May 26, 1982 (Cannes) June 11, 1982 (United States)
Running time
115 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$10.5 million
Box office
$792.9 million
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 Americanscience fiction movie produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. The screenplay was written by Melissa Mathison. The movie was released on June 11, 1982, by Universal Pictures. It stars Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Robert Macnaughton, and Dee Wallace as the Taylor family. E.T. is portrayed by an animatronic puppet. Peter Coyote plays a conflicted G-man hunting E.T. down, ostensibly for science.
Plot
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is about an extraterrestrial who is among a group of scientist extraterrestrials who visit earth to study its flora and nature. E.T. is left behind on Earth when his space-exploring ship is in a hurry to leave the planet to avoid capture by Earth government agents and scientists. Frightened, E.T. runs and hides.
A young ten-year-old boy, Elliott, lures E.T. from the wooded area where he is hiding with chocolate peanut butter candies, and brings him to his house, where Elliott lives with his older brother Mike, his younger sister Gertie, and his divorced mother, Mary, as well as their dog.
Elliott hides E.T. in his bedroom and does not tell anyone else in his family about the alien. He attempts to teach him things about Earth, although the alien does not understand human language. Elliott does ascertain that E.T. very much likes Reeses Pieces. Elliott plays sick for a little while, to stay at home with E.T., but eventually has to go to school, and leave E.T. alone in his room while he is gone.
Eventually, his younger sister learns of the alien; Elliott swears her to secrecy (Gertie is a very irrepressable young girl though, and at some point she is involved in outing E.T.'s presence to both their older brother and their mother).
Gertie teaches E.T. to read basic English with a Speak-n-Spell machine. He is forced to play dress-up with Gertie, and being dressed up as an old lady by Gertie, E.T. hides in a closet among dolls to avoid being discovered by Mary, the childrens' mother, when she shows up to take Gertie out.
Mary and Gertie leave, and E.T., still in his old lady costume, sets about exploring the house. He raids the refrigerator, discovers what beer is, gets very drunk, and we learn that E.T. has special empathic "powers" – that, over the course of their time together, E.T. and Elliott had developed a psychic connection.
The day E.T. discovers beer, gets very drunk, and discovers channel surfing on the (pre-cable-connected) television, Elliott is in school, and while in science class, also gets incredibly drunk (without drinking) due to their empathic connection.
Losing some control of his own free will to E.T.'s, Elliott and the psychicly connected E.T. get the entire class to free a bunch of frogs that were meant to be dissected. E.T., at the Taylor house, drunk, watches a romantic scene on television at the Taylors' house, which leads Elliott to kiss a girl in his class during the release of the frogs.
Elliott is sent home from school with his frustrated, divorced mother (who has no idea why her son is acting this way or doing these things).
Not too long later in the storyline, E.T., who is apparently handy with Earth-based piezoelectronics, learns to make the Speak-n-Spell part of an extrastellar communication device capable of transmitting a sort of code into outer space, powered by tree branches, in an attempt to set up a rendezvous with his fellow scientist aliens. He uses the makeshift device to attempt to send an S.O.S. message to his compatriot aliens so he can go home. It turns out that E.T. cannot be gone from home for too long or he gets sick, due in part to his strong need to be psychicly connected to the creatures he is close to.
E.T. is dressed up as a ghost for Halloween.
At some point the government agents locate E.T. and the family hiding him. E.T. gets sick, as does Elliott, due to their spiritual and psychic connection. The government agents seem sympathetic and allow visits. Gertie brings Elliott and E.T. a potted plant. The agents believe E.T. is close to death. Suddenly, it appears the group of alien scientists got the message and were on their way back to pick E.T. back up.
Elliott gets better and he and Gertie and Mike devise a plan to rescue E.T., after his heartlight lights up. The geranium Gertie brought that was dying shoots back to life. The family breaks E.T. out of the makeshift alien study facility near their home.
Mike and his friends mountain bike E.T. to the clearing where the scientist aliens that are E.T.'s friends plan to pick E.T. back up in their large spaceship (to get to the rendezvous point, they eventually fly on their mountain bikes to escape the government agents hot on their trail, thanks to E.T.'s apparent ability to make things levitate; this was E.T.'s second mountain-bike flying scene; the first took place earlier with only he and Elliott).
The rest of Elliott's family and Elliott eventually make it to the clearing in the woods too. E.T. offers Elliott a ride to his planet too; Elliott does not go. Gertie hands E.T. the potted flower to take with him on his spaceship. E.T. instructs the children to be good.
The spaceship flies away with the family and the lead government agent watching, in a mild light spectacle.
Cast
Henry Thomas as Elliott Taylor, a ten-year-old boy who forms a bond with E.T..
Robert Macnaughton as Michael Taylor, Elliott's older brother.
Drew Barrymore as Gertie Taylor, Elliott's younger sister.
Dee Wallace as Mary Taylor, Elliott's mother. She does not notice the alien's presence in her household.
Peter Coyote as "Keys", one of the government agents.
Michael's friends were played by K. C. Martel (as Greg), Sean Frye (as Steve), and C. Thomas Howell – billed as Tom Howell – (as Tyler).
A pre-teenaged actor with no legs and two dwarf actors were hired to dress in E.T. costume for the parts where E.T. was not able to be portrayed solely via animatronics.
The major voice acting for the part of the animatronic puppet E.T. was done by Pat Welsh, an elderly woman who lived in Marin County, California. Welsh smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, which gave her voice a quality that sound effects creator Ben Burtt liked.
Burtt also recorded 16 other people and various animals to create E.T.'s "voice". These included Spielberg; actress Debra Winger; Burtt's sleeping wife, who had a cold; a burp from his University of Southern California movie professor; and other sounds, including raccoons, sea otters, and horses.
Doctors working at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center were recruited to play the doctors who try to save E.T.. Spielberg felt that actors in the roles, performing lines with medical lingo, would come across as unnatural.
Filming and budget
The filming of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial took place from September to December 1981. The movie's budget was $10.5 million U.S. dollars (equivalent to around $36.6 million in 2026 dollars).
Release
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was first shown at the closing gala of the 1982 Cannes Film Festival on May 26, 1982.
The movie was widely released in the United States two weeks later, on June 11, 1982. It opened at number one with a gross of $11 million.
E.T. was an immediate blockbuster, surpassing Star Wars to become the highest grossing movie that anyone had made to date (a record that was unbroken for 11 years, until Jurassic Park (another Spielberg movie) surpassed it).
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial remained in the theaters for a very long time – nearly an entire year – during its original release, running for 363 days from June 11, 1982, until June 9, 1983.
On September 17, 1982, the movie was shown at the United Nations, and Spielberg received the U.N. Peace Medal.
E.T. was widely acclaimed by critics and is considered to be one of the greatest and beloved movies of all time.
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was re-released in the theaters in 1985.
E.T. was again re-released in 2002, to celebrate its 20th anniversary, in a special cut with additional scenes and extras.
E.T. won two Golden Globes at the 40th Golden Globe Awards: Best Picture in the Drama category, and Best Score. It had also been nominated for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best New Male Star (Henry Thomas).
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded the movie awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and a "New Generation Award" for screenwriter Melissa Mathison.
The movie won five Saturn Awards: Best Science Fiction Film, Best Writing, Best Special Effects, Best Music, and Best Poster Art.
Young Artist Awards were won by all three children playing the Taylor family in the movie, Henry Thomas, Robert McNaughton, and Drew Barrymore.
An Atari video game loosely based on the movie was made.
A novelization of the movie, and a sequel to that novel, were also made, as well as picture books.
Many lines of stuffed animals, dolls, toys, stickers and a lot of assorted memorabilia were released.
Other music
A heartwarming hit single song, "Heartlight", was released in September 1982. "Heartlight", written by Neil Diamond and his wife Carol Bayer Sager, was written after they saw E.T. in a movie theater. The song was inspired by and loosely based on events in the movie, and was released after the movie. The song "Heartlight" would reach #5 on the Billboard 100 (Diamond's last song to chart so high, to date). Neil Diamond would be sued for the song, but he and MCA/Universal settled out of court for $25,000 in 1982.
The song fell out of his rotation in the 1990s, though returned as the finale song during Diamond's 2015 world tour. "Heartlight" would feature not long after in 2019 commercials for Comcast.
