actually do and the artistic palate for what we would call a family film. “E.T.” is a kid’s movie, no doubt, but it’s for kids who never grew up. Spielberg’s fascination with Peter Pan shines through, and his future project is even alluded to as Mary reads to Gertie. As Sean noted, no adult in the film is named (besides Elliott’s mom, Mary, and even she was portrayed with a kind of childlike innocence) and beyond the mom, we don’t even see an adult’s face until the government agents are trying to resuscitate E.T. The symbolism of seeing adults for the first time, just as they are killing E.T., is like a whack over the head. Want to know how you’ve become an adult? It will be the moment you kill the thing that used to give you the most wonder.

The most important line in the film, in my opinion, was from “Keys” who says, as E.T. is dying, “I've been wishing for this since I was 10 years old, I don't want him to die.” In that one line, the entire movie is revealed. We’re not really watching a movie about an alien visitation to earth (I mean, we are but…); we’re really watching a director channel his inner 10 year old boy through the medium of film. I read this movie as an allegory for the power of film. Film is a kind of magic; it’s a place in the modern world (symbolized by government scientists and creepy black vans that listen to your private conversations) where wonder can still exist. When we step into a movie theater we are all children.

“E.T.” is a movie that doesn’t apologize for what it is, and doesn’t need to. It’s a big movie that eschews nuance and logic (how did the dog show up in the forest at the end, anyway?) in order to get us all in touch with our inner children. I’m not ashamed to say that I sat on my couch, watching this on a Friday morning, and shedding a tear or two as E.T. hobbled up the ramp to his space ship. And bingo—that’s what this movie is for. Let “Alien” or “Predator” take us to the darker nightmares of alien warfare where science and logic and violence rule; this is a movie about the heart.

It’s unfortunate that when we think about big summer blockbusters that have an actual soul, we have to think in a nostalgic framework.

I’m good on this film: A.

Reply
Bobby
7/30/2016 11:27:43 pm

What a difference 25ish years makes... I don't recall the last time I watched this, but I apparently gave it a nostalgic fueled A- on the spreadsheet before. This makes me wonder how many others would be vastly different watching them now.

The best parts of this movie are Drew Barrymore and Harvey the dog... E.T. was cool, too.

I could probably copy and paste Sean's review and call it a day. Now, I get what Lane is saying, and I agree... there's some strong inner childhood stuff going on here. But while it's great to have a shit-ton of solid symbolism, it still needs a coherent and capable story around it. I, like Bryan, would have liked more about the connection between Elliot and E.T.... as well as E.T. and the flower. Sure, he healed the flower and Elliot, but they were connected before Elliot hurt himself. With that, what actually brings E.T. back from the dead? Was he never dead in the first place? I read some theory that E.T. breaths CO2... and while there is plenty here for plants, there's not enough to sustain him long term. So, when they put him on dry ice, the the CO2 was more than enough to kick start him back to life. Of course, he would have likely needed to be alive still, or at least no worst than mostly dead....

But, this movie isn't anything of the sort like The Princess Bride, and certainly not nearly as good. There's not a single interesting character here, let alone multiple, and the plot is a mess. The biggest plot critique of TPB, a fantasy story being read to a kid mind you, was how Inigo knew the Man in Black was making the sound of true suffering.

I'm between a C and C+, and will give it the latter for nostalgia sake.

Reply
Sean
8/1/2016 05:19:20 pm

Copy mine and call it a day- sounds like a Mediocrity nomination. Put it on the list!

Reply
Drew
8/1/2016 09:09:46 pm

Lane was right; this was a movie about the heart and that made no sense to me. E.T. was about a blase' as a movie can be. It was neither cute nor endearing. Not to be harsh, there were some laugh out loud moments. When E.T. was dressed as a woman, it reminded me a short, ugly lady one could find in the supermarket on a weekend and when it saw Michael with the fake knife through his head and tried to heal him, I almost spit up my water.

Also, there were iconic quotes and moments. "E.T. phone home," "Be good," and "Ouch." When riding through forest, E.T. helps Elliot glide by the moon and the biker "gang" do the same when trying to get E.T. to some point in the woods.

Despite those laughable and iconic moments, the movie made little sense. How did E.T. get lost? When "phoning home," how did it end up in a creek? Why were the G-men in the shadows stealthy only to kind? How was Elliot able to feel what E.T. felt? Where was Drew Barrymore at Halloween? How did they find her? Too many plot holes that needed explanation but Spielberg was more concerned about the alien getting home than filling them.

The only saving grace that keeps this film above water was the music. John Williams is a fantastic composer and in E.T. he was superb. Way to save the film, Maestro.

Grade: C-

Reply
Bobby
8/1/2016 11:48:15 pm

Drew was dressed like a ghost, with the bike by the fence, right? That's the only one I can answer, and it isn't even concrete!

Reply
Shane
8/3/2016 01:48:52 pm

Brings back to childhood
Adventurous and wonder
Tugs at the heart strings
A-

Reply
Cooker
8/17/2016 01:09:59 pm

E.T.
I developed a grudge against the movie E.T. back in 2002 when they released the 20th anniversary edition in theaters. I went and saw it and was incredibly pissed off by the “added material” in which it’s clearly obvious that E.T. is digital and no longer the puppet that appeared in the original (Think Jabba the Hutt in the special edition Star Wars films). I was done.

But I opted to watch it again, and was delighted that the version on Netflix didn’t include digital E.T. taking a bath.

First off, a few E.T. non movie-related comments.

1. The film (okay, this is kind of movie-related) inspired several terrific pop culture references (Think Family Guy with James Woods and the trail of Reese’s Pieces).

2. The ride at Universal Studios is creepy as hell. I mean, it’s all fun and exciting, but then you go up to E.T.’s planet. Freaky.

3. I vaguely remember a grade school musical I participated in and one of the younger classes sang a song with the lyrics, “E.T., you’re as cute as can be.” That’s all I can remember, but it was annoying as hell.

4. I love the theory that by E.T. seeming to recognize the Yoda costume on Halloween, he might possibly be a Jedi.

5. I could go on and on about how terrible the Angry Video Game Nerd Movie is in which he finally does a review of the Atari E.T. game during the end credits, but I’ll just stop there and jump into the movie.

First off, the cast is great. Dee Wallace (met her many years ago, nice lady) as the mom, and all the kids are fantastic. I always forget that C. Thomas Howell (who would portray Ponyboy Curtis in the Outsiders the following year) plays one of the friends. The initial reactions/screams to first seeing E.T. are all classic, and I truly believed that the three leads were siblings by the way they interacted with one another. And what about Harrison Ford’s uncredited appearance as the science teacher?

The plot, well, I can agree with previous comments. It was a mix-match. I definitely wanted more of an understanding of the link between E.T. and Elliot. As a family film, though, getting too “Sciency” might draw the kids away from it. And the “Kid meets alien, kid helps alien get back home” simple story is well, just that. It reminded me of the MST3K episode Pod People. While Elliot was naming off his action figure collection, I literally wanted to repeat the Tom Servo spoken line, “He doesn’t speak your language, dickweed.” Of course, this is proven to be incorrect in E.T. The use of the “government officials” was also puzzling, but then again do adult authority figures in kid movies really accomplish much?

Everyone is saying that E.T. is a film that “tugs at the heart.” Well, as a true kid-at-heart (sometimes I think I have Peter Pan syndrome, ironically read in the movie, and yes, I’m also a big fan of Hook), I simply eat this shit up. I put my differences aside from the anniversary edition and bumped my previously ranked B to an A-

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