#E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Bicycle Chase

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E. T.

Geração Só80s – Facebook “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Bicycle Chase then and now (1982 and 2022). Darby Ave. and Beaufait Ave. Porter Ranch, Ca. 91326. StrangeRage – ifunny. 18 jun 2024 E.T. O Extraterrestre (1982), filme do diretor Steven Spielberg, é um clássico dos anos 1980. O longa-metragem que acompanha a amizade entre o garoto Elliot e um pequeno alienígena perdido na Terra rendeu mais de…

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ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982); AFI #24

The next film on the AFI list is one of the most financially successful movies of all time, the classic ET: The Extra Terrestrial (1982). The film won four technical awards for music and effects, but all of the production and acting awards that year went to the extremely strong competition of Ghandi and Sophie’s Choice. The film was in theatres for an extraordinary amount of time and was far and away the greatest financial success of all the movies that came out that year. I have a bit of a history with this movie, but I want to go over the plot synopsis first:

SPOILER ALERT!!!

The movie opens immediately on aliens waddling around in the forest and doing what looks like farming or collecting plant samples. These things scared the crap out of me as a child because I did not get that a PG rated family film meant that this was not likely to go towards the horrific. These aliens are surprised by some government agents and, in their haste to escape, the aliens leave one of the crew on the planet. 

We meet the family that is made up of a recently divorced mom named Mary (Dee Wallace), older brother Michael (Robert McNaughton), baby sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore), and middle brother Elliot (Henry Thomas). Elliot goes out to pick up a delivered pizza outside the house and runs into the abandoned alien. He tells his family but nobody believes him. They next day he leaves out candy to catch whatever it was that he saw and successfully lures the being into the house and up to his room. Elliot pretends to be sick and stays home to take care of the new pet, basically. When his brother and sister return from school, they are both introduced to the alien (lots of little girl and alien screaming) but they decide to all keep the alien a secret. As they interact with the alien, the three kids realize that this creature will likely want to go home. The next day, Elliot goes to school but has established so kind of psychic link with the alien and the two share emotions. This gets Elliot into trouble and he is sent home from school after a debacle with a class frog dissection.  

The alien learns some basic language from Gertie and a Speak and Spell toy as Elliot is brought back from school. The alien is dubbed ET by Elliot, and the two try and figure out how the alien can contact his ship for a pick up. It becomes apparent that the bond between Elliot and ET as the boy starts referring to the alien as we. It also appears that ET has declining health and needs to get back to his space ship.

On Halloween, Michael and Elliott dress E.T. as a ghost so they can sneak him out of the house. That night, Elliott and E.T. head through the forest, where they make a successful call home. The next day, Elliott wakes up in the field, only to find E.T. gone. Elliott returns home to his distressed family. Michael searches for and finds E.T. dying next to a drain. Michael takes E.T. home to Elliott, who is also dying. Mary becomes frightened when she discovers her son's illness and the dying alien, just as government agents invade the house. Scientists set up a hospital at the house, questioning Michael, Mary and Gertie while treating Elliott and E.T. Their connection disappears and E.T. then appears to die while Elliott recovers. A grief-stricken Elliott is left alone with the motionless E.T. when he notices a dead chrysanthemum, a plant E.T. had previously revived, coming back to life. E.T. reanimates and reveals that his people are returning. Elliott and Michael steal a van that E.T. had been loaded into and a chase ensues, with Michael's friends joining them as they attempt to evade the authorities by bicycles. Suddenly facing a police roadblock, they escape as E.T. uses telekinesis to lift the group into the air and toward the forest.

Standing near the spaceship, E.T.'s heart glows as he prepares to return home. Mary and Gertie show up and E.T. says goodbye to Michael and Gertie, as she presents him with the chrysanthemum that he had revived. Before boarding the spaceship, ET embraces Elliott and tells him "I'll be right here", pointing his glowing finger to Elliott's forehead. He then picks up the chrysanthemum, boards the spaceship, and it takes off, leaving a rainbow in the sky as everyone watches it leave. 

It feels like a really short movie because the pacing is fantastic, but it is a feature length (almost 2 hour) film. This was one of the, if not the, first 80s kid adventure films (like Goonies) that inspired things today like the movie Super 8 or the Netflix show Stranger Things. There was some talk of a sequel to ET right after it came out, but thankfully that was canned by Spielberg. He was rich enough that he wasn’t making films for money even back in the early 80s. 

When I saw this film in theatres as a very young child, the aliens scared the crap out of me. Through some research, I found out that the movie was at one time considered as a flat out horror film in which a group of aliens terrorizes a family. Instead, Spielberg used his own life to inspire the story as his parents divorced when he was Elliot’s age and he had a make believe friend. I think it was a better choice and the box office returns tell me that others agree.

One thing that really stands out with this film was the special effects done by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). The company was basically founded to make Star Wars and has since been putting out the best special effects in the business, about 40 years now. This group did the effects for all the Indiana Jones films, all of the Star Wars films, all of the Jurassic Park films, all of the Harry Potter films, all of the Marvel cinematic universe films, the Transformers films, and the Terminator films. I was watching the famous flying bicycle scene which is shown on all the posters and it still holds up. No wonder I was scared as a kid, it is really not difficult to imagine the aliens being real. 

I have mentioned it before for Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I will say again the part of the success of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg lies in the musical talent of John Williams. The score on this film is superb. The action escape music for ET, especially during the flying bike scenes, is some of the most recognizable music in cinema history. Absolutely beautiful score.

There are not a whole lot of family films on the AFI top 100, but of the ones that are present, this is the best in my opinion. I absolutely recommend it and believe it is great for anybody over about 6 years of age. I actually got a couple questions regarding why it was on the top 100 American movies as it only won technical awards and none of the actors were nominated for Academy awards. I was more than a little surprised at this. Besides the 4 awards it did win, the film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, and Best Screenplay; it just went up against the awards juggernaut which was Ghandi. The director of that film, David Attenborough, famously said that he thought that ET would win and that it deserved to win for being so innovative. The movie is a standout in a year of fantastic films. When adjusted for inflation, it is one of the top 5 most financially successful films ever made. This is a great film and absolutely deserves such a high spot on the list. It should be required viewing for schools and it was a pleasure to have a reason to go back and watch it again.