E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

“I’ll be right here.”

E.T.

E.T. is an extremely special movie, probably the most special movie I’ve ever seen in my life. The amount of care and emotion that’s poured into this film’s plot, sets, and characters is absolutely incredible and that’s how it lands itself a spot in my top 5 films of all time. Originally I didn’t really care for this movie when I was younger, I thought it was really boring and unexciting. It didn’t really click with me how good this movie was until I was around the age of 15 or so and I was suddenly amazed with the magic this movie presents, completely baffled that just a few years earlier I had thought it was boring. There’s a few minor spoilers in this review, but I don’t give away too much in case you’ve never seen it.

If you’ve seen this movie you’ll know it’s not an action movie, but E.T. contains the best child acting I’ve ever seen in a movie. And it’s not just great acting from one of them, all three of the kids are fantastic in their roles and absolutely make me believe that they’re a family unit, that Mike (Robert MacNaughton) is the older brother who picks on Elliott and Gertie, and Gertie (Drew Barrymore) is the little impressionable sister who is a little goofball trying to be like her older brothers. Barrymore’s acting is even more incredible to me because she was only 6 years old when they filmed this! And of course Elliott (Henry Thomas) is our human protagonist alongside E.T., he gets tons of screen time and I can’t point out a single scene where he doesn’t do spectacular! My favorite scene with Elliott is when he’s showing E.T. around his room, which I’ve heard was mostly ad-libbed where they just told Thomas to explain to E.T. what the toys on the table were. I could be wrong in that aspect, but I’m pretty sure I remember reading about that at some point. I can’t talk about Elliott’s family without mentioning his mom, Mary (Dee Wallace), who also gives an excellent performance. She’s a single mom going through a recent divorce trying her absolute hardest to keep her ever so distant family together, and you can always see the constant stress she’s under even though she’s trying her best not to show it in front of her kids.

John Williams outdoes himself in this movie, his Oscar winning soundtrack for E.T. is my absolute favorite by John Williams, especially the final song in the film before the credits (Escape/Chase/Saying Goodbye). It’s extremely layered, gives off several different tones and emotions from mystery and uneasiness when E.T. is wandering lost looking for Reese’s Pieces to magic and wonder in the flying theme that goes with the iconic over-the-moon shot. I’ve listened through this soundtrack hundreds of times and still get the same feelings and emotions every time I revisit it.

Cinematography in this movie is also really good, the most famous is obviously the over-the-moon shot that’s in all the advertising for it and even became the logo for Amblin Entertainment, but there’s several other shots in this movie that I rank high up with my favorite film shots ever. My favorite shot in the movie isn’t even the moon shot, it’s the one I’ve included below. As E.T. and Elliott hug, the camera pulls away as the lighting just POURS over them, the soundtrack swells up, and it’s a beautiful moment and I don’t typically get emotional when I watch movies, but this one can get me closer than most. Another thing I love about this movie is it’s shot purely from Elliott’s point of view, we don’t typically see any adult faces until they become relevant to Elliott. We see his mom’s face throughout the movie, but almost all the other adults are shot with a heavy silhouette, through a mask, or even just shot from the chest downward. There’s even a character, “Keys” (Peter Coyote), who’s looking for E.T. the entire film but we only know him by his (you guessed it) keys hanging from his belt until the character becomes relevant to Elliott when he’s convinced they’re killing E.T.. This is also where we begin to see other adult faces as they pull off their masks and are trying their best to save Elliott and E.T.. Even toward the beginning of the film when Elliott first encounters E.T. and brings him into his room, he’s extremely back-lit and almost always hidden in shadows because Elliott is unsure what to think of him, it’s a fear of the unknown but also full of curiosity, and we don’t see all of E.T. until Elliott becomes fully comfortable with him.

I could gush on and on about this movie for hours, I love it! It’s one of those movies where the only things I would change about it are super nit-picky details that don’t really matter, it’s extremely close to being a perfect movie in my opinion. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial gets a solid 9.9/10 from me, I absolutely adore this movie and will never get tired of re-visiting it. This movie has it all, it’s got mystery, suspense, comedy, love, excitement, and can be an extremely emotional ride in the best way possible.

Also this Xfinity ad from 2019 is super special if you love E.T. as much as I do.