E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
“Best” and “worst” are, of course, subjective terms,
especially when it comes to art. Different people assign different values to things
using all sorts of criteria, so it’s impossible to make superlative statements
that can’t apply to everyone. But in my opinion, “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”
is the best movie ever made.
When we think of “best movies,” academics usually reference
movies like “Citizen Kane,” or “The Godfather,” or “Lawrence of Arabia.” These
are all critically-acclaimed movies, but they require certain prerequisites in
order to fully appreciate them: a knowledge of history, a knowledge of culture,
and, most significantly, age. Many of these “best movies” simply cannot be seen
or understood by children, and they therefore exclude a large number of
potential audience members. To watch something as a child, as an adolescent, and
as an adult and to still experience profound emotion is a feat that no other movie
does as well as “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.”
Youth.
When I saw “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” in theaters in the
summer of 1982, I was a 6-year-old boy. I was just a little bit older than
Gertie (Drew Barrymore), but I related more to the 10-year-old boy Elliott
(Henry Thomas). We spoke the same language and had similar interests, and the
motivations of the grown-ups in the movie were more alien to me and Elliott
than E.T. himself. During the course of the movie, I experienced all the
emotions that Elliott experienced, and, through Elliott, I learned some new
ones as well. After feeling the shock and fright of getting scared by (and
scaring) E.T., Elliott didn’t retreat; instead, he went out on his own to find
this scary creature, luring him with (of course) candy. That brief scene of Elliott
sowing the ground with Reese’s Pieces and avoiding “Keys” (Peter Coyote) showed
me an example of bravery and courage that I could understand. When E.T. says
“stay” to Elliott as he is examined by scientists, I heard what Elliott heard: to
comfort Elliott, E.T. was sadly parroting Elliott’s words as E.T.’s condition
deteriorated. I felt Elliott’s grief and anger at losing E.T., and his
subsequent elation when E.T. comes back to life. I was in awe of the teenagers
as they used their biking skills to evade the authorities. The authorities’
guns frightened me, which made my relief and joy at the boys’ escape flight
that much more powerful. I felt the sadness of their parting, a parting that was
ultimately accepted as necessary. When we first see Elliott, he is a boy who
couldn’t get anyone to take him seriously. The last shot of Elliott looking up
in the sky as E.T.’s spaceship disappears is not that of the boy we saw in the
beginning, but of a young man ready for the future. As John Williams’s score
boomed its final chord and the screen went black, I wiped the tears from my
eyes and I knew that watching movies would be my favorite thing to do.
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” came out on VHS in the fall of
1988, and I got it for Christmas. I think I watched tape at least twice a day
during that holiday break. Now 13-years-old, I was able to better understand Elliott’s
pain, especially that of missing his father. I was happy when he got to kiss
the pretty girl in his class. I felt guilt when watching Elliott and his older
brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton) coercing Gertie by “torturing” her stuffed
animal. Of course, a TV monitor can’t project the same scope and scale of a
movie screen, but the beauty of the story shone through nevertheless.
As years passed, I would revisit the movie rarely, with
other interests taking my time. When watching the movie again as a senior in
high school, I was shocked at how I now could relate to Michael. As a child, I
saw Michael as much an authority figure as their mother Mary (Dee Wallace).
When Michael poorly backed out of the driveway, as a kid, I was shocked that he
was that bad; I thought everyone who could get behind the wheel of a car would
be an expert. His line of “we’re all gonna die, and they’re never gonna give me
my license!” sang so true to me as a new driver that I had an epiphany about
this movie: all the characters in this movie were written as real people.
(Well, except for the grown-ups, right? But I’ll get to that later.) This movie
stood out in my memory because of that enduring feeling: I could relate to
someone other than Elliott.
Change.
For those of us of a certain age, national and world
politics made less of an impact on our lives and were therefore less of a
priority. For older people, the experience of the end of the Cold War was a
disruption of the world order, a welcome one, but a disruption nevertheless. For
people my age, the end of the Cold War was seen as more of an inevitability and
a hope for new opportunities. It wasn’t exactly a topic that young people could
debate about.
Pop culture, on the other hand, was an easier field for
younger people. The impact that certain movies had in our young lives made them
an integral part of our psyche, so it’s understandable when something you once
held as constant and true is changed in any way, even in the name of progress.
When George Lucas re-released the original Star Wars trilogy with added effects
in preparation for the release of “Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace,”
the alterations felt more like desecration than improvement to some people. If
Lucas had only made cosmetic improvements like recompositing footage or
cleaning up matte lines, there wouldn’t have been much outrage. But Lucas’s
additions were so significant that his “improvements” or “corrections” invalidated
our enjoyment of a supposedly inferior experiences, experiences that we had
held to be ever unchanging.
As the years passed, my generation became more aware of the
impact of the rest of the world outside of popular entertainment. There were so
many changes: the Clinton Administration’s scandals, the war in Bosnia, and the
2000 presidential election nonsense had taken its toll on American society. We
were all needing something definite to hold onto, be it a new experience like
“Harry Potter” or “The Matrix,” or re-experiencing older ones, like listening
to forgotten hits from the 80’s by downloading mp3s en masse from
Napster.
And, of course, there was 9/11.
No matter your age, there was no denying that a profound
change had occurred on a worldwide scale. Nothing would ever be the same
anymore. Everything was in flux, and everyone had to confront the harsh reality
that there were forces who were willing to do anything to change what they
didn’t like. There was a widespread feeling of powerlessness, an existential
fear that unfocused anger would threaten to run unchecked on a global scale.
That need to hold onto something like a cherished memory grew even more
intense, and when Steven Spielberg re-released a Special Edition of “E.T.,” it
was not hard to feel insulted.
It was the summer of 2002, and the Special Edition was
released to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the theatrical
release of “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.” There were only a few changes that Spielberg
made to “E.T.,” and some were not too bad. One example was the modification of
E.T.’s escape from authorities in the beginning of the movie: instead of an
obvious doll on a track, a CGI-version of E.T. bounding away using his arms was
digitally inserted. But even the subtle changes, like E.T.’s face being
digitally-enhanced to look more expressive seemed uncharacteristic. It was my
mother who voiced what I felt was wrong. She said, “E.T. is an alien; he
wouldn’t have human expressions.” She was right. E.T. looked and acted more
like a cartoon than a corporeal entity, and I found that to be a little
condescending. More specifically, my 6-year-old inner child felt a little
patronized, and that hurt. But that was nothing compared to the digital
replacement of the firearms with walkie-talkies.
I knew that Steven Spielberg was uncomfortable with
displaying guns in the presence of children, and it was certainly
understandable considering the horrors of the previous years involving
firearms, most notably the 1999 shooting spree committed by teenagers at
Columbine High School. But it was precisely the threat of violence that allowed
us to cheer so hard by the miracle of the boys’ and E.T.’s escape into the sky.
The greater the fear of danger, the more palpable the feeling of relief and
joy, and Spielberg took that away. In his effort to spice things up, Spielberg
made something blander. In his effort to sanitize, Spielberg made something
more sterile. During a time where we as a society had experienced so much loss
in the real world, losing a sense of joy in the fantasy world hit some a bit
too hard, and in a world where nothing was certain anymore, this alteration was
unequivocally declared by more reactive fans to be nothing less than a
perversion. Were the minds of Spielberg’s critics so fragile that they could
unironically proclaim that he and George Lucas had “ruined their childhoods?” If
you believe them to have been weakened by an ever-changing and more dangerous
world, then maybe. Personally, I was extremely disappointed, but I empathized
with Steven Spielberg; this movie was his baby, and like a parent, he
wanted to correct what he felt to be a mistake that he did to his child. But
like a parent, he couldn’t see the perfection in the masterpiece he created; what
he saw as flaws actually made his work endearing to the world.
Adulthood.
More years passed. I enlisted in the Air Force. I got
married and moved overseas to serve in Okinawa. I moved back home, and I became
a father. I did a tour of duty in Iraq. I got divorced after 9 years of
marriage, and shortly afterwards, my enlistment in the Air Force ended. Jobs
came and went. Relationships, love, and heartache all came and went. The only
thing I was certain of was that I was a good father to a loving daughter. I
made it a point to be present for her no matter what, and our time together was
always precious. I counted myself lucky that she was interested in watching
movies, and I was anticipating the day when I could finally introduce “E.T.” to
her (the DVD or the original version, of course). When we finally
watched it in 2017, she was 9-years-old. I was 41.
I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d seen the
movie, and it was the first time I watched it as a parent. On that level, I was
now able to relate to Mary, Elliott’s mother. I also could relate to “Keys,”
and I smiled when he told Elliott that E.T. “came to me, too.” As a child all
those years ago, I was irritated by that exchange. E.T. didn’t come to you,
I had thought. Keys said he had been wishing for this since he was a boy, but I
had thought that was impossible. You’re a grown-up, I had thought. You
could never have been a boy, and you could never understand what it means to be
a child. Now as an adult, hearing Keys talk to Elliott, I finally
understood what he meant.
Unfortunately, even though I understood and could now relate
to the experiences of the adults in the movie, I wasn’t feeling it as
much, because part of my attention was directed towards my daughter and making
sure she was enjoying it. That was really my priority, and I was relieved after
we finished the movie and she had declared it to be the “best movie ever.”
Mission accomplished. Milestone achieved.
In following years, I’d played back the movie in my head,
and as I learned more about my inner child in therapy, I finally felt what Keys
had meant. Keys saw himself in Elliott and was showing Elliott his honest and heartfelt
appreciation in the only way he could. “He came to me, too,” continues to hit
me hard in my memory; there is a child within us all, and that inner child
needs as much love and validation as real children. E.T. was able to give those
things to Elliott, and through Elliott, Keys was able to feel some of that
validation as well.
From boys to men.
Elliott’s time with E.T. profoundly changes Elliott from a
timid boy to an assured leader. Elliott starts off the movie pleading to get a
chance to play Dungeons & Dragons with the older boys. The boys reflexively
mock his whining tone, and it’s painfully clear that Elliott has absolutely no
authority with this group. In the third act, Elliott becomes a general, with Michael
as his adjutant. It’s Elliott who makes up the escape plan and gives the orders to Michael and his friends.
There’s a small moment that means more to me now after
having served in a combat area: Michael pulls up the stolen government van to
his friends and tells them to “get the bikes,” to which one of them immediately
exclaims, “LET’S DO IT!” without question or hesitation. They then “suit up” in
their “helmets” of hats and sunglasses with such seriousness that it’s
hilarious, but the camaraderie they display is nothing short of inspiring.
These would-be cavaliers then work as a team, following
Elliott’s lead, expertly using the terrain to their advantage. They split up,
evade, and eventually reunite like cavalrymen, and through the miracle of E.T.’s
telekinesis, the cavaliers become pilots. It’s a quest that their time spent
playing Dungeons & Dragons might have prepared them for.
Michael has one final moment with E.T. as they say their
goodbyes. Michael reaches out to touch E.T.’s face, which E.T. reflexively
avoids, but eventually allows Michael to do. This is the first and only tender
touch that Michael displays throughout the movie. Michael is the family’s steadfast
knight, and in addition to displaying strength, he displays vulnerability. When
E.T. verbally thanks him, Michael responds with a kind and dutiful, “You’re
welcome.”
Four decades later.
And now, “E.T.” is back in theaters for its 40th
Anniversary. I rarely go to re-releases like these, but this was one I couldn’t
miss. How serendipitous it was that it happened to be playing while out on a
date with my girlfriend, a woman who also loves the movie. Before we knew it, I’m
in my seat next to my her about to watch my favorite movie of all time, the
first time seeing it in a movie theater since 1982.
It was a revelation.
All my previous experiences with this movie were amplified,
and there were new ones as well. Melissa Mathison’s script allowed me to see
Mary not just as a parent anymore, but as a woman in her own right,
trying to deal with the hurt of not only being a newly-single mom, but also as
an ex-wife and a woman who pushes her own individual needs aside in order to
deal with the logistics of having three kids, a job, and a dog. I felt her
frustration when she said, “Stupid Ragu, I knew it wouldn’t come out!” as she
saw that the dry cleaners couldn’t get a stain out of her clothes. I remembered the deleted scene on the DVD
bonus features that elaborated why Mary was wearing a tight cat costume for
Halloween: she was about to go on a date while the kids would be out
trick-or-treating. It makes Michael’s and Elliott’s stunned reaction to her
costume that much more hilarious in context. In that deleted scene, we also
learn that she was stood up, and it makes her anger as she drives to look for
her kids understandable, as she grumbles “Mexico” under her breath,
referring to her ex-husband’s whereabouts with (presumably) his new girlfriend.
When Mary yells “This is my house!” as the space-suited government
agents corner her in her home, I felt the power she was trying to muster as she
was trying to keep control of her and her family’s sanctuary. I could never
have understood the struggle Mary had been going through until now, and I felt
her anguish.
Throughout the movie, we never see any of the adults’ faces.
Spielberg, taking cues from Tex Avery and Charles Schulz, has all adult
characters (except for Mary) shot without showing their faces. John Williams plays
a sinister melody whenever the government agents appear, and when Keys’s face
finally is shown, it is eerily lit from lights under his sterile containment suit.
Knowing Keys’s benevolent intentions, it seems unfair the way the movie manipulates
the audience into immediately distrusting this authority figure, and it’s a
brilliant filmmaking choice. His kind and supportive words to Elliott may be
touching, but they’re just not enough to overcome this prejudice against Keys
and his men that was established from the start of the movie. When I was a kid,
I remember agreeing with Elliott when he yelled at the doctors, “you’re
killing him!” I remember being extremely shaken when the doctors used the defibrillators
on E.T.’s body, thinking they were torturing the poor dying alien. Now, I know
they were trying their best to save him, and they didn’t have time to spend
trying to explain to Elliott what they were doing, I wanted to reach out to try
and calm Elliott down, but I also knew it wouldn’t have made any difference. No
matter how smart Elliott was, this understanding was still something beyond his
capability, and as I watched the doctors and scientists do their work, I noticed
for the first time, I’m now older than all of these people. It was at
this point that I found myself for the first time, absurdly, incomprehensibly,
relating to E.T.
The (missing) father.
Steven Spielberg has been on record about a couple of things
regarding this movie: first, that it was a story borne out of the loss of his
father’s presence after his parents’ divorce; second, that any Christian thematic
parallels were purely coincidental from this Jewish director. While ostensibly coincidental,
parallels of E.T. to Jesus are impossible to miss. Love, death, sacrifice, faith,
and resurrection are central to the structure of this movie. This superpowered entity
from the heavens, a being that is able to perform incredible feats like restoring
a plant’s health, healing injuries, levitating objects, and flying, is a
presence whose brief time among mortals enriches the lives of all he comes into
contact with. “His being here is a miracle,” Keys tells Elliott. The power
of faith, first shown in a tender moment as E.T. and Elliott listen to Mary
reading Peter Pan to Gertie, is echoed when Gertie wishes E.T. to come
back, a wish that Mary seconds. Allegories of death and resurrection within
literature and performance aren’t exactly novel, but the wholesomeness
of its presence in “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” makes the power of this theme
incredibly heartwarming to watch, even for a non-Christian like myself.
But throughout the years, it was the loss of a father figure
for Elliott that I had the hardest time understanding. Because Elliott’s father
wasn’t in the movie and only mentioned a handful of times, I never gave much
thought about how his absence affected the characters; if he wasn’t there, he wasn’t
important. As a kid, when Michael and Elliott find their dad’s shirt in their
garage and smelled it, I found it a cute scene, but ultimately unnecessary,
really only there to show how the government found E.T.’s location. Now, I
completely understand what Spielberg was trying to show: the giant hole in his
life that Elliott now had because his father wasn’t there. Michael was older
and could understand: his outburst of anger at Elliott for upsetting their mother
by bringing up their missing dad and “Sally” is not coming from an insensitive
older brother but from a dutiful eldest son defending his mother. “Think about
how other people feel for a change!” is not something you’d expect to hear from
a teenage boy, but from a young man, now the default man of the house. Gertie
was too young to understand what was missing: all she knows is that her father is
“in Mexico.” It’s Elliott, the middle child, that is hit hardest. He has no one
to turn to for support. Gertie is the baby, so she is the one that is taken
care of. Michael has his friends for support, but Michael and his friends won’t
waste time with emotional nonsense from Elliott, who is (in their eyes) a “douchebag”
and a “wimp.” This boy needs his father, and the bond that Elliott forms with
E.T. takes that place.
The bond that E.T. and Elliott share is obvious, but as a
kid, I perceived it to come gradually. Watching it with new eyes, the bond is immediate.
It’s a bond created for survival, and examining the bond more closely, it is
clear that it is unfortunately parasitic. That is not to say that E.T. is
consciously harming Elliott, but Elliott’s loss of self is disturbing to watch
as the movie progresses. When the scientists discover that E.T.’s and Elliott’s
brainwave patterns are perfectly synced, the implication that Elliott’s words might
actually be E.T.’s is profound. When Elliott repeatedly tells Keys that “he
wants to go home,” it’s not that hard to hear E.T. saying through Elliott, “I
want to go home.” Later, Elliott inexplicably starts to recover, while E.T.
starts to deteriorate. As their bond breaks, E.T. says “Stay,” to Elliott. This
exchange, which I had once thought was E.T. saying one of the few words he
knew, takes on a more poignant tone when interpreted E.T. as telling Elliott to
“stay” as E.T. willfully releases Elliott from a vital bond, sacrificing his
own life in order to spare Elliott from a conjoined death. Elliott’s recovery,
in other words, is no longer inexplicable.
In the middle of the movie, Elliott tearfully pleads to E.T.
to stay, that they “could be happy” together and they could “grow up” together.
At the end, when E.T. asks Elliott to “come,” Elliott sadly but apologetically answers
“stay,” telling E.T. that he will stay home with his own loving family. It’s a
decision that hurts, but it’s one that Elliott makes completely on his own as an
individual. When E.T. tells Elliott “I’ll
be right here” and points a glowing finger to Elliott’s head, I felt the
reassurance coming from E.T. for the first time, while simultaneously feeling
Elliott’s sadness and resolve as he whispers, “Good-bye.”
For Everyone.
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” is unique not just because it is
a movie that can be seen and appreciated by all ages, since all ages (except
for the very old) are represented, but also because there are no villains in
this story. It is a story that is best told through the medium of film, with
all the visual and aural magic that only film can provide. It is a product of
its time, yet the humanity of all the characters makes it timeless. Think about
when Michael comes home from football practice to raid the fridge. As he’s
singing Elvis Costello’s “Accidents Will Happen,” he scans the fridge and mumbles,
“nothing but health shit.” A timeless sentiment.
These sentiments transcend time. No movie has ever shown how
the same miraculous encounter could affect different people of different ages in
the same way. “E.T.,” both the movie and the character, came to me when I was a
boy. E.T. came to me as a teen. E.T. came to me as an adult. E.T. came to me as
a father.
E.T. is here for everyone.