“E.T.” turns thirty

I can't believe it has been thirty years since I, at the age of 12, saw E.T. in the cinema. What a wonderful film it still is and The New Yorker has covered the event perfectly.

The thirtieth-anniversary edition of “E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial ” is in theatres tonight and out on Blu-ray next Tuesday, and Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece about the audacity of empathy hasn’t lost a speck of its humor, emotion, or mystery. It’s even acquired a new sheen: when Spielberg supervised the film’s twentieth-anniversary edition, he foolishly erased shotguns from the hands of threatening federal agents in the climactic chase scene (he replaced the firearms with walkie-talkies); he also substituted the word “hippies” for the word “terrorists” in a comical Halloween sequence. These moves were high-minded—and misguided...

Comments

[Rui Duarte]

The impact it caused on me then. Wow.