E.T. Movie Released - The History Behind the Movie
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
E.T. Movie Released - The History Behind the Movie
By Jennifer Rosenberg, ThoughtCo, Updated March 18 2019
Ann Ronan Pictures/Getty Images
The movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was a hit from the day it was released (June 11, 1982) and quickly became one of the most beloved movies of all tim The Plot
The movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was about a 10-year-old boy, Elliott (played by Henry Thomas ), who befriended a little, lost alien. Elliott named the alien "E.T." and did his best to hide him from adults. Soon Elliott's two siblings, Gertie (played by Drew Barrymore ) and Michael (played by Robert MacNaughton ), discovered E.T.'s existence and helped.
The children tried to help E.T. construct a device so that he could "phone home" and thus hopefully become rescued from the planet he was accidentally left upon. During the time they spent together, Elliott and E.T. create such a strong bond that when E.T. started to become sick, so did Elliott.
The plot got even sadder when agents from the government discovered the dying E.T. and quarantined him. Elliott, distraught by his friend's illness, eventually rescues his friend and flees from the pursuing government agents.
Realizing that E.T. would only really get better if he could go home, Elliott took E.T. to the spaceship that had returned for him. Knowing they would never see each other again, the two good friends say goodbye.
Creating E.T.
They storyline of E.T. had its beginnings in director Steven Spielberg's own past. When Spielberg's parents divorced in 1960, Spielberg invented an imaginary alien to keep him company. Using the idea of a lovable alien, Spielberg worked with Melissa Mathison (future wife of Harrison Ford) on the set of Raiders of the Lost Ark to write the screenplay.
With the screenplay written, Spielberg needed the right alien to play E.T. After spending $1.5 million, the E.T. we now know and love was created in multiple versions for close-ups, full-body shots, and animatronics. Reportedly, the look of E.T. was based on Albert Einstein , Carl Sandburg, and a pug dog. (Personally, I can definitely see the pug in E.T.)
Spielberg filmed E.T. in two very unusual ways. First, nearly all of the movie was filmed from the eye-level of the children, with most of the adults in E.T. only seen from about the waist down. This perspective allowed even adult moviegoers to feel like a child while watching the movie.
Secondly, the film was mostly shot in chronological order, which is not a common filmmaking practice. Spielberg chose to film this way so that the child actors would have a more realistic, emotional reaction to E.T. throughout the movie and especially during E.T.'s departure at the end.
E.T. Was a Hit
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was a blockbuster movie right from its release. Its opening weekend grossed $11.9 million and E.T. stayed at the top of the charts for over four months. At the time, it was the largest grossing movie ever made.
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won four of them: Sound Effects Editing, Visual Effects, Best Music (Original Score), and Best Sound (Best Picture that year went to Gandhi ).
E.T. touched the hearts of millions and has remained one of the best movies ever made.
If you love the movies, you'll love checking out all the interesting articles about the movies, their directors, actors, even the movie theatres themselves, by joining the Everyone Loves Movies - Classic to Current group:
The source seed used the word "released" which may confuse readers into thinking it is an article from back in 1982, but it is in fact a current article. I am not permitted to change that copyrighted material.
I worked at a theater showing ET for months ... I got so sick of that movie!
I heard that they threw "penis breath" in there just to avoid a G rating, so it would attract a larger audience.
Well, when I see that a seed about a gun massacre in Texas gets almost 400 comments, and an article about a movie that virtually everyone probably knows about gets none (except my own), it does educate me about culture in America.
Do they have weather coverage of America in China?
Everyone I know, except for some die hard NT commenters, lol, is, and has been watching hurricane Dorian skip past
Puerto Rico and other Caribbean favorite vacation islands only to become a Cat 5 hurricane that stalled on top of the Bahamas
and is decimating the islands one hour after the other while Florida and the rest of the USA waits with baited breath,
ignoring the Presidents 100 plus tweets about the danger to Alabama.
So, let me apologize on the behalf of NT for not paying attention to Hollywood history
while tragic events in California, Texas and the whole east coast of the USA play out.
Dorian is a fairly substantial news subject in China. A watched a video of the storm sitting on Nassau on the China Daily site. I also saw both Bing and Yahoo and even China news about the Texas shooting. Funny thing is I had time to post this article, and one with photos of China that took me about 3 hours to do because of an internet slowdown, and I have been posting on a few of the NT articles, and doing my spam police job determining that a new user seems to be okay, and I found, read and posted a long article about Israel on one of my groups. However, I haven't been able to spend too much more time on NT because I had to go to the bank today that's a bus ride away and I watched a movie - a sort of updated 3 Musketeers and D'artagnian (sp?) - the only actor I recognized was Orlando Bloom, who played Legolas in the LOTR trilogy. It's somewhat after 3 p.m. here so I still have more I want to do. Sorry I have spent so LITTLE time focusing on the gun slaughter happening in the USA. Oh, I did also correspond with Kavika about his safety as he is living in Florida, and with A.Mac asking for some advice about my photos, and with Perrie about the spam situation.
But I DO thank you for checking out this seed.