I have just watched a recording of E.T. from the other night on itv2. What does everyone think of it? Do you think its overrated or do you think it is cinema at its most magical? Where do you rate it in the list of Spielberg offerings?

Personally i think it is a wonderful movie.

Amazing that you post this today, as this is featured on Yahoo;

uk.movies.yahoo.com/the-sinister-e-t--se...lly--never-made.html

Well that sounds awful. Thank God that never materialised.

That reads like a deliberate attempt by Speilberg and his co-writer to kill talk of a sequel.

Sounds like this

Somehow, and I'm just the right demographic, I never saw it. I was concerned it would make me cry.

i dont cry at movies. Not a macho thing, i just dont feel like crying watching a story on screen. However E.T. gets me closer than anything. Although no tears materialise i can feel my insides churning as the ending scene unfolds.

the only other movie that can make me feel sad is Forest Gump. I dont think that will be too popular a movie on this site but i think it is one of the most depressing movies i have ever seen. It is labelled a feel good, sentimental movie. I saw it as brutal. This simple guy going through history and having almost everyone he loves or befriends dying or being crippled. I found it almost too much to take. When he finally sees his son and silently asks if the son is like him mentally and Jenny says no he is smart and Forest breaks down in happiness i am almost destroyed. How the hell can that film be called feelgood i ask you?

Anyway if you are emotional at movies then there is a good chance E.T. will have you gushing.

I need to watch it again to see if age has desensitized me to it, but the scene when ET is looking like a gonner, and the whole place looks like nothing more than a tarpaulin draped circus, was the one that got me right up to the last time I saw it about 8 years ago. I welled up, I felt tears rolling, but it wasn't the full on blub I had the previous times...when I was about 18.

But yeah, ET got me more than any other film. The only other film that brought me to tears was Sliding Doors. And that was sadness at myself, for being duped into watching the intrminable shite in the first place.

I like it when the little girl says "penis breath".

I thought it was Elliot who said that.

The trouble with not seeing a movie before the ending becomes a universally recognisable catchphrase is that when I finally saw E.T. and he looks like he's dead, I was cracking jokes about crackling long-distance calls (for our younger viewers, today's equivalent would be Skype constantly buffering).

It sort of stole the magic. Lovely film with a beautiful message, but somehow not one I care to watch more frequently than every twenty years.

Wonderful film and John Williams score evoking childlike innocence and flight I think is Williams most effective movie piece.

I watched ET again a couple of years back and I noticed for the first time the clever way Spielberg manipulates the audience into seeing the world as a child.

If you notice, the only adult figure whose face is seen in a positive kindly light is the children’s mother. You hardly see any other adults throughout the film and when you do they are threatening figures (Elliott’s teacher, the military, police and the scientists at the end).

The lack of a father figure in ET is one example of the enduring leitmotif of Spielberg’s films- Paternal issues. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind's Roy Neary is emotionally detached from his family as he becomes obsessive over aliens. The mother struggles to get by as a single parent in ET. Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade and Hook both highlight the troubled father-son relationship whilst Catch Me If You Can has Frank Abagnale embark on his adventures after the divorce of his parents.

Surrogate fathers appear in Schindler’s List (Schindler’s relationship to the Jews) and Saving Private Ryan (Captain Miller to Private Ryan). It’s safe to say Spielberg’s career has been one long attempt at catharsis in dealing with the troubled relationship he had with his own father.

What ever happened to saying
******SPOILERS******
before giving away key plot lines?

Now I will never be able to watch it (weep).

- more as a joke @ G Man than Sir Geoff.

Geoffrey de Ste. Croix wrote:


Yeah, just look at Jaws.

Sean of the Szczed wrote:


Don't spoil it for me.

My BMX was called Gertie after the girl from ET.

My guitar was called Kim Wilde.

i love how the camera is always at the childrens level and all adults are seen from the waist up. as you say there are only a couple of adults who we see as sympathetic. The mother and i would say the main scientist is scary at first but ultimately sympathetic. At certain points in the movie they both kneel down. Is this Spielberg suggesting they have achieved the level of belief and wonder of the kids?

It feels like the movie, whilst being about Spielberg's relationship with his parents is also about holding onto the magic of childhood before responsibility comes crashing into our lives. When E.T. dies the camera is looking up at Elliott for the first time. Is that Spielberg suggesting his childhood is ending with this death? Once E.T. returns to life, the camera is back on Elliott's eye level.

In one scene he tells Drew Barrymore not to tell their mother as "grown up cant see him, only little people can see him." Also the kids escape initially in a van but dump it for much slower bicycles. This leads to them escaping on the bikes by using dirt tracks and gardens and whatever else they need to escape. The adults chasing have to stick to the roads.

The score at the end is incredible. When it really cranks up and the ramp of the spaceship pulls up and we see E.T.'s silhouette at the door, wow, it is just fantastic. In my opinion it is one of the greatest movies ever made.

The opening 5 - 10 minutes of the Pixar film 'Up'.

Need I say more?

When it first came out I watched a pirate copy in a back room in The Central in Deeside. Everyone cried when the flowers came back to life and the pub was full of hard men walking around, poking each other and saying 'ouch'. Magical times, a magical film.