A troubled child summons the courage to help a friendly alien escape Earth and return to his home-world.
Oh, Where to start with this Steven Spielberg classic! Released in 1982 and unlike anything released before it! Spielberg released E.T the same year as Poltergeist (1982) with the intention of making enough profit with Poltergeist to cover the expected losses he would endure with the movie E.T. It was however, the movie that he really wanted to make and where his real passion lay. Poltergeist was the complete opposite of E.T, it was a kids worst nightmare brought to movie. E.T however, grossed nearly 6 times as much as Poltergeist, reaching $436 million.
We begin our story panning across a starry sky at night and cut to a spaceship comfortably sitting in a Californian forest with its lights on. Revealed to us are extra-terrestrial creatures harvesting the local plant and rock life for further study. About 3.5 feet high, with long fingers and a large torso. Their torsos begin to light up and they begin to return to their spaceship. Simultaneously a car pulls up not too far away and 5 men exit the vehicle with flashlights. Hearing a stranded creature cry for help and seeing the glowing torso they begin chasing it. The creature runs in the direction of its ship but it is too late and it is abandoned. In a haze of confusion and searching for safety it enters the local town, enters the back garden of and is found by Elliot (Henry Thomas). Elliot with the help of his brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton) and Gertie (Drew Barrymore) begin bonding with the creature and try to help and domesticate it. They discover that the Aliens health is getting progressively worse in our atmosphere and needs to get home or it will die. While all along a man (Peter Coyote) from the car at the forest closes in on his search for the Alien and his intentions are not positive.
Perhaps more impressive then the storyline of this movie is the absolutely spectacular score written to accompany it, a pleasure for all the senses and works in perfect tandem with the visual storyboard. E.T will be a favourite movie of most children in the late 80’s early 90’s as it’s made primarily for children. The combination of issues Elliot has in the movie such as his parents going through a separation or Elliot feeling unimportant as the middle child in the family, along with most of the movie being filmed at waist level, how a child would view the world, gives every child something they can relate to. The funny thing is Elliot says to Gertie at one point jokingly that “only kids can see him” but for the majority of the movie, only kids do get to see the Alien. The Alien itself is spectacularly constructed and a real feat of creative design, with multiple hands working behind the camera to operate its entire body and make it as lifelike as possible but also shares little animal kingdom nuances like exposing its neck to indicate trust. The Alien is not unlike the creatures featured previous in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).The movie is probably has the biggest product placement in history with ‘Reece’s Pieces’ attaining worldwide recognition following its release and use to lure the Alien from hiding in the movie. The movie was released twice for home entertainment, originally in 1983 and then again in 2002 in a special 20th anniversary edition. The anniversary edition had a plethora of additional scenes and remastered a scene in the final third of the movie that Steven Spielberg had a 20 year issue with, Spielberg had a problem with the use of guns in this children’s movie. They instead were replaced by walkie talkies. Unfortunately in the final third of the movie were are subject to an emotional battering with too much emphasise on the rising volume of the music then the acting, which was sufficient enough.
A feat of film making and a movie that changed the course of movie history, you will experience every emotion possible. Fear, excitement, panic, devastating sadness, relief, hope and unbridled joy.
Futureproof Movie Review Score: 8.0
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