E.T. The Rare Blockbuster that Deserves the Hype

Runtime: 1 hr 55 min

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Dee Wallace; Peter Coyote; Robert MacNaughton; Drew Barrymore; Henry Thomas

Rating: PG

This weekend, I drove to the nearest IMAX theater I could find and watched Steven Spielberg's beloved E.T. The Extraterrestrial for its 40th anniversary. It was the first time I had watched the film from start to finish since sixth grade. While I grew up immersed in plenty of '80s classics, E.T. was never a personal favorite. I had the VHS tape and would watch it occasionally, but it was never in heavy rotation at my house like Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark. So after having maintained that distance from the film, I felt this was a perfect opportunity to see it with a more "objective" perspective, to see the movie on its terms, and imagine how an audience member might react to first seeing the film in 1982. I resolved to analyze the feature from a nuts and bolts perspective, breaking down the technical aspects like a mechanic might admire the ingenuity that allows a beautiful sports car to run. While I came away from the movie with a greater appreciation than before, this thought experiment proved futile for reasons I could not have guessed.

After seeing the film for the first time in years, the sound design stood out to me. The movie opens with a simple title sequence of white text on a black background. Instead of a whimsical score by John Williams, we get a series of unsettling and otherworldly noises. Honestly, it feels more like the opening to a John Carpenter movie than a family-friendly blockbuster. Then we get our first images of the film; a night of stars, a mysterious ship hidden amongst redwoods, and an entire world of alien fauna (one of the specimens is a tree with a face on it). The camera, lighting, and sound all paint the otherworldly figures roaming the forrest as mysterious and distant.

Finally, we get our first look at the titular character. It's a wide shot of E.T. gazing up at the magnificent redwoods. Far enough to maintain that distance, but clear enough that we can start to see him as an individual. Then we cut to a view of the trees from E.T.'s perspective. The camera continues to show us the following events as E.T. views them. We see the separation from his family, the pursuit by government employees, and the first peek of human suburbia all through the eyes of the little visitor.

The following sequence sets up the dynamics of Elliot and his family. We see how Elliot and his siblings interact and catch a glimpse of the effect of the parent's separation. Finally, we see Elliot's early encounter with E.T. Interestingly, these scenes use low-key lighting heavily, while the framing and editing of E.T. approaching Elliot invokes the language of horror movies verbatim. Even after Elliot and E.T. make their connection, Spielberg keeps the alien visitor in heavy shadow, preserving the creature's mystique as much as possible. Most tellingly, when Elliot formally introduces his new companion to his siblings, the camera not only shows the perspective of the kids but also E.T.'s view of his human hosts. All of these details are expressions of the movie's underlying concept; the belief that empathy is more powerful than our fear of the unknown and that it is worth trying to understand the people we consider to be "the Other."

This theme continues with how Spielberg presents the film's antagonists. The government agents searching for E.T. are faceless for most of the film. The only identifying trait is that one of them carries around a jangling set of keys from his belt. The biggest shock I felt from this movie as a kid was when Micheal opens the front door to reveal an astronaut, face shield down to hide its face and arms outstretched like a classic Universal monster to pursue the family. Then, we finally see the face of our key-carrying enemy when the house is quarantined. In contrast to many of E.T.'s countless imitators, the government agent is not a shallow stooge obsessed with national security or devoid of sympathy. Instead, he tries to comfort Elliot, wants to keep E.T. alive, and gives Elliot a moment to mourn when it appears the alien dies. Like Elliot, he recognizes the miraculous nature of E.T.'s existence and is filled with scientific curiosity and a need to understand. However, he lacks Elliot's emotional connection with E.T. and cannot put the creature's well-being over his own goals. In many ways, he is similar to Richard Dreyffus' character in Close Encounters, someone who seeks out contact with extraterrestrials in the hope of almost spiritual fulfillment. The main difference here is that, unlike Dreyffus, he mistakenly thinks he can contain this source of awe. 

I was not cognizant of any of this for the last half of the movie. Because something just as miraculous as the film's events happened while I sat in that theater. I was completely sucked into what was happening on screen, and by the time of E.T.'s "death," I could feel my eyes tearing up. A movie that never once earned a sob out of me as a kid had a more significant impact on me as a cynical adult. Some of this comes down to how Spielberg handles the human characters. In one interview, the director claimed that he never needed to rely on editing if the actors he worked with were talented enough. This movie provides substantial evidence for that claim. So much of its strength lies in the little human moments scattered throughout - the family's domestic squabbles, E.T. and Elliot's curiosity about one another, and the brief moments when the mother lowers her emotional barriers. The fact that the child actors are so good is an extraordinary feat (Drew Barrymore was only six when filming this, and she nails every joke). And Spielberg has an uncanny understanding of when to employ close ups for maximum effect.

But to be honest, the reason this movie affected me so much more than when I was young is because of the added context of being an adult. Unlike seven-year-old me, I'm now an older sibling and relate to the dynamic between Elliot, Micheal, and Gertie in a new way. Likewise, I now have additional emotional context to understand the magnitude of what Elliot's mom must be experiencing. Contrary to my attempt to be an objective viewer, movies work because they signify things that exist outside themselves. Our relationship to the ideas controls how we will react to a film. And E.T. is, first and foremost, a modern-day fairytale in the same spirit as classic Disney cartoons. This is why the movie can be weirdly divisive, because there are plenty of people who are not interested in that mode of storytelling or even think less of it. It's also probably why a younger me did not consider it a favorite. Something like Raiders or Star Wars offers a similar flavor of escapism but differs in that they do not ask their audience to be as emotionally vulnerable as E.T. I am not the first to point out this phenomenon. Many critics have already outlined the arc moviegoers experience with Spielberg. They uncritically admire his work in their youth, then reject him for being too manipulative and maudlin, only to reembrace his work upon revisiting it and recognizing the skill that goes into these movies.

E.T. The Extraterrestrial still deserves its title as one of the great blockbusters of the 1980s. It is the culmination of a director's deft touch, an impeccable cast's raw talent, and the precise technical execution of its entire crew, from its lighting department to sound mixers to visual effects artists. Many movies have adapted E.T.'s story beats, but none have recreated its vibrant atmosphere or surpassed its tender emotional core.