Talk:E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

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Contents

[edit] Video Game Crash of 1983

Why is there a 'citation needed' under the video crash of 1983 link? One only has to click on the link to find the relevance. It has been removed.

[edit] Plagiarism Section?

The Satyajit Ray article has Spielberg making an contradictory claim about the effect Satyajit Ray's movie "The Alien" had on "E.T". I have no clue which claim is more accurate, but feel that the wikipedia loses credibility when it is not internally consistent. I suspect that Indians are pushing the case for Satyajit Ray's influence, and Americans, are probably downplaying it. Is there any non-POV way to resovle this discrepency?65.125.163.221 08:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Having external sources for this would definately help. (The quote in the Ray article is unsourced, as is the one used here, and therefore both are hard to verify.) --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 10:15, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

a plot summary would be nice >.>—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.47.38.130 (talk • contribs) .

[edit] POV

I was impressed with the organisation of this article, but then I came across two conflicting sets of facts (both unreferenced, just to make it harder). In the 20th anniversary section, two changes are mentioned: replacing guns with walkie-talkie handsets, and replacing a mention of "terrorist" with "hippie". The first one is said to be because after the birth of his own children "Spielberg found it too threatening to have guns around the children in the movie." Two paragraphs later, the article says "However, the omission of the word "terrorist" and the digitally removed guns are clearly not things Spielberg was unable to do in 1981, but changes made to confine to political correctness following the September 11, 2001 attacks and the debate about the gun politics in the United States in the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre." (I presume that "conform" is meant rather than "confine".)

I think this second "However..." sentence is making a judgement call and not neutral point-of-view. However, it's been in the article for so long (since October 9th) that perhaps every other editor to the article disagrees and I am wrong. So I am leaving it in for now. But I do think that this "clearly these changes were made to conform to PC" commentary should go unless there is an excellent reference for it. Thoughts?

--Telsa 10:26, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, you are right to some extend, it does sound a little pov (I even had some concerns about that back when I wrote it). I just had a quick look at some of my notes and I think the first part (him saying he doesn't want guns around children) is also from the documentary referenced elsewhere in the paragraph. For the second part, I just found this: "Spielberg has publicly stated that in a time when we are still reeling from events like Columbine and Littleton, movies that show kids and guns together make him uncomfortable."[1] and "[...]and then changing "terrorist" to "hippie." Spielberg says it's due to the current post-9/11 environment,[...]"[2] So maybe we can just rewrite it to make it less pov instead of omit it, given there are sources for this. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 11:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

What a rapid reply! Thanks, these are great. Would you be happy to drop the mention of "PC", which means so many different things to different people, and simply to go with something along the lines of

  1. "...in the scene near the movie's end where the kids are fleeing on their bicycles, all the police officers' guns were digitally removed and replaced with walkie-talkies, because Spielberg found it too threatening to have guns around the children in the movie. The second prominent change is the replacing of the word "terrorist" with the word "hippie" in one scene where Mary forbids Michael to dress up as a terrorist for Halloween." (ie, describe changes without the reasons given)
  2. Then keep the next paragraph about the other changes (perhaps run it and the prior paragrah together) and fix the mention of "rash" -- I wasn't sure what that was supposed to be.
  3. Then put all the reasons in together in the next paragraph: "Spielberg stated that he made the changes to E.T. to please the perfectionist in him and that he had not been completely satisfied with some scenes and could now go back and change what he could not achieve in 1981 due to limited time or limited technical possibilities, as well as reincorporate scenes he had to cut to meet a certain runtime.[1] The changes involving the guns and the replacement of the word terrorist had a different genesis, however: he apparently found himself uncomfortable with scenes of guns around children ([2]Metro ref here); and the wording change is reported to have been made due to a "post-9/11 environment" ([3]WorldWideRant ref here)"

Would that be acceptable, you think?

--Telsa 13:39, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Sounds great. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 15:08, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

There we go. I took the "rash" out too, because I am still not sure what it should have been. --Telsa 16:06, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


I would like to point out that none of the articles being cited have actual direct quotes from Spielberg about the changes, they are all people complaining about the change without full knowledge. I have updated the article to reflect the facts as far as the ADRing of that line. ThatGuamGuy 17:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)sean

[edit] Box Office Section (since merged)

ok - so I read and learned how to sign my name... DOH.. ANYWAYS... I added a Box Office section - especially since this film held the number one position of all time gross foe so long. I checked, but an still somewhat uncertain if it was Titanic or Star Wars re-release the knocked it out. It would be great if this can be double checked (I checked both Box Office Mojo as well an IMDB). Raabscuttle 05:50, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't the fact that it was the biggest grossing film (for a time) be added into the body of the article, not just a side note? Copy Editor 07:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scary

Mars Company's fear of E.T. scaring children was not unfounded. It scared the heck out of me when I was a wee lad. JIP | Talk 17:59, 25 March 2006 (UTC) I was also terrified by E.T. and found out tonight that my son took to him as I did.

[edit] Movie poster design

I have already posted this on the Drew Struzan page, but Struzan did NOT design the movie poster for E.T... John Alvin did. [3] [4] This is easily verifiable by googling "John Alvin," and it was Alvin, and not Struzan or anyone else, who received the Hollywood Reporter Key Art Award and the Saturn Award for the E.T. poster. Anyone care to explain why this article (and Struzan's) claim that Struzan designed that poster? If no one can explain the discrepancy, I'm going to change both articles. The credit properly belongs to John Alvin. CagedRage 18:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Struzan created one poster for the film [5], I guess who ever added the sentence simply confused the two. Go ahead and change it. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 19:03, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation page

Just wondering, shouldn't E.T. be a disambiguation page? Or at worst, redirect it here, and have here a link to E.T. (disambiguation)? I hoped to reach a disambiguation page by typing E.T. to go to the Atari game, but got redirected here instead. -- ReyBrujo 00:36, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

ET actually is a disambiguation page. It would probably make more sense to redirect E.T. there than to this article. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 09:36, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] PoV / Ref ?

Actually, "E.T." is a remake of the 1970's Disney movies "Escape to Witch Mountain" (1975) and "The Cat From Outer Space" (1978). Both Disney films feature stranded aliens who befriend humans who help the aliens return to their home planets. Both aliens (the kids and the cat) can levitate objects, resulting in flying escapes, alternately by a flying RV in "Escape to Witch Mountain" and by a flying motorcycle in "The Cat From Outer Space." Both aliens and their human helpers are pursued by gangs of thugs, alternately an evil rich man's lackeys in "Escape" and government UFO investigators in "Cat." Watch the amazing scene in "Cat" where the alien cat in a motorcycle bike basket and his human friend driving the motorcycle escape US military guys pursuing them in jeeps by flying the motorcycle away! For a very interesting, revealing excercise, try screening a triple feature of these films, in the order of their release. As the saying goes, "everything old is new again."

What the hell is this?! └ VodkaJazz / talk ┐ 21:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

It had just been added by an anonymous editor. I removed it for lack of references, POV and OR. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 09:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Universal Studios

Needs some mention of the Universal Studios attraction.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.97.135.60 (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Cast Error

Michael Durrell Van Man

On the DVD credits he listed as Michael Darrell. Was this an typo in the original cast list or are they two different people? Watching the DVD I was unable to determine exactly who they were referring to. I think the Van Man is the gentleman who taps on the window of the van as the kids drive away. If it is him they are obviously not the same person. IMDB lists Michael Darrell with ET being his only credit and no photo to confirm his identity. ET is also listed on the page of Michael Durrell as a credit. If it was just a typo on one page I would have just corrected it. Searching around a lot of places list Durrell instead of Darrell so I could not determine a conclusive opinion. --Koosh 05:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plot section expansion

Plot section is practically nonexistent considering the spoiler tag. It needs the chase section added at least. Chris Cunningham 23:43, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Heartlight

I came apon this, 'The movie inspired the hit (but often-ridiculed) song "Heartlight," written and performed by Neil Diamond.'

Ridiculed by whom? How often? I find this completely unfounded, the song peaked at #5 on the Billboard chart. Barrel-rider 01:29, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reception and criticism section

The Academy Awards won by the film defenitely don't belong in the Trivia section. More information regarding public response to the film would also be useful. Paul C 08:19, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 80's ET Song?

I was hoping to find information about an ET song I recorded from the radio around 1982-3, and I can't seem to find anything. I would add it to the page if I knew any real information about it. It was a pretty corny pop song that had an ET style voice singing about his adventure. It was the usual sort of 80's pop-rock type song with a saxophone and all that. As I recall it sounded pretty professional, so I don't think it was just a regional type thing. So far my google searches have yielded nothing. Does anyone have any idea what I'm referring to? Technocratic 00:15, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Elliott: two l's, two t's

The official movie site and IMDB both spell "Elliott" with two l's and two t's. I fixed all the misspellings in the article I could find. SnappingTurtle 02:21, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion for cleanup of the "in popular culture"

Since the majority of E.T. references draw from the famous flying bicycle scene, a lot of them could be organized under the flying reference. Say, put a header saying "one of the most-referenced moments of E.T. is the flying scene; these include" (or something to that effect) and then simply list films/TV/etc. that do so without having multiple bullet points that take up space by repeating over and over, "(______ film or TV show) did _____ scene that referenced the flying sequence from E.T." Just a suggestion. - Pennyforth 16:37, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Given the article's length, it might also be a good idea to split the section off into it's own article. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 12:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Added more specific references to Peter Pan

I included several references to Peter Pan. I'm sure there are more parallels to that classic: Lost Boys, pixie dust=heart light, etc. --Gouveia2 00:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, it counts as original research. Wiki-newbie 16:54, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathison vs Universal/Rambaldi lawsuit

Some mention should be made of Mathison sueing over the image of E.T., which Universal claimed was invented by Rambaldi but Mathison proved in court was in her original script, therefore entitling her to huge chunks of the profits from the merchandising. Very surprised it's not mentioned at all, because it pretty much made Mathison as wealthy as her then-husband, Harrison Ford. RoyBatty42 02:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Got a citation? Wiki-newbie 16:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] When is E.T. first named?

I'm currently rewriting the plot section, given it is a simple story that can benefit with 600 words. I cannot recall however when E.T. stops merely being "an alien" and is called "E.T.". WikiNew 17:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

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