E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Universal Pictures· USA· 115 min· English
Directed by Steven SpielbergMusic by John Williams
Synopsis
A gentle alien botanist is stranded in a California suburb when his ship leaves without him. Found by a lonely ten-year-old boy in the aftermath of his parents' divorce, the two form a bond so deep it becomes biological — while government agents close in and the visitor grows fatally homesick.
Review
E.T. is the film Spielberg made instead of therapy, and it shows in the best way. Conceived from an imaginary friend he invented after his parents' divorce, it's a first-contact story told entirely at a child's eye level — the camera literally stays at kid height for most of the film, and adults (except Mom) are headless authorities, badges and belt buckles until the story earns them faces.
Carlo Rambaldi's E.T. puppet, with its improbable design brief — the wise old eyes of Einstein on a creature only a child could love — is one of cinema's great characters despite being aluminum, foam rubber and four decades of hindsight. He gets drunk, learns to talk from Sesame Street, dresses in drag, dies and comes back. Every beat lands because Henry Thomas and six-year-old Drew Barrymore react with a sincerity no effect could fake.
The last act is engineered ecstasy: flying bicycles against the moon (the single most iconic frame of its decade), John Williams handed complete control of the finale's tempo, and a goodbye that has made grown adults cry on airplanes for forty years. Cynics call it manipulative. They're right. So is Beethoven. Ouch.
Trivia & Color Notes
Shot in story order
Spielberg filmed largely in chronological order — rare and expensive — so his child actors would experience the story as it happened. Henry Thomas's grief in the final scenes is the accumulated weight of the whole shoot.
Einstein's eyes
Designer Carlo Rambaldi modeled E.T.'s face on Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandburg, and a pug dog. Twelve operators worked the puppet's cable-controlled face; two little people and a boy born without legs performed the walking suit.
The candy that said no
Mars turned down having M&M's lure E.T., so Hershey's took the deal for the then-new Reese's Pieces. Sales jumped roughly 65% — the case study that built the product-placement industry.
Conducting the picture
When Williams struggled to sync the finale's music to picture, Spielberg told him to conduct it freely, as a concert — then recut the film's ending to match the music.
The audition that wept
Henry Thomas's improvised audition — imagining his dog's death — reduced the room to silence; Spielberg's voice on the tape says 'Okay kid, you got the job.' The tape is on YouTube and still devastating.
E.T. is a fable, and its science is warm-hearted hand-waving: an empathic-telepathic bond that links heartbeats and blood alcohol, telekinesis on demand, and a chest-light that glows with feeling. One lovely, defensible touch: E.T. is a botanist collecting specimens — a plausible mission profile for interstellar exploration — and his 'phone home' rig built from a Speak & Spell, umbrella and saw blade is a genuinely charming piece of improvised-engineering fiction.
🎵 Soundtrack
Music by John Williams
John Williams won his fourth Oscar for a score whose flying theme is second only to Star Wars in his songbook. For the fifteen-minute finale, Spielberg re-edited the film to Williams's music rather than the reverse — the rarest compliment in filmmaking.
🔗 This film connects to…
Cast & Crew
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