E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Retro Review #59: I used to agree this was an all-time great film, but the little guy isnʼt aging well.

Apr 06, 2025

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
+ Feature film, /¶ 1h 54m🎖️
+ ?/? works in Star Wars multiverse⭐
+ 1️⃣/4 works in E.T. franchise⭐
+ 1️⃣/2 works in E.T. video series⭐

A ^

Grade: A ^ (12.0) / HOF: 30
EQ 👍A+ | 📖A 👥A+ 📽️A+ 🎼A
DW 😎😎10.0 | 🌚10 🌝10
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R 💻⬆️1️⃣ 👀⬇️⏬ 🛐⬇️1️⃣

Produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg. Written by Melissa Mathison. Directed by Steven Spielberg.

In 1983, I was probably one of the last people to see E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in a movie theater at the end of its first run. It hit American theaters on June 11, 1982, and topped the box office charts for six straight weeks, ending up at #1 for sixteen weeks by the end of its long run.

I saw this classic early in its 1982 summer release and thoroughly loved it. It was an easy A+ in my book.

In the fall of 1982 I moved out from my parents house to be closer to the university I had been commuting to for three years. Turned out to be a good move—by Spring 1983 I had a girlfriend for the first time.

But here’s the problem: she hadn’t seen E.T.! She was out of the country on a summer mission in 1982, and now that she was back, she desperately wanted to see the movie. I learned this on the last day that the film was going to be in theaters, when she showed me a newspaper article indicating it was her last chance, and proclaimed to me her need to see it that very night.

It was over forty years ago, so the details are fuzzy. But if I recall correctly it wasn’t showing in very many theaters by that time, nearly a year after the initial release. We went to the closest one and settled in to enjoy the film. The projector broke a few minutes in. We scoured the newspaper listings and only found one late night showing miles and miles away, but we barely made it, and being on the west coast of the USA, were probably in the last audience of the movie’s first run.

Now I didn’t share that story just to bore you with details of my past that you aren’t interested in, and I apologize if you did find that a little mundane. There’s a point, er, method, to my madness: This movie was BIG. It broke the record held by Star Wars as the highest-grossing film ever, and held the record for ten years until Jurassic Park took over.

Also, I share this story to point out that my second viewing in no way diminished my opinion that E.T. was an all-time great film. It was still very much an A+ in my book.

Somehow E.T. didn’t take home the Oscar for Best Picture, surprisingly losing to Gandhi, another weird little creature. But it did win Oscars for Original Score, Sound, Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects. It won Golden Globes for Best Picture (Drama) and Best Original Score. It won Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Writing, Best Special Effects and Best Music.

The accolades didn’t stop after the initial run. Over the decades E.T. has been prominently placed on all sorts of all-time best lists, as high as the fifth best movie ever, second best science fiction movie and very best family film. (Those rankings and more are mentioned here.)

With all that in mind, can you imagine how surprised and disappointed I was when, to write this review, I watched E.T. again for the first time in forty years and didn’t like it as much as I originally did?

For the few of you who might be reading that have never seen the film, it’s about a little space alien, accidentally left behind by his fellow aliens after a visit to Earth. He’s befriended by a young boy, but pursued by shady agents of the US Government.

The animatronic alien puppet that was E.T. managed to be simultaneously one of the ugliest, yet cutest, creatures ever seen on film and was unquestionably a major reason for the success of the film.

E.T. and Henry Thomas as Elliott Taylor. © Universal Pictures

But credit for the emotional success of the film should also be given to director Steven Spielberg, one of the rare directors with a skill in drawing great performances out of child actors. In this case it’s Henry Thomas as E.T.’s friend Elliott, and Drew Barrymore as Elliott’s little sister, Gertie, who are exceptionally good.

Drew Barrymore and Dee Wallace as Gertie and Mary Taylor. © Universal Pictures

Dee Wallace as the children’s single mother is also outstanding, delivering a powerful pro-marriage, pro-family performance by portraying the personal devastation of spousal abandonment, while subtler moments in the film show the impact of paternal betrayal on the kids.

This movie is good in so many ways—funny, suspenseful, thrilling, inspiring, and a tear-jerker to boot. So what went wrong with my 2025 viewing of E.T.? Why did it lose a bit of the wonder and charm it delivered to me before?

Well, even though the John Williams score is highly praised and won awards, it just isn’t one of my favorites as far as John Williams scores go. But then it never was, so that’s not the answer.

I considered that watching at home is never as good as watching on a big theater screen. But my TV has an 84" diagonal, and that has always been enough for me to fully appreciate other films with epic visuals. So that can’t be it either.

Eventually, I realized that there were three significant factors that contributed to the loss of wonder and charm this time around.

I won’t discuss the one of the three factors here, because it involves spoilers and politics, a couple of things I prefer to minimize in my main reviews. I will elaborate a little in the chat for this film, where such topics are more appropriate.

A second factor is the adult language. As a young adult in my twenties, I didn’t think twice, care about, or really notice adult language much, unless it was excessive. The language in E.T. is not excessive, for adults. There aren’t a lot of inappropriate words in the film, but if I was a parent of teenagers, I wouldn’t want them using the handful of words that are there.

And it’s teenagers that use the words in the film, compounding the problem by tacit approval. It’s really a shame that a film considered one of the all-time great family movies contains such language, because it isn’t necessary. One could argue that it helps show the damage caused by the missing father, but that’s a weak argument when that point would be completely lost on the viewing teenager who just sees other teens acting cool.

While those two factors combine to lower my grade for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial from a solid A+ down to a high A, it is the third factor that saddens me the most.

E.T. isn’t unique anymore. We had never seen anything like him on film before. Wonderful and charming aren’t big enough words to convey the emotional impact of that little animatronic puppet.

Decades later we have seen hundreds of similar creatures and critters. For better or worse, CGI surpasses 1980s practical special effects. We’ve been charmed by so very many characters now that E.T. is just one in a crowd.

I give full credit to Spielberg and writer Melissa Mathison for the groundbreaking nature of their magical character. But the sad truth is that, today, anyone seeing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the very first time is not likely to experience as much wonder and charm as we did forty years ago. E.T., both the movie and the character, just isn’t as special anymore.

Am I wrong? Feel free to argue with me in the comments!

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