E.T.'s Hidden Details, From the Erased Shotguns to Spielberg's Lesson in Letting Go

Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extraterrestrial gave us some of the most iconic moments in film history, and one of its most telling details is a close-up of a shotgun that Spielberg himself removed for the 2002 20th anniversary release, which also turned the agents' guns into walkie-talkies. In 2011 he changed it back, because over the life of this film Spielberg learned the same lesson Elliott learns: the power of letting go.

I didn't think it was possible to love E.T. even more, but during my Spielberg summer I realized something new. It's set at Halloween, but it's really a summer movie. Its themes still lead us to associate it with summertime: the kind of summer trouble we get into and the kind of summer friends we make.

E.T.'s name, species and age were all added after the 1982 film

The film opens on black with the title drawn in purple crayon text, because E.T. is just the kids' nickname. We never learn its native name or species in the movie, and the word alien is never spoken. E.T.'s species was later made canon in the Star Wars universe, with a cameo in the Galactic Senate in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and like everything in Star Wars they were given a name, along with a home planet whose name is meant to translate to Green Planet, tying in with the sequel novel E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet.

According to the first film's novelization, E.T. is over 10 million years old, and a never made sequel script would have given him a name of his own. I'm setting all of that aside, because it was added later. I'm looking at this story through the eyes of its creators, director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Melissa Mathison, as they made it in the early 1980s.

E.T. is all about a family separated and a boy who misses his father

E.T. was Spielberg's follow up to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, though he shot Raiders of the Lost Ark in between. Close Encounters was his attempt to reconcile the mysteries of the night sky using light and music, which he later realized was his desire to reconnect his music loving mother with his technology obsessed father. E.T. is really all about a family separated from each other and a lonely child who misses his father.

That loneliness and homesickness is what connects E.T. and Elliott, whose full name was later revealed as Elliott Taylor. Initials: E.T. The most tragic part of E.T.'s separation from his group is that he wandered off because he was too busy staring at the human neighborhood in the valley below. He was lured by curiosity and the promise of human friendship.

A Jules Verne spaceship, an Einstein face and a mime's hands

Star Wars concept artist Ralph McQuarrie designed the spaceship from the screenplay's descriptions and made it look Victorian and steampunk, inspired by the work of Jules Verne. The effect is to make these creatures look peaceful and intellectual, because they're really just a group of botanists collecting plants and fungi from other worlds. That docile quality runs through E.T.'s anatomy, brought to life by Carlo Rambaldi, who had also designed the aliens for Close Encounters. Rambaldi gave them long necks based on one of his paintings and based E.T.'s face on Albert Einstein, the poet Carl Sandburg, the writer Ernest Hemingway and a pug.

Staffers from the Jules Stein Eye Institute were consulted to give E.T. huge, expressive eyes, which went on to inspire designs like Pixar's Wall-E. E.T. was moved by a team of puppeteers including two little people and a 12 year old boy, born without legs, who walked on his hands in the costume for scenes where E.T. walks awkwardly and bumps into things. The hands might be the most important part, because they were moved by a professional mime. Those fingers carry E.T.'s innocence, and when an owl hoots and every creature goes on alert, we see that this species shares an empathic link. It's really Spielberg's version of George Lucas's Force, though I don't like to think of it as literally the Force.

Spielberg shot E.T. from a child's height, so the adults stay faceless

Most of the film was shot in the suburbs of Southern California, but the forest scenes were shot in the redwoods of Northern California. Having lived in both regions over the previous 13 years, I can tell you there's a kind of magic in California that makes it feel like eternal summer. Then trucks roll up with oppressive headlights and a polluting exhaust pipe. Spielberg shot most of the film with the camera just three or four feet off the ground, the height of E.T. and of a child, so for most of the film we don't see the adults, just their flashlights and jingling keys. The main government agent is only ever called Keys in the script.

Spielberg and Mathison developed E.T. from a darker project called Night Skies, in which malevolent aliens would terrorize a family while one friendly alien named Buddy befriends an autistic child. That project's final scene would have left Buddy behind on Earth, and that is where this movie begins. When Elliott's brother Michael and his friends Greg, Tyler and Steve play Dungeons and Dragons, Greg tells Elliott he can't join any universe in the middle, painting him as an outcast from this universe just as E.T. is.

Reese's Pieces and E.T.'s record run

I love them making Elliott wait for the pizza at the end of the driveway; my siblings and I would do that to avoid alerting our parents. Notice the dog Harvey barking like crazy, then later going quiet when E.T. throws Elliott's ball back out of the shed, already trying to play a game. When Michael asks if the coyotes are back, it's a nod to Peter Coyote, the actor who plays Keys. In the cornstalks Elliott literally steps in E.T.'s footsteps, and their emotions are already linked: each is as scared as the other.

The next day Elliott scatters Reese's Pieces. Originally Spielberg wanted M&M's, but the Mars company refused because they thought E.T. was too ugly and would frighten kids. As a result, Reese's Pieces sales exploded, as did product placement in movies in general. E.T. surpassed Star Wars as the most profitable film of all time, beaten only by Spielberg himself with Jurassic Park, and as of 2023 it still held the record for the longest unbroken theatrical run: it debuted in June 1982 and stayed in theaters for over a year. For many Gen Xers, older millennials and their younger siblings, E.T. was the movie of our childhoods.

Elliott's missing father is Spielberg's own story

When the family speculates about what Elliott saw, Dee Wallace's laugh was spontaneous, because it would be hilarious to hear a kid say that. Then things get sad when Elliott says Dad would believe him, and we learn his father is in Mexico with Sally. This is a family in pain from the father leaving. Spielberg conceived it as a story of himself missing his own father, as he detailed in an HBO documentary.

As a younger man Spielberg grew distant from his father, Arnold Spielberg, after his parents divorced, not knowing his mother Leah had fallen in love with a family friend, Bernie Adler. Arnold never told the kids the real reason, so Steven blamed him for years and didn't learn the truth until he was an adult. That explains why so many early Spielberg films are working through these daddy issues. See The Fabelmans: it's fascinating for the way Spielberg reframes and re-edits his childhood narratives to help himself heal as an adult.

E.T. and Elliott's empathic link is a two way street

Part of E.T.'s charm is the sound design. He's voiced by Pat Welsh, a voiceover actress who smoked a lot of cigarettes to get her voice raspy enough, and they added the sound of a cat purring to make him sound more affectionate. The mime's work with the hands makes E.T. feel timid, sweet and curious in a way you would not get with CGI hands, which is why, for me, Spielberg before digital touches our hearts more than digital Spielberg does. The BFG, also written by Mathison, is a sweet movie, but just because it's digital it's not as good.

E.T. and Elliott start mirroring each other, touching their faces, bending a finger, sharing drowsiness. It's great visual storytelling showing the link is two way and safe. John Williams scores it with harp strings to characterize it as innocent, because with different music it could feel like alien mind control. Later Elliott fakes being sick by holding the thermometer to a lamp, a trick Spielberg reportedly used as a kid and I definitely used after this movie. His toys include Star Wars Kenner figures: Greedo, Lando Calrissian and Boba Fett. According to Spielberg, Lucas, thinking Close Encounters would be the bigger movie, traded him two and a half percent of Star Wars for two and a half percent of Close Encounters, a deal that made Spielberg a fortune and one he helped grow by putting Star Wars toys in E.T.

When E.T. tries to eat the toys and Elliott asks if he's hungry, we see the link is physiological too: hunger, pain, fatigue, inebriation. Within the movie it suggests that for an advanced species, empathy is a biological imperative we can evolve toward. If one member of a tribe senses danger, everyone sensing it and joining forces helps all of them. There's research showing the sound of a baby crying triggers us as an evolutionary distress beacon, because humans are social creatures.

Michael's turn from tormentor to protector

When Elliott reveals E.T. to Michael and Gertie, it gets lost in the screaming, but Gertie clearly made a get well card for her big brother. My favorite kid here is Michael, who goes from jokey older brother to super protective of all of them, E.T. included. That transition is so authentic. I can't tell you how many times my big brother Matt went from making fun of me to having my back. For Spielberg, it was based on how he went from tormenting his sisters to protecting them when his father left.

Gertie calls her mother Mary, as all the kids do. I think it's a reaction to the divorce: they see her less as a mom than a big sister, and Spielberg and his mother have said she kind of was that to the Spielberg kids. When watermelon sticks to E.T.'s face, the mime subtly wipes it off, a missable gesture that makes him more authentic. He points home through rainbow blinds, and at the end he leaves a rainbow streak in the sky. According to Spielberg, the shaking hand E.T. places on Elliott's shoulder was jittery because she'd been drinking coffee.

Harrison Ford made E.T. better by staying out of it

We don't see the face of Elliott's science teacher either. There's a deleted scene in which Harrison Ford played the school's principal, and Spielberg thought about putting it back for the re-releases, but with Ford being such a huge star it would have totally changed the film. As with Jurassic Park, "Harrison Ford is so good he can make a movie better just by not being in it."

At home, a drunk E.T. reads a Buck Rogers comic that reminds him he needs to be saved, and Elliott, flooded with the impulse to save, frees the frogs. E.T. sees The Quiet Man, directed by John Ford, whom Spielberg idolized, and Elliott reenacts its doorway kiss. Gertie's Sesame Street teaches E.T. English, including a phrase he tells her at the end.

E.T.'s illness is homesickness

Why does E.T. get sick? One practical possibility is that his DNA's six nucleotides, instead of the human four, give him less nourishment from food. It could also be that he's susceptible to Earth pathogens, like the aliens in War of the Worlds. But notice it doesn't begin until E.T. remembers he has to go home, and Michael and Elliott recalling their father taking them to ball games and the movies does not help.

For E.T., extreme empathy leaves him with a physiological homesickness. The longing E.T. and Elliott filled in each other is redirected to their absent parents, so his health declines from there. When Elliott cuts his finger and E.T. heals it, I love how E.T.'s eyes dilate from the light, all while Mary reads Peter Pan to Gertie. For any kid it's a meta moment: cherished fairy tales can exist beside real magic. On Halloween, E.T. recognizes a kid in a Yoda costume, with Williams mixing in Yoda's theme, so there is some in universe logic since E.T.'s species is Star Wars canon.

The flying bike captures every kid's first ride

The fusion of Williams' strings and that iconic moon shot is awesome. At a certain age we all had this music in our heads whenever we rode our bikes. I couldn't ride without training wheels until I was seven, way too late for my older siblings, who got impatient teaching me because I'd fall, run inside crying and give up. One day I got so sick of being left behind that I fell once, got back on and pedaled to the end of the block where everyone was. I will never forget how alive I felt.

So I think this moment captures something simpler than extraterrestrial magic: a rite of passage, realizing you're no longer limited by your neighborhood. I think that's why Spielberg kept Elliott pedaling even though he doesn't need to. It's about a kid breaking free of boundaries. And like Elliott, you always crash at the end.

Henry Thomas's audition and a shoot in story order

As E.T. rigs his signal, Elliott says they could grow up together. Henry Thomas got the part by improvising a scene as if someone were trying to take his dog away, and off screen Spielberg advised the adult to cheer him up by saying he could keep the dog, before giving Thomas the job. Spielberg shot the film in chronological order so the kids' tomorrow would be the next day in the story, letting them build a truly authentic relationship with E.T. The HBO documentary shows him animated directing Thomas, and consoling a crying Drew Barrymore by having her dry her dolls' tears.

E.T. found sick by the river is the most horrifying thing I think I've ever seen in a kids movie, and I love the real raccoon beside the puppet. When we finally see Keys' face, he's pretty much a grown up Elliott, wishing for this since he was 10. I think Keys was a lifelong believer, but I also like the idea that he saw a UFO as a kid. Spielberg used real doctors and nurses from the USC Medical Center for authentic medical chatter. When Elliott says he can't feel anything anymore, what a profound thing for a kid to realize: to lose someone is to struggle to regain how they made you feel.

The bike chase, and Spielberg's walkie-talkie regret

Steve, Greg and Tyler step into Dungeons and Dragons hero roles. You can see the camera crew in Greg's aviators, but Spielberg justifies it with TV news crews behind Steve. No movie has made suburban biking look as cool, and the BMX stunt doubles were, for whatever reason, not listed in the credits. The sequence holds up because it isn't implausible like Home Alone; kids could outmaneuver cars in a neighborhood they know. Could a 10 year old pedal with a milk crate and a 30 to 40 pound E.T.? I don't know, which is why it helps that their success is short lived. The Duffer brothers would use the push in on Elliott in Stranger Things.

For 2002, Spielberg used VFX to turn the shotguns into walkie-talkies, then in 2011 changed them back, saying "I never should have done that" and that "no film should be revised based on the lenses we now are either voluntarily or being forced to peer through." That gives me so much respect for him, and I wish George Lucas had this mindset with Star Wars. Was 2002 America just super sanitized? Maybe, but I think Spielberg was afraid to let go, preserving an innocence the film was better off without, because to come of age is to acknowledge the world has danger in it.

An ending edited to John Williams' music, and the lesson of letting go

E.T. extends his neck to be eye level with Michael, and the goodbye with Elliott is perfectly edited to Williams' music because Spielberg was so in awe of the orchestration that he reversed the process and cut the scene to the score. It feels like E.T. is inviting Elliott along, but Elliott knows his place is here, with Mary barely noticeable beside the ship. E.T. repeats what Elliott told him: he'll be right here.

The final shot stays with Elliott, and he's okay. They needed each other for a time: E.T. to feel less homesick, Elliott to replace his dad. The original ending had Elliott leading Dungeons and Dragons, but his face alone tells us he's learned to let go of childish dependencies. E.T. will always be a summer movie to me because "nothing is more of a coming of age for a kid of a certain age as when summer comes to an end." We say goodbye to the kids we rode bikes with. They aren't forever friends; they get us from one point to another, and we cherish them for that.

What was your first experience with E.T., and what do you feel when you return to it as an adult?