E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial

by Jerry Roberts

I feel blessed that I was 10 years-old when E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial was released in 1982. I feel blessed that the first time that I saw this wonderful movie I was just at the threshold between childhood wonderment and pre-teen reality. I was still at the age at which I didn't have to take a step backwards emotionally to enjoy it, I felt that it was a movie made just for me. Now I have to take a step back into my childhood but fortunately cynacism doesn't cloud my enjoyment.

E.T. is a glorious film, a story of friendship, frustration, love, responsibility, and it's also a red-blooded adventure and a lot of fun. It doesn't talk down to it's audience like a "children's movie" but Steven Spielberg presents the story at the level that a 10 year-old would tell it. You can tell he's a kid at heart.

The story in E.T. is universally known and unbearably simple. A boy from a broken home, with no friends, absent of the ability to empathize, meets a creature from another world who has been left behind on this planet during a mission to collect plants. E.T. is alone, scared to death and knows that beings from this planet are searching high and low to find him. Why? He probably doesn't want to know.

Wandering into a small California town he finds himself in the backyard shed of Elliott and after some scares and then some cautious approaches they quickly realize that they can trust one another. Their bond is mutual, but it is also empathetic (each is kind of lost on this planet) and telepathic. What the alien feels the boy feels also and so he knows that hiding his new friend would probably be a good idea. His siblings have the same initial approach but they come to love this alien.

The movie is specific about the kids but wants them to stand for all kids, that's why it isn't specific about their lives other than the very basics (note that the movie never gives them a last name).

The casting of the kids is essential. 10 year-old Elliott is just the right age to deal with keeping E.T. hidden and dealing with the nature of their friendship. He is flanked by an older, more cynical, teenage brother named Michael whose friends represent the kind of immature smart-alleck gawkyness that Elliott witnesses but has yet to experience. On the opposite side there is a younger sister, Gertie, who still lives in a world of dolls, dress-up and Sesame Street. If Elliott were any younger he may have been scared away, any older and he might have called the authorities for help.

The movie explores E.T.'s domestic experience with all the usually "alien-around-the-house" destructiveness that is common in a fish-out-of-water tale. There's the introduction of junk food, television, toys and the inevitable tussle with the frightening entity known as the family dog. Plus there is a strange connection with a resurrected geranium that, at one point, acts as E.T.'s pseudo-heart monitor.

E.T himself is a masterwork. He is really little more than a collection of rubber, paint and robotronics but fused so convincingly that the filmmakers were able to rise beyond just a clever puppet with blinking eyes. They gave him a life, an energy, they made him expressive so we feel what he feels. He's not just an over-sized Muppet but a fully realized soul who, like Yoda before him, comes to life and is able to fool the eye with life-like details.

And the movie would be nothing without the element of danger. All through the movie, as E.T. hides in the safety of the children's closet, fearful goverment scientists are circling the area and closing in on his location.

The movie has some things in common with another Speilberg production, Poltergeist, which was released exactly one week before this film. Both had Spielberg's touch, but while he directed E.T. he only took a producer credit for Poltergeist and gave directing duties to Texas Chainsaw Massacre scribe Tobe Hooper (although it's been famously debated ever since that Spielberg actually directed both). The two films are polar opposites of one another, where one film is about hope and love, the other is about fear and terror. Both films maintain their center in the children's closet, Elliott hides E.T. away in the safety of his closet while the one in Poltergeist becomes the center from which the terror consistantly flows. The best of both films is the way Spielberg allows his character's personalities to drive the story, both have wonderful special effects but they don't take over the film.

Spielberg is best as seeing through the eyes of his characters. He begins by seeing through the eyes of his alien to help understand how he sees our world. Revisting the film I noticed a shot in the beginning that illustrates this without a single word. As the movie opens E.T. and his alien crew are wandering through a California forest at night and the only light is the brightness from the interior of the ship, he walks past the trunks of two giant redwood trees whose branches are hidden by the darkness. Look closely and the tree trunks almost resemble a pair of giant legs.

Look at another moment when the aliens turn a corner and a pick-up trunk turns in their direction. The headlights could be, to them, a pair of beaming eyes and I could swear the truck roars when it turns into the shot. Speilberg could have pumped up the tention of that scene with a lot of stinger music but he plays the scene as the aliens would see it.

Then there are the moments of pure exhileration. Take the most famous moment in the movie when Elliot nestles E.T. into the basket of his bike and they ride into the forest to set up a makeshift communicator that they have built to signal the alien's home planet. The bike takes off, flying through the night sky and the moment, coupled with John Williams uplifting score, is one of the cinema's most thrilling moments. The polar opposite of course is E.T. 's death scene in which the scientists have pushed their way into Elliott's home and begun experiments on the alien who is apparently dying. The tone and the emotion of that moment make for one of the most heart-tugging death scenes in movie history. Spielberg pulls us along emotionally but never tells us how to feel.

That scene is the one everyone remembers because it's hard not to cry. But for me, the most tearful moment in the film is the last one, as the two friends part company. Look closely at the scene, look at the lighting, the composition, the camera movement, couple with Williams' beautiful score and you see a moment that really reminds me of why I go to the movies.

When it was released in 1982 no one was more surprised by it's success then Spielberg himself. He knew it would be popular but he never suspected that it would become the best selling movie of all time, outgrossing box office champ Star Wars (until Star Wars reclaimed it's title 15 years later only to be bested by Titanic before the year was out). The movie had almost the same kind of universal praise and merchandise as Star Wars but curiously E.T.'s public reputation has slipped. Most of the audience who made it such a hit have grown up in a cynical age and generally sniff and dismiss it as a soppy children's movie. An example of it's slipping impact could be seen in it's unsuccessful 20th anniversary rerelease in 2002 which used computer effects to make E.T. more expressive, added a curious but unnecessary bathtub scene and replaced the Fed's guns with walkie-talkies. I wasn't much of a fan of these changes, purity is the theme of this movie and I choose to watch it's purity, I like it when it's not dressed up for the 21st Century.

The world may have moved past E.T. but I never did. I still find it to be a wonderful experience, just as I did when I saw it at age 10. Back then I regarded it with wonder and awe. Now, as I slip ever-too-swiftly into middle-age, the magic of E.T. enchants me still. It has a winning heart that is timeless, tearful and beautiful.