E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial debuted in theaters on June 11, 1982, two months prior to my ninth birthday. E.T. mania exploded during the summer of ’82 and the marketing machine churned at full speed. By the time I started fourth grade later that fall, our school was flooded with E.T. t-shirts, E.T. pencil toppers, E.T. backpacks and E.T. lunchboxes (I was the lone dissenter, clinging to my Return of the Jedi lunchbox). For my birthday that August I got an E.T. t-shirt; for Christmas that year, I got E.T. for the Atari 2600. My sister got a ceramic E.T. coin bank.
At some point that fall I also got an E.T. coloring book. My dad took a page from the book to work (a picture of E.T.’s face) and made me 100 copies, which I handed out freely to my fellow classmates. I was single-handedly responsible for Yukon’s great brown crayon shortage of ’82. I was pretty much the main E.T. hookup in my school … until Jerry Buffington came along. Jerry Buffington’s dad was Tom Wayne, who, in 1982, wrote, recorded, and released his song “We Called Him E.T.” Soon, my second-hand E.T. coloring pages were old news, replaced by the limited-edition red vinyl release of “We Called Him E.T.” (For those who missed out on the single the first time around, a CD version is now available with three songs: “We Called Him E.T.,” “E.T. and Me,” and “Best Friends with E.T.” Tell Tom one of his son’s elementary school classmates sent you — maybe you’ll get some free Reese’s Pieces or something.)
E.T. Mania began to wane in early 1983, and by the time I entered fifth grade there was little trace of the little long-fingered alien. E.T. clothing moved to the clearance racks, E.T. toys moved to the bargain bins, and E.T. Atari cartridges moved to a desert landfill.
As those of you with kids and cable sure already know, Nickelodeon has apparently acquired the rights to air E.T. for some unspecified amount of time. The movie first ran on May 11th, and it has aired at least every other night (and maybe more often than that) since then.
My kids have watched it a couple of times this month, but I don’t think it’s had the impact on them that it had on me — then again, in 1982, the special effects in E.T. were still impressive. Today they’re average, if that. Last week Mason and I watched a completely realistic-looking Iron Man fight a giant robot — a “little person” in a rubber alien suit isn’t particularly jaw dropping these days. Watching kids ride their bicycles down the street and up into the sky is no longer amazing. Kids today will never wonder “how did they do that?” when watching a movie. When I asked Mason how he thought they did that, he said, “eh, computers,” without breaking his stride through the living room.
Some of you may or may not know that while George Lucas was dabbling with digitally editing the original Star Wars films for their re-releases, Steven Spielberg did the same thing with E.T. for its 2002 DVD debut. The biggest controversy revolved around a scene in which FBI agents’ guns were replaced with walkie-talkies. The biggest complaint I have read about this scene is, “it doesn’t look real.” This is in the same scene in which children, with an alien in tow, fly into the sky while riding bicycles. I can’t believe the digital walkie-talkies are the least believable thing in that scene. My guess is, unless someone told you, you would never, ever notice the change. Much more noticable are the added cities that star a completely digital version of E.T. None of them add to the film’s plot and they reek of “look what we can do” additions.
Anyway, we (or at least I) had a good time watching E.T. again. I don’t know if the film will enter the kids’ regular rotation, but at least they’ve now seen it.