E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
★★★★ — E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
This film basically raised me. I'm not being dramatic about that. There were stretches of my childhood where I must've watched E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial close to a hundred times, and every single one of those viewings ended the same way: me and my mates outside on our bikes, arguing over who had to be the alien in the basket. That's what a great film does. It doesn't just sit in front of you. It follows you out the door.
What Spielberg pulled off here is deceptively simple. A boy finds an alien. They become friends. The world tries to get in the way. That's it, really. And yet there's something in that simplicity that feels almost miraculous, because it works just as well now as it did in 1982. The story doesn't lean on spectacle to earn its emotions, it earns them the old-fashioned way, through two characters who genuinely need each other. That's a harder trick than it looks.
Yes, some of the effects are showing their age, and the adult characters, particularly the government types, are painted in pretty broad strokes. The acting from the younger cast has that slightly rough, unpolished quality that you either find charming or distracting depending on your patience. I find it charming. It feels real in a way that over-coached child performances never quite do. But I won't pretend the film is flawless, because it isn't. It's just that the flaws don't matter, because what surrounds them is so good.
John Williams' score is, and I'll say it plainly, perfect. I don't know how else to put it. The music during the bike flight across the moon is one of those moments where the visuals and the sound lock together so completely that you couldn't separate them if you tried. That sequence alone is worth four stars. And then there's the glowing finger. The phone home. The moment near the end that I won't spoil for anyone who somehow hasn't seen it, but which still gets me every single time, no matter how well I know it's coming.
Spielberg had a real gift in this period for filming the world from a child's perspective, not in a patronising way, but in a way that made you feel the scale and the strangeness of everything through young eyes. It connects, for me, to what he was doing in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that same sense that contact with something alien isn't a military problem or a geopolitical event, it's a deeply personal, almost spiritual one. The difference is that E.T. brings it down to the level of a back garden and a suburban bedroom, and somehow that makes it feel even bigger.
The real test came when I sat my own kids down with it. No CGI gloss, no modern pacing, effects that even they could tell were practical and a bit creaky in places. And they got it. Completely. They were gripped, and a bit tearful at the right moments, and afterwards they wanted to talk about it. That's not nothing. That's the whole thing, actually. A film that can cross forty-odd years and still land with a child who grew up on Marvel films and whatever else is a film that's doing something right at a fundamental level.
It's not a perfect film. But it's a true one. And it stays with you long after the credits roll, the way the best stories always do. Four stars.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 1982 | Watched: 2025-05-14
Where to watch
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Steven Spielberg: Duel (1971) · Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) · The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) · Jurassic Park (1993)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More science fiction: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Fantastic Planet (1973) · Nightmare City (1980) · The Long Walk (2025)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
