OK, just for the hell of it, I’ve put on E.T. and have been skipping through it, trying to see what’s noteworthy about it. One thing I have to say I think bears mentioning, that I’ve noticed, is the unbelievable sense of tension created by the fact that the kids are hiding the existence of E.T. from their mother, which blurs her role in the film - when the kids finally show her the creature, it’s a pretty heavy scene: first, her sarcastic disbelief (“that’s terrific” - assuming the alien is - what? Someone wearing an elaborate costume? Some kind of toy?) and then the sickly groans of E.T. and her realization that it’s not only an actual alien, but a dying alien, and her hand slowly losing its grip on the coffee cup and spilling the coffee on the floor. I mean, you have to admit, it’s a powerful scene. What kids’ film prior to* E.T.* had anything like that in it?
Science as detached and cold and for that reason dangerous is nothing particularly new, though.
-FrL-
Maybe but where’s the precedent for those themes being incorporated into a kids’ movie?
I’m sorry. I don’t doubt your sincerity. But your criteria are bizarre and irrelevant. (Recognizably canonical to a 1982 preteen? WTF indeed.)
That’s only close to what I said in the sense that it includes many of the same words I used.
I didn’t say “recognizably canonical,” rather, I said, roughly, “canonical, by which I mean recognizable.”
There’s nothing bizarre or irrelevant about the desiderata I listed. They articulate what people on this thread are saying is original about E.T. That means the desiderata are exactly on point.
Do you think they’re saying something else than what I think they’re saying?
-FrL-
If you’re gonna insist that you said,
is substantially–hell, remotely–different from my restatement of it–
–then I’m gonna leave you to it.
I was six years old when I saw E.T. for the first time in 1982 and I loved it. When it was finally released on video I tried watching it and couldn’t for the life of my understand what I saw in it when I was younger. I was huge at the time but I think the movie aged poorly.
Marc
It’s completely different.
Nothing in my sentence implies that kids have a concept of “canon.” Now they do have a notion, about some movies, that “everybody’s seen” those movies. But that is not to have a notion of canon, and that is not to have a notion that there’s a particular kind of movie which is the kind “everybody’s seen.” It’s just to have particular beliefs about particular movies, namely, the belief, in each case, that “everybody’s seen” that movie.
Of course kids think this. Well, I thought it when I was a kid, anyway, and I don’t think it’s likely I was too different from other kids in this respect.
But in your misstatement of what I said, you clearly imply that I was saying kids have a notion of “canon.” That’s wrong. I didn’t say it, and I didn’t imply it. It is easy to imagine someone thinking, “Everybody’s seen X” and “Everybody’s seen Y” without having any notion of film canon in their mental inventory.
To return to the topic. In my post above, I have made it clear what people are saying is original about E.T. Do you think E.T. is original in this way? If not, then what are some examples of precedents?
Alternatively, do you think I’m wrong in my characterization of the claim of originality? If so, then what do you think people are saying is original about E.T.?
Alternatively again, do you think that E.T. is indeed the first film to satisfy the desiderata I listed, but also that this is not a significant or interesting fact? If so, how can it not be significant (and significantly original) for a movie to be the first to depict kids’ suburban life to kids in a way that doesn’t stereotype it as inherently peachy or inherently tragic? That really does sound to me like the kind of thing that would mark a movie as significantly original if indeed the movie is original in doing it.
-FrL-
ETA: I don’t know if you’ll actually reply to this, since you’ve said you’re going to “leave me to it” (“it”'s antecedent is not clear, which gives me hope) but I’ll note that I am now turning in so I won’t be able to reply til tomorrow. So with that, I’ll leave you to it. 
C’mon, lissener! Stop tapping your cleats and start the batting. I’m genuinely interested in exploring the topic presented by Frylock. For me, at least, it’s very difficult to think of examples that clearly demonstrate E.T. is, in context, formulaic.
I can only really think of examples made after E.T. Movies like the Shirley Temple classics are pretty much all musical and mostly unfailingly optimistic. That being said, I’d actually be very surprised if Spielberg’s was the first major exploration of the themes in question in film. So, please, someone with more knowledge of movies enlighten us!
I don’t know, maybe any kid/family movie where the kids beloved pet is dying and the parent needs to help. It did not seem all that unique to me. I even see connections to “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. The Mom (Helen) did not immediately believe her son about Klaatu but she comes around to his side as the film progresses to its sad but poignant end. So here again and long before the ‘Mom’ is helping the ‘Alien’, risking her own life for him in fact.
Jim
I was just the right age when E.T. came out and I thought it was great. It was funny, sad, suspenseful, scary, uplifting, etc. I haven’t seen it in forever but I remember it fondly.
It seems to me that people are going to the theaters in droves to see unnecessary remakes, torture movies, old-TV-show ripoff movies, and lame-ass “comedies”. And we have to defend E.T.? :smack:
In this game he’d bunt and miss. The alien wasn’t a bug and it wasn’t ripping arms off of 90210 rejects. I’m surprised lissener even opened this thread.
Bah, it was slapped together by Atari’s marketing department to support the game’s release. That was the true masterpiece.
Actually, I was smack in the target demographic when it came out, and I couldn’t have said it better than:
I, too, thought the movie was set in California… the LA basin to be precise. Is there anything within the movie that states where the film is set?
Upon re-watching this a few months ago… my wife: “ZOMFG, she’s going to leave a seven year-old alone in the house!!!” The times, they have a’ changed.
OK, so I bought this movie (and Roger Rabbit) for a long road trip with my wife and six year-old daughter this past weekend. We popped ET in the mini-DVD player and handed it to Sophie who is engrossed (she likes movies about space aliens and stuff. Oh, and Will Turner/Legolas… don’t even get me started on that. But I digress…)
Anyway, Sophie, in the back seat, is enraptured in the film while I’m driving on our way to NYC. Then, all of a sudden…
:gasp: “Mommy! What’s wrong?!? What’s wrong with ET?!”
“No, he can’t be sick! No, he can’t die! No!”…
… “This is a bad movie! This is a bad movie!”
“Sophie, let’s stop this film now.”
“NOOO!!! I need to see what happens!”
… “What’s happening? Is he alive? He’s alive, he’s alive! Oh, ET, I love you!”
… “What? Why is he leaving? I don’t want ET to leave! No!”
… “Daddy, can I watch it again?”
So, yeah, it’s still considered a good movie.
ET is one of the few movies I ever walked out on. As a 20 year old college student, I was, perhaps, too old for it. I went because my date wanted to see it. I spent half of the movie in the lobby playing video games.
Too sweet. Too sickly sweet by far. For me, watching it was like eating sugar lumps dipped in honey, rolled in powdered sugar, drizzled with molasses, and sprinkled with jimmies.
It’s a rare film indeed that can survive the deconstruction and analysis that this thread is bringing to bear. So I submit only two facts:
I was 12 in 1982 and I liked it.
Bingo. The movie was good in that it resonated with you and made for a moving experience.
Did it explore any new themes in a manner that hadn’t been done before? Probably not, but for pure entertainment it did exactly what the director who made it wanted it to do.
I agree. I was in grad school when this came out, in a great summer for SF movies (**Star Trek II! Bladerunner! Tron! The Thing! Firefox! **)and I was severely disappointed. Too cute by more than a half. When ET’s ship takes off at the end and makes a rainbow, I wanted to throw up.
It’s a good thing Elliot ran into such a cute extraterrestrial. Imagine if he’d run into Alien in his backyard, instead.
Heh, I’d forgotten about that. Even as a kid, I was thinking “Why does everyone think that’s so cool? It’s just, like, chemicals or something.”
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the movie. (I was three when it came out but I saw it when I was, I think, six, in a re-release.) But I also wasn’t completely stupid. 
-FrL-
wept like a wee babe at the “death” of E.T., though. Then my mom spoilered the movie for me, “He’s not really dead, it’s okay!” Afterwards I told her she shouldn’t have told me that!
Well I didn’t hate, I just did not like it that much, but I was only around 15. However, Star Trek II and Bladerunner were incredible. Tron was like ET, another film that I just did not really enjoy. I never really understood the love for it.
Jim