E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Steven Spielberg’s 115 minute film begins with Elliott, a suburban boy, hiding the alien he finds in the yard inside his house. Spielberg shot it largely in chronological order so the children would be saying goodbye for real at the end. That shows twice over: the early fear does not look learned in advance, and the children’s growing ease with the creature rises along with the edit. E.T. is also not one puppet. The animatronic built by Carlo Rambaldi cost around one and a half million dollars and took three months, and different performers carried it: short statured actors inside the suit, a twelve year old walking on his hands for the ungainly movement, a mime for the hands. That is why the creature is almost always seated, barely moving, or kept below frame. The film is what remained of Night Skies, an abandoned project about hostile aliens. Spielberg liked the chase music so much he recut the sequence to fit it, reversing the usual order. Version matters: the 2002 anniversary cut replaced the agents’ guns with walkie talkies, while the 2012 Blu-ray carried only the 1982 theatrical cut. Not for you if you want science fiction at adult eye level: the camera stays at child height and adult faces are withheld for a long stretch.