In praise of "E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial," released 25 years ago on June 11, 1982

fiddle about, fiddle about

I guess I was 12, saw it in the theater, loved it. Though that was a tough age to see it in a way because you're just starting to get a little cynical, so it was very easy to feel like you were above a movie like this. I went w/ my best friend at the time and he was crying at the end, and I'd never seen him cry before even though we'd been friends for a long time, so that was pretty uncomfortable. I felt really bad for him b/c I think he was embarrassed. For a 12 year old boy in those days, crying in a movie was not cool!

I hated it as a kid too; the crying kids in the audience repulsed me. It was a particularly awful example of my trying to be better than the hoi polloi.

yeah I liked a lot of stuff that was popular at the time - just not this horrid manipulative movie with its phoned-in jokes ("lol school is dumb!") and total lack of cool shit like aliens that eat your head. fuck a feel-good-movie-of-the-summer

I didn't really realize that but we don't have feel-good summer movies anymore, do we? Just stuff-gets-blowed up action spectaculars and sequels sequels sequels.

I don't think I understood the idea of a movie being manipulative when I was 12, but then I was a late bloomer.

appreciate the "the only way you can hate this movie is if you're a snob" bs tho Alf

oh, 'manipulative' nevah gets old. That goddamn Eisenstein.

I don't recognize the 'summer movie' as anything but a marketing concept.

somehow Dr. I get the impression that nothing could convince you otherwise in the case of this film

ah, Alien. In space, no one can hear you snore.

-- Dr Morbius, Monday, June 11, 2007 5:57 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

...

still don't know what that ellipses shit means. i'll live.

it means SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND ARRRRRRGGHHH

http://www.feoamante.com/Movies/Alien/images/Alien/Alien04.jpg

latebloomer I kiss you with aliens

I love E.T. and it still makes me cry like a baby. I was 5 when it came out and remember seeing it in the theatre. I still have an amazing plush E.T. doll with the tags on that say 1982. I often wonder if it'll be worth something one day.

if i've ever watched this, i don't remember it at all

(this isn't saying something about its quality, i seriously have no idea if i've ever watched ET)

i was incredibly indifferent to this one as a kid. that school line is sub-nickelodeon at best.

appreciate the "the only way you can hate this movie is if you're a snob" bs tho Alf

I hated it for the wrong reasons -- I wanted to feel superior to the crying kids. I hated Return of the Jedi even more though: what at letdown that was (laughable Emperor making third-rate cackles, cloddish acting, Han and Lando strangely absent).

i'll admit i like ET. but i haven't seen it in years, except for catching a few bits while working as an usher during the re-release 5 years ago.

god, that atari game was shit!!!!!

i think you have to have seen it as a kid to love it?

yeah, that might be true. i think if i had seen it as a teen or pre-teen i would have dismissed it. i saw it as a 6 year old when it first came to vhs (around '88 i think?). there was a pretty big marketing blitz for the video release i think, since the movie had been (officially) unavailable since it left theaters.

me and my family were living in Oklahoma then, and we watched it at a neighbor's house. it remains a very vivid childhood cinematic experience for me because it's the first film i remember balling my eyes out at and actually feeling worried and scared how it was going to turn out.

the Atari game was (allegedly) partially responsible for the big game industry crash of '83!

My mother went to see it with the guy she was dating at the time, so I had to go see it by myself -- the idea of going to see a movie more than once at the theater was a foreign concept to Mom -- and this would have been the weekend after it opened, at the Mentor Mall General Cinemas Theater in Mentor, OH. Yeah, send overly-sensitive 12-year-old child-of-divorce to see tearjerking broken-home/dying alien movie by himself THANKS MOM.

i think you have to have seen it as a kid to love it?

I re-screened it last year!

i've never sene ETY is it good

the Atari game was (allegedly) partially responsible for the big game industry crash of '83!

-- latebloomer, Monday, June 11, 2007 4:53 PM (Monday, June 11, 2007 4:53 PM) Bookmark Link

In the novel Lucky Wander Boy, a landfill composed of those games almost makes a cameo appearance.

no, i mean seen it as a kid initially to enjoy it.. because part of me thinks the reason I didn't like it is that i have only seen it as a teenager and/or young adult.

speaking of movies you had to have seen as a kid to enjoy as an adult: cannonball run anyone?

hahaha otm! spaceballs also falls into that category, i think.

Definitely true of Cannonball Run. Which I think I can still quote verbatim.

also, howard the duck

I saw this in the theater when it came out with my grandma and parents and older brother. It was somewhere in the Bay Area, we had made a family trip to visit grandma, I must've been around 9 or 10. I don't really remember much about it except I do remember that I cried at one point and then we went to get lunch with a Vietnam vet/college friend of my parents who I scared the shit out of with my popgun and then the rest of the afternoon went badly.

anyway fuck Spielberg this movie is horrible. I don't think I've seen it in its entirety since I was 12 or 13 tho, when it was screened on one of the last days of junior high school in our biology class.

eagerly anticipating future rip thread

well, I don't think Spielberg's a bad guy (like, say Jack Valenti or Jerry Falwell), just someone who makes a lot of aesthetic decisions I disagree with.

What about Jaws?

E.T. is good, but Pauline Kael was un-OTM about thinking it was so clearly superior to Poltergeist.

I was 12, loved it. Saw the anniversary edition, and was so annoyed by the changes that I started looking for weakenesses. (I'm not sure the adult-scientist-child conflict at the end ever made sense.) Then saw the original again last year, and was surprised again by how great the scenes with the kids are--most realistic older brother ever. You get used to movies that have absolutely no idea what to do with children, and they keep coming.

I need pictures of Morbs crying.

yeah, the portrayal of sibling dynamics/kid interaction was very true-to-life and honest.

In the novel Lucky Wander Boy, a landfill composed of those games almost makes a cameo appearance.

that landfill is for real! here is the story: http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.asp

i was 15 when this came out, and i was primed to hate it, thinking it would be corny kids stuff. and of course it is, superficially, but i ended up loving it anyway. haven't seen it since tho.

I NOT LIKE ETEE TOO MUCH BECOS THEY NEVER SHOWED WHAT HE DID FOR A LIVING OR HOW HE WAS MORE EXTRA SPECIAL THAN THE OTHER ETEES THE EXTRATERRESTRIALLS. THEN WHEN HE GOT SICKS AND THE RACCOONS JUST WANT TO EAT HIM AND IT GOT WORSE IN THE MOVIE. AT THE END OF MOVIE. I JUST DONT KNOW WHAT TO THINKED ABOUT ETEE THE EXTRATERRIESTRIAL ANYMORE THEN TO BEGIN WITH. I DONT LIKE HOW THOSED RACOONS WANT TO EAT HIM. BUT MORE THAN THAT. I DONT KNOW. ONE THINK ID LIKE TO KNOW. HOW ETEE LOSED HIS PENISE. I JUST HOPED NOT SOME RACOONS THE EXTRATERRESTRISALS ON ETEES PLANET DIDNT EAT IT. BECOS THEN WHEN ETEE WAS ALMOST EATED BY RACOONS ON OUR PLANET. IT COULD REMIND HIM OF THOSED OTHER RACOONS TOO AND HED FEEL UNLUCKY.

did e.t. go to sbarro's?

IF I WAS ETEE. I WOULD GOTO SBARROS SOMETIMES. NOT ALL THE TIME. BUT SOMETIMES I WOULD GO THERE TO ORDER FOOD AND LEAVE THINGS I PRINTED OUT ON THE PRINTER ABOUT RACOONS.

"When did you first see it? and don't pretend you didn't love it. Me, at the now-defunct Bay Cinema on 32nd and 2nd in Manhattan [...]"

I saw it at that very same theater.

I despised it. It was, in fact, the first time I hated a film, wanted to injure it.

I saw the tarted-up version and the same deep, profound loathing was there, except digitally enhanced.

hey i still never saw this

i was 4 when i saw it. my older brother wrote me a letter and signed it E.T. and i was entirely convinced he was coming to visit me. i had E.T. slides for my viewmaster, and they gave me this recurring nightmare: kinda like a frieze-frame, compiled from my distorted memory of the movie - i'm in a room which has a big window along one wall, with blinds and bright light shining through. there's a family kinda standing in one corner, looking horrified, and there's an arm poking through the blinds with what looks like a plaster cast incasing it. all elements from the movie itself. 23 years later and i still vividly recall that nightmare, and how utterly terrified it made me.

i was 4 when i saw it. my older brother wrote me a letter and signed it E.T. and i was entirely convinced he was coming to visit me.

awwwww!

...and then he took great pleasure in telling me it was all a lie, and that E.T. wasn't real and would never be coming to visit. my brother was (and still is) a cunt bastard.

hahahaha that's like when my mom stepped out one afternoon to go to the store and my sister (about 5 or 6 at the time), not realizing she'd left, came out of her room asking where mommy was. i told her in a somber tone, "Mommy got flushed down the toilet and she's never coming back." and of course my sister started crying uncontrollably until my mom came home and chewed me out for being such a jerk. ah, to be a big brother...

you mean little shit! ;)
i bet you gave her the stinkfinger, too. that was one of my bro's favourites.

no, i mean seen it as a kid initially to enjoy it

You could have something there, but I'm thinking in terms of the ILX worship of the likes of The Goonies or Ferris Bueller.

it was screened on one of the last days of junior high school in our biology class.

Hahaha, did you liberate the frogs and kiss a girl like John Wayne?

I need pictures of Morbs crying.

If I sign a new lease for my apartment in Toddlerland Brooklyn, I'll ask for a camera.

Gen X-stacy more like it

boomer-iagra

Why would that be? Boomers sure as hell weren't kids when ET was released in 1982 and a lot of them didn't even have children, yet.

All the people going crazy about it/forwarding it seem to be boomers.

I never considered ET a kids movie? Wasn't it popular all around?

hmmm. maybe they're just old, bored, housebound, overly sentimental, and unimaginative, and therefore a perfect demographic for Comcast.

It was nominated for Best Picture.

It’s a family movie