Spielberg’s vision of childhood – innocent and open, unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, with triumphs and traumas which adults find incomprehensible – can be found in much of his work. But it had its fullest, most plangent treatment in a comparatively modest little film called E.T THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982) which became the most popular film ever made within a few weeks of its release.
Spielberg, not a conscious intellectual, would probably be sarcastic about comparisons with the poet William Wordsworth but, for both, the world of childhood is central to their vision of adult life. Wordsworth quite simply saw children as being closer to God than is possible for grown-ups, and the actual process of growing up he saw as a slow corruption and darkening of their vision. To be an adult is to have lost not just one’s innocence but also one’s joy. Wordsworth called it The Vision Splendid: “At length the man perceives it die away, and fade into the light of common day.” To grow up is to become confined: “Shades of the prison-house begin to close, upon the growing boy.”
Spielberg’s genius is to teach this lesson over again, but to render it acceptable by giving it a commonplace twentieth century context where children are not just vessels of the pristine light, but cheeky kids. Just as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) restructures an ancient fairy-tale, so E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial restructures Peter Pan, William Wordsworth and – the most daring stroke of all – the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
E.T. is himself a child, a lost alien whose family has accidentally deserted him. He makes friends with Elliott (Henry Thomas) who is himself lonely and fatherless. E.T. is the secret magic friend of childhood, but the adult world intrudes and E.T. finally dies. It is not a direct crucifixion – nobody actually ‘kills’ him – but the nature of our fallen world has caused him to become sick. Fortunately, he rises from the dead and, in a sequence of transcendent joy, he teaches the children how to fly like so many Peter Pans on bicycles and soar to freedom high above the repressions of the adult world.
In the thrilling opening E.T. (a soft-eyed, charming, ungainly, pleasantly reptilian creature designed by Carlo Rambaldi) is studying earth plant life in the woods near a Californian suburb when he is accidentally left behind by his spaceship, which leaves hurriedly to avoid detection. While government agents and scientists search for him, he wisely hides out and is befriended by a nice ten-year-old boy.
E.T. and Elliott have an immediate kinship, and the boy soon discovers he also shares the alien’s feelings. E.T. also becomes a special friend to Elliott’s older brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton) and younger sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore), but the children’s recently divorced mother (Dee Wallace) is too distracted to realise that something weird is going on in Elliott’s room. The love blossoms between the kids and E.T. but the fragile creature becomes sickly and longs to return home, so the film becomes a twist on The Wizard Of Oz (1939): three youngsters help an adult return to his own world – there’s no place like home.
In truth, the film has far more sympathy and understanding of children than The Wizard Of Oz, a celebration of youth and innocence – unlike The Wizard Of Oz, these children refuse to grow up. For many, the key scene is when the scientist (Peter Coyote) tells Elliott that he’s been dreaming of meeting an alien since he was a little boy, but we recognise that when he was a boy he wanted to play with an alien but, as an adult, all he wants to do is perform experiments on him.
The film has suspense, wit, magical special effects and numerous scenes that have etched themselves into the memories of moviegoers everywhere. Though Spielberg occasionally manipulates us into shedding tears, the film is genuinely sweet. E.T. is a wonderful creation with universal appeal, and kids respond to him with such affection because he truly satisfies their need for the so-called ‘imaginary playmate’ established by psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, the ideal friend for all kids, especially those who don’t have two parents always there, who wish their stuffed toys could hug them back.
Adults, of course, are also taken with E.T. – when he dons a bathrobe and waddles through the house, he may remind you of your favourite quirkiest visiting relative. It is all enormously well-done, and viewers who resist the undoubted charm of the film have the embarrassment of enduring accusations of hard-heartedness from the tearful majority.
Not to be overlooked when trying to figure out the amazing success of the film is the performance of Henry Thomas. In a very difficult role he is so appealing that we gladly accept him as our surrogate and allow him to fulfill our dream of meeting the perfect alien. The adult world is almost always seen from a child’s point-of-view, with the emphasis on legs and bodies with the faces too high up to be visible.
The greatest strength of E.T. would have to be its fantastic set-up. One of Spielberg’s greatest gifts was his uncanny ability to create a grungy and realistic suburban environment that would be unsettled by supernatural disruptions, creating an escapist and modern form of cinema that was identifiably his own. The dysfunctional family environment that Spielberg
creates in the initial scenes gives the film a weight and emotional pull that few children’s films these days can match.
For the twentieth anniversary DVD re-release in 2002, Spielberg wanted to update the effects: “I didn’t want to mess with it too much. I had him run in a more realistic way, which I think looks a lot better, and there were certain things we had to change that just wouldn’t be suitable now. I changed the guns to walkie-talkies and we had to change the dialogue when Elliott’s mother says to the kids when they go out for Halloween, to not go out looking like a terrorist.”
The majority of E.T.’s acting was done by Felix Silla (Cousin Itt of The Addams Family and Twiki of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century) in a rubber suit, but the latex mask limited the number of facial expressions. All-in-all Spielberg updated 110 shots over a six month period, including matte paintings, flying bicycles, the spaceship, and E.T. himself. The development of the E.T. creature is also discussed as well as the digital modifications for the special twentieth anniversary edition re-release that a modest Spielberg describes as being “Like an artist touching up a masterpiece, making it better.”