It's the penultimate part of the Among Us series and if we left things at the foot of Devils Tower, you’d be forgiven for thinking humanity’s best option was to pack a bag, ditch the kids and hitch a ride off the planet.
In Close Encounters Roy Nearly didn't look back, he didn't give his wife or children a second thought, he gladly embraced the invitation to walk on board the alien spaceship. That was in 1977, Spielberg was in his 30s and single ambitious director with no children and was convinced the guilt free escape was the ultimate adventure. A mere five years later he revisited the themes but this time with a perspective of the child and told his most personal story to date. Following its release a slew of imitation films followed all with a cutesy well meaning visitor from another planet, but looking through the series so far we can see how usually the sci-fi visitor trope was used to reflect our fears and paranoia. Even two weeks later after the release of E.T John Carpenter's The Thing hit the cinema.
Don Siegel and Philip Kaufman gave us pod people that hollowed out our neighbours while we slept. Carpenter trapped us in an Antarctic meat locker where you couldn't even trust your own blood, then handed Roddy Piper a pair of sunglasses in They Live to show us the monsters were already running the banks. Even the supposedly friendly visitors, like Klaatu with his finger on an orbital trigger or the porcelain observers of Close Encounters snatching a toddler through a pet door, treated human emotion as an inconvenience.
The Thing would bomb at the box office (it would later get its deserved plaudits later) and E.T soared. Was it just saccharine escapism and a reflection of the glossy home life that the Regan era was trying to install with good old fashioned family values and conservatism?
No
Behind the modern suburban life of California the idea of the post war nuclear family of America was fading away, divorce rates were higher than ever, a detail that was highly personal and experienced by a young Steven Spielberg. It was prime Gen X, kids were left to their own devices and given their own latch keys. A swath of children came home after school to empty houses, TV dinners and parents who were working. The scene in which ten year old Elliot is left alone in his house after faking illness seems completely bizarre in today's world.
In Close Encounters it's the Dad who leaves the family at the end of the film but in E.T this has already happened before the titles begin. Down in Mexico with Sally he's left the family and it's up to Mary (played by the amazing Dee Wallace with a raw frazzled energy) to hold the family together. In the scene where they are eating dinner and Elliot mentions his Dad the tension is palpable and shows the house is broken long before an uninvited Alien becomes a lodger.
Enter the creature in the cornfield.
Instead of a futuristic hi tech enforcer or an ethereal visitor we meet a squashed, slimy, pot bellied botanist. Across between a turtle and a pug with feet that awkwardly slaps across the kitchen floor with brown leathery skin slick with moisture who wheezes when he breathes and raids the fridge for beer…
The bond between Elliot is pure pop culture, made over Reece's pieces and Starwars action figures.
The film is so good at progressing and pacing the story perfectly because despite the premise it plays it small. It isn't a Galactic event, its two innocents just getting to know each other. The film is shot brilliantly, from the perspective of a child, the camera is lowered to the eye level of a ten year old. For the first two thirds of the film Elliot's mother Mary is the only adult face we see. Its either faceless teachers or Government agents just waist down and jangling keys cutting through the dark fog of the redwood forest. When they do turn up Spielberg again shows his knack of the thriller and the scenes almost play out like a horror.
Tracking down E.T to Elliot's home, the villains aren't the aliens, it's the Government. Staged with the same suffocating dread as the abduction of Barry in Close Encounters, the roles are reversed: it is the men in faceless space suits who march up the driveway with blinding glares of light and breathing like the uber villain Darth Vader. They seal the house off from the rest of the street with thick plastic sheeting, tunnels and turning the home into sterile, fluorescent lit prison.
It's at this point I'll put my hands up, does this film have the same impact on fresh eyes as it does with my nostalgia filled ones? I have no idea. But to me it's an important film, its one of the first films I saw as a child and offered a pure form of escape. If you want to be cynical about it, E.T. is one of the most shamelessly manipulative movies ever committed to film. Spielberg knows every single button he’s pressing. You have the warm, golden backlighting filtering through the screen, a talented bunch of child actors, the pop culture and Melissa Mathison’s script linking the boy and the creature’s nervous systems so they literally feel each other’s pain. Add in John Williams’s score swelling into a full-throated orchestral tidal wave and the film is yanking at your heartstrings with both hands.
Even when you see the machinery working in front of you I don't care a single bit, I'm a sucker for it.
Whether it's the sight of that pale, dying E.T lying in a tiled drainage ditch, or little Gertie handing over her wilted pot of geraniums at the end, the movie bypasses every cynical defence I have. I’ve seen it dozens of times and it never, ever fails to make me cry. Because underneath all that sweeping orchestral magic is a remarkably mature reversal of everything Spielberg had built five years earlier.
Look at the final scene in the forest. After the thrill of the escape and the joy of E.T recovering and the classic flying through the air scene the mothership settles down through the trees to bring him home.
The ramp lowers, spilling that familiar, warm amber light across the pine needles. The withered geraniums have bloomed back to life, E.T. Its chest glows bright red nearing the end. Turning to Elliott and says the one word that changes the whole trajectory of the story: "Come." He offers Elliott the Roy Neary ticket, a chance to leave the divorced parents, the lonely suburban cul-de-sac and the mess of growing up behind forever.
Instead, a ten-year-old boy looks at the only friend who truly understands him and says the word a grown man in Indiana couldn't muster: "Stay."
Neither of them gets their wish and that’s why those final five minutes hit so hard emotionally. E.T. belongs among the stars with his own kind and Elliott belongs on the ground with his mum, his brother, his sister and the bruised, complicated business of being human. When that glowing finger touches Elliott's forehead ("I'll be right here"), it’s a parting gift so the boy can survive staying behind.
The Artwork
Created through a fascinating mono-print Gel Plate process, each piece is a one-of-a-kind work of art, featuring the iconic silhouette of Elliott and E.T. set against an atmospheric, luminous moon and a deep Blue forest canopy.
(Created by Basesketch)