CHAPTER 16: THE HOME MEDIA EXPERIENCE
Steven Awalt: I waited a grueling six years to see E.T. again after it played in theaters in 1982. I don’t recall us seeing the 1985 rerelease, but I was desperate to have it at home on VHS. The day it went up for pre-order at our neighborhood video store, I asked for a copy to be ordered. I then purchased the film on LaserDisc (incredible box set!), DVD, Blu-ray, UHD, Digital. It’s an essential film and a no-brainer when it comes to wanting to upgrade it as the formats and resolution got better and better. Having it in such a stunning UHD now is pretty amazing, especially looking back at how low-quality VHS and even LaserDisc are now in hindsight.
Ron Dassa (owner, Laser Blazer): The CLV E.T. came out in ’88 and the CAV in ’89. Back then there were only a few thousand titles on LaserDisc and so everything was being asked for, but E.T. was on most people’s request list, definitely top five. Then, Universal came out with the Signature Collection boxed set in 1996, which did well, considering the list price was $149.98. E.T. was also highly requested for DVD, which came out in 1997, but E.T. not making it until 2002.
Mike Matessino: I had the initial VHS in 1988 and then the LaserDisc, and all the iterations that followed. My connection with the movie gradually elided into a professional one, with doing Q&As at screenings and then working on the soundtrack, so it’s hard to get back a place of purely looking at it for enjoyment, especially after seeing it more times theatrically than any other movie, perhaps around eighty now. I will say, however, that the best way to experience E.T. now is by going to the live concert version. The response of the audience brings you right back to 1982 and allows you to marvel at just how powerful a movie it is.
Saul Pincus: I’ve owned E.T. in nearly every home video incarnation. The pre-HD options were a tough go, because so much of the film relied on Allen Daviau’s exquisite, subtle night photography and the Impressionism of the 35mm theatrical experience could get lost, especially on wider lenses in the forest. And though home video E.T. worked just as well as an emotional experience, it was now a much more personal emotional experience. I missed what the audience brought to it, that communal heartbeat. The film was a marvel to most audiences of the time.
Brian Herzlinger: I own E.T. on every format—Beta, VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray, 4K… even Hi-8 back in the day! However, nothing beats watching a film in a packed cinema!
Mark A. Altman: I do think the film plays well at home since it’s fairly intimate without a great deal of scope as opposed to something like Jaws or Raiders that play much better on the big screen. Or even 1941. It’s funny; even though I had it on LaserDisc and DVD and Blu-ray, I never watched it again until the 4K version came out and I could show it to my kids.
Steven Awalt: While I was waiting to see the film again all those years, it felt like something of a dream having seen it in 1982. I think by Steven Spielberg holding out on releasing it to home video it kept the film a bit more special, again magical, like this beautiful shared memory the world had. There’s something to be said about having to wait for something versus having hundreds of thousands of films now at our fingertips. As movie mad kids who grew up in the 70s/80s can attest, we had to “recreate” the experience of seeing movies through the novelizations, storybooks, comics, and Topps trading cards.
CHAPTER 17: THE TIE-IN MERCHANDISE
Gary Gerani (editor, Topps bubblegum card series): We were pitched E.T. ahead of time, because we already had a good relationship with Spielberg [for our trading-card sets of Close Encounters and Raiders]. I had access to excellent material, and made a nice set. We would have released a Series 2, but some legal problems with Universal held that up, and ultimately I created a very limited Series 2 that had no text... a real creative challenge. This one was never released, although I still have a mint uncut sheet. Also never released was the Widevision E.T. set I put together many years later.
Scott Rogers (game designer and historian; author, Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design): I know the Atari E.T. game gets a lot of flak for having terrible controls, incomprehensible graphics and blatantly unfair gameplay. For being a rush job by an arrogant programmer and clueless execs who were trying to capitalize on the popularity of the movie at the last minute to get a quick Christmas holiday cash grab. it’s been blamed for destroying the American video game industry in the 80s. These accusations are all true. But, it did give video game industry, its greatest urban myth—that if your game is so bad, it will be buried in a New Mexico landfill like a dead mobster.
CHAPTER 18: HOMAGE, PARODY AND RIP-OFFS
William Kallay: By far the worst was Mac and Me. I have watched it and cannot fathom, to this day, what the filmmakers were thinking. The aliens were freaking creepy and totally hideous. The family was a very poor rip-off on the family in E.T. The scenes were clumsy. And what was with that dance scene at McDonald’s?
Mike Matessino: Drew Barrymore on Saturday Night Live was funny…with Eddie Murphy as Mr. T. looking for his son “E.” But beyond that, we’re talking about lightning in a bottle. You can make reference to it, you can throw its basic ingredients into another bowl and stir it up, but you’re never going to come up with that piece of pure cinematic magic that came our way forty years ago.
Saul Pincus: Does the Atari game count as a rip-off? Sure felt like it!
William Kallay: John Carpenter’s Starman was released two years after E.T. and some people considered it to be a rip off. Apparently, though, the screenplay for Starman had been circulating around Hollywood before E.T. was written. I thought Starman was a worthy film itself and told a similar but very different story. The biggest surprise for me was how adept Carpenter was with emotion! Here was the same director who scared audiences with Halloween and The Thing making a sensitive alien meets earthling film.
Brian Herzlinger: The best form of flattery is imitation, and all of the imitations only succeed in reminding us how wonderful E.T. truly is.
CHAPTER 19: WALKIE-TALKIES AND THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY
James Kendrick: Avoid it. Nothing that was added to the revised cut did anything to improve the film, and it is no surprise that Spielberg has largely abandoned it in favor of the theatrical version. Spielberg made a nearly perfect film the first time, so there was no reason to alter it in any way.
Mark A. Altman: I was so happy that after the anodyne gun-less, CGI E.T. re-issue, Spielberg quickly realized what a mistake he made and buried that version forever and once again re-embraced the original theatrical version. If only George Lucas had the same epiphany.
CHAPTER 20: IMAX
Brian Herzlinger: Having both E.T. and Jaws released in IMAX this year was the best gift to theaters and audiences. As I said, nothing beats the experience of seeing a movie in the theater, and to have the films formatted and restored with the care and attention that comes with an IMAX presentation creates a wonderful experience for filmgoers.
Steven Awalt: Beautifully done, as was the Jaws IMAX re-issue. I was so fortunate to see not only E.T. and Jaws during this past year’s reissues, but also Raiders of the Lost Ark, and all at the classic Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. I’d first been to the Chinese as an invitee for the premiere of Steven’s War of the Worlds back in 2005, and then again not soon after I moved to L.A. in 2018 to work for Amblin, for the premiere of The House with a Clock in Its Walls. It’s a gorgeous theater, world-famous and rightly so for not only the venue, but the high quality of projection and sound. These films deserve the very best treatment and exhibition standards, and Universal (and Lucasfilm, in the case of Raiders) really did right by audiences with the re-issues. Pure cinematic magic, all.
CHAPTER 21: THE SEQUEL
Brian Herzlinger: I believe it is the one film that Spielberg refused to make a sequel to, and I agree with his decision 100 percent. The film is a perfect story, and it leaves nothing more to tell and nothing more to see. The finality of the last frame of the film- the closeup on Elliott’s face as John Williams’ epic score closes the story for us, is the best ending to any film I’ve seen. I would not like to see a sequel (but, ya know, if Steven changes his mind, I’ll be first in line).
Saul Pincus: Technically there was a sequel in the form of an official book called E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet (1985). I bought it, but never finished it. I’m reminded of that famous episode of The Twilight Zone, Walking Distance, where the adult protagonist Martin Sloan is told “there’s one summer to every customer.” I think of E.T. as a similar singular experience, and I’m sure Spielberg did too. My mental image of the summer of ‘82 will forever be intertwined with that squishy little guy and his adventures on earth.
Mark A. Altman: One of my favorite moments was being in a pitch for a TV series (which I sold by the way) at Black Tower at Universal and outside was a guy holding a cardboard sign that read: “E.T. 2. Phone Me Steven” with his telephone number. And it was some guy trying to convince Steven to do E.T. 2. We found it quite amusing. That said, I don’t think it’s a film that warrants a sequel although it might be interesting for E.T. to come back now that Elliott and the family is grown up and has kids of his own. But these things rarely work and I don’t think Spielberg wants to touch it which is nice given our IP/franchise driven world in which sequels and reboots rarely live up the quality of their progenitors. I do, however, have fond memories of the goofy ride at Universal Studios where you saved E.T. and took him back to the Green Planet and Botanicus and at the end he personally thanked you by name, which was always a lot of kitschy fun.
Steven Awalt: I love that it’s a film that stands alone, as it should, and as it always should. And yet, I have to speak out of church for the first time publicly, so to speak, to tell you how heartbroken and even angry I was with that 2019 television commercial for Xfinity (owned by Universal) that featured Henry Thomas playing Elliott and a hideously off-model E.T., reunited. I still despise the fact it ever happened, bringing these two characters back together as pitchmen for cable service. And it was told as a sequel story, even being a television commercial. I abhor thinking the world now has in its head; I wish it were never in my head. I don’t know the business behind it all, but I was honestly disappointed that Steven agreed to allow his characters to be used for it. Of course Universal owns the rights to E.T., but Steven’s word about the property’s handling weighs heavily with the studio. It felt like it sullied such a pure thing that Steven had spent decades protecting from crass sequelization. Sad fact of life, but the older I get I find that nothing is really sacred. This might read silly, crying over the specialness of a movie, but stories and characters matter to audiences, we really do open our hearts to them. And even with all the merchandizing and over-saturation in the culture of the 1980s, E.T. was something singular and unique and special in all of film history. These things are worth protecting.
Bill Hunt: I can only think of one case (Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner: 2049) where a sequel to a truly iconic film, made years later, lived up to the original experience. Some movies are just so fresh, unique, and complete that they should never have a sequel. E.T. is one of them.
CHAPTER 22: THE LEGACY
Joseph McBride: The legacy of E.T. is that it is one of Spielberg’s most beloved and deeply personal films, along with Close Encounters and The Fabelmans, which all deal with his primal trauma of his family’s divorce and his identification with outsiders. (Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple, observed after seeing E.T., “From the very beginning of the film, I recognized E.T. as a Being of Color.”) Whenever Spielberg makes a movie about African Americans, he is pilloried, even though Amistad is one of his greatest works, and The Color Purple is also magnificent in many ways. E.T. and Celie resemble each other.
Mike Matessino: The legacy of E.T., for me, are the points I mentioned—the window into the period of time in which it was made as well as to a period when blockbusters were made by the audience. And, of course, it remains an anchor for any discussion about the work of Steven Spielberg.
Mark A. Altman: It’s really interesting because even though it was one of the biggest grossing films of all-time and a perennial family classic like The Wizard of Oz, it doesn’t really get the enduring love of films like Star Wars or even some of the less successful films of 1982 like Blade Runner or The Thing or Megaforce. (Okay, not Megaforce.) For a long time, I enjoyed Poltergeist more than E.T., but realized more recently what a miraculous achievement it is and I think it will continue to stand the time for many decades to come.
Steven Awalt: Reflecting back to your question about E.T.’s significance, I know how it should be remembered, but I do fear its place within the larger culture might be slipping. But I can say for myself—and I do hope millions of others as individuals might feel the same way—the film is truly one-of-a-kind no matter what, a movie imbued with the magic of a filmmaker at the top of his craft, telling this simple, ultimately delicate story of friendship and love that spans the stars, where two completely different beings can find empathy and the very best of what we can be—caring, compassionate, fearless when it comes to being there for one another, protecting one another, and having the strength of heart and character to say goodbye no matter how much it pains us. That’s universal and eternal, which I really hope E.T. will continue to be in its own quiet way. Society grows too fast, too complex with advancements in knowledge and technology, but in the sacred spaces of our own hearts, I think there must always a place for stories like E.T..
Caseen Gaines: After having written my book—E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History—I think I have a slightly different answer on this than what I would have said a few years ago. For me, E.T. is about faith. It’s a film that, for a million reasons, shouldn’t have worked. It’s a movie that almost wasn’t made. It almost materialized as a very different project and with a different lead actor as Elliott. So many things could have been different, but a number of really phenomenal people, many of whom were relative newcomers to cinema, came together and created this work of art that has withstood the test of time. This happened because Steven Spielberg had faith the film would work and that this was a story worth telling. On screen, Elliott had faith that E.T. would come back to him, and wouldn’t harm him, and he had faith his siblings would keep his secret. E.T. had faith in Elliott too, and had faith his family would come back to get him. It’s a film about love and connectedness, of course, but what if the message of E.T. is that we all need to have a little more faith and trust in each other? That’s the lesson I take from this film.
Brian Herzlinger: E.T. is the perfect balance between epic and intimate. It is an incredible example of how cinema can transport us into a world of limitless possibilities through imagination, and it showcases filmmaking at the highest level in its use of technology, skill, and craft. But its most basic legacy is that’s it’s a simple and beautiful story—just two lost souls from different worlds who found each other, taught each other, and lost each other in an unforgettable and perfect experience.
John Cork: Part of the greatness of E.T. is how the film resonates as a metaphor for so much about the experience of childhood. It does an amazing job of reminding adult viewers of our own childhoods, the depth of our wants, the acuteness of the pain we felt, the unbridled joys we experienced, the way we interacted with the adult world. But E.T. himself exists as Elliott’s alter-ego. He is the toddler and kid who is clumsy, uneducated, baffled by the complex world that surrounds him in such pure childlike ways. He’s shuffled here and there for reasons he doesn’t understand, just like we are growing up. Yet, he’s brilliant and on a quest to do something amazing if he can just navigate the strange existence where he finds himself. And that is the conundrum of childhood. If we are lucky, we have faith in ourselves and know throughout all the many failures and goofs we inevitably make growing up, we can do amazing things. We know we will inevitably leave home, that we must to flourish as adults. When E.T. touches Elliott’s forehead at the end, Elliott’s alter-ego is not only saying that there is some psychic connection that will remain between the pair, but Spielberg is communicating that all the intelligence and power that E.T. possesses to do the impossible is inside all of our heads, that we can live brilliant lives where we make the impossible happen if we embrace the power of our brains.
Saul Pincus: E.T. may be the greatest love story ever filmed about friendship. It’s about seeing others for whom they really are—not through the easy lens of fear—and having the tenacity to convince those around you that if they can just trust their better instincts, they’ll come through it all the better, too. The film memorably celebrates some of life’s simplest, most lasting values and yeah, it’s a great cinematic experience, too. These are the thoughts that go through my head whenever I contemplate another viewing—and I can’t say I’m ever disappointed.
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