ET - The Alien

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Movie
German title ET - The Alien
Original title ET the Extra-Terrestrial
Et-logo.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1982
length Original version: 115 minutes,
new version: 120 minutes
Age rating FSK / JMK 6
Rod
Director Steven Spielberg
script Melissa Mathison
production Steven Spielberg,
Kathleen Kennedy
music John Williams
camera Allen Daviau
cut Carol Littleton
occupation
synchronization

ET The Extra-Terrestrial is an American science fiction film released in 1982 . Director Steven Spielberg combined in elements of science fiction and fairy tales - genres and transferred the plot to an American suburb, in the home of an average family. The film, which was released in US cinemas on June 11, 1982 and in German cinemas on December 9, 1982, is one of the most commercially successful feature films .

action

Aliens land in a forest near Los Angeles collecting plant samples. When a group of government agents suddenly appear, the aliens flee hastily in their spaceship. In doing so, they inadvertently leave one of their companions behind who had moved further away. The little alien is looking for shelter in the shed of a house in the nearby suburb. There he is discovered by ten-year-old Elliott, who lives in the house with his mother and siblings. A close friendship quickly develops between him and the little visitor. Both are lonely: Elliott misses his father, who recently left the family, and ET misses his companions who left him "3 million light years from home" on Earth. ET begins to learn human language like a child, and he and Elliott go through sometimes comical and sometimes tragic adventures, while ET expresses his homesickness by trying to "phone home". When ET wanted to demonstrate to the children that he came from space, he showed telekinetic abilities: He could make objects float and revive plants. Using toys and other small parts, he builds a makeshift radio transmitter, which he sets up in the forest with Elliott's help to send a signal to his spaceship.

A telepathic connection develops between Elliott and ET , which causes a transmission of their emotional states. Together with his siblings Gertie and Michael, Elliott tries to protect the unusual friend from the world of adults - this includes her mother Mary, who she only inaugurates at the very end when ETs and thus Elliott's health deteriorate dramatically. The greatest threat, however, comes from Agent Keys and his people who are looking for ET and trying to capture him for research. After they have managed to track him down, they set up a quarantine center in the home of Elliott's family, where the now terminally ill ET and Elliott are examined and treated by a team of doctors. ET breaks his telepathic connection with Elliott and dies. When Elliott is alone with him to say goodbye, ET is brought back to life by the proximity of the returning spaceship. The alleged body is supposed to be transported away, but Elliott and his brother Michael hijack the vehicle. A subsequent chase culminates in ET floating away with the children on their BMX bikes in front of the security officers in the nearby forest, where a short time later the long-awaited spaceship lands to pick him up. After the children have said goodbye to him, ET boards the spaceship and flies away.

analysis

The film draws on the emotional world of children and evokes emotions in particular. The night in the forest, a dysfunctional family, faceless authority symbolized by a bunch of keys. Fear is used in a targeted manner: the child Elliott speaks of dying. The whole film is like this: A mind-expanding vortex of tension, forlornness and vulnerability; probably the three most harrowing feelings in a child.

In this film, Spielberg processed feelings from his own childhood, especially loneliness and disorientation after his parents separated.

background

The ET doll was developed and built by the Italian Carlo Rambaldi . During filming, ET was alternately portrayed by three short actors, including Tamara De Treaux , who stood inside the doll. Since director and producer Spielberg wanted to preserve the illusion of the character ET, all three were banned from speaking publicly about their involvement in the film. Only De Treaux later ignored this directive in order to be recognized as an actress. However, despite its releases, only the doll itself really gained popularity. After the shooting, Spielberg had all of ET's dolls and doll parts destroyed. The English voice of ET comes from Pat Welsh (1915-1995), a woman from California who, as a heavy smoker, had a deep, creaky voice. She spent nine and a half hours in the studio for her speaking role and received a total of $ 380. The German voice of ET was spoken by Paula Lepa .

Steven Spielberg shot the film with largely unknown actors; in addition to the child actors, Dee Wallace-Stone and Peter Coyote , the actors in the only major adult roles, were still unknown. Of the child actors, Drew Barrymore and C. Thomas Howell made the leap into the adult camp of successful actors. Harrison Ford could be won for the role of the director at Elliott's school. Ford had ample time during the breaks from filming Blade Runner to take on the small role in ET at Steven Spielberg's request . The scene was taken from the final film, however; it was not reintegrated into the new version either.

Spielberg wanted the actors to develop the most believable relationship possible with the doll. You should also get your hands on the ET doll behind the scenes. There is also a photo on which Spielberg himself is scrubbing the doll sitting in a bathtub. To intensify the final scene, Spielberg shot all the scenes according to the chronological order of the film. Accordingly, at the end of the film, the actors actually say goodbye to ET, or rather to the ET film project.

If you believe Spielberg's words, he didn't plan the film as a box office hit. He was “only” expecting box office earnings of about $ 50 million; the cost of production was just over $ 10 million and global box office income of $ 800 million. Star Wars and ET replaced each other several times in the 1980s as the most successful films in cinema history . Both films were only surpassed eleven years later by Jurassic Park , also by Spielberg.

ET contains many Star Wars characters . The figure of Master Yoda is used as one of the disguises on Halloween. At this point, John Williams also quotes Yoda's theme from his Star Wars soundtracks in his film music . In Elliott's room there are many figures from the Star Wars universe, which he also shows the extraterrestrial visitor. In 1983 the science fiction film The Extra Terrestrial Visitors (original title: Los nuevos extraterrestres) was produced, which shows some parallels to Spielberg's film. In today's DVD edition it also appeared under the title Return of ET

Plagiarism allegation

Indian-Bengali director Satyajit Ray accused Spielberg of taking the idea for ET from a 1967 screenplay entitled The Alien . This was already in circulation in Hollywood in 1967. In terms of content, it was about an alien who spent a short time on Earth and made friends with a boy. Spielberg replied that he was still a teenager in high school at the time. Star Weekend Magazine contradicted Spielberg's claim, showing that Spielberg graduated from high school in 1965 and was a director in Hollywood as early as 1969. Apart from that, parallels between Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Alien have also been alleged. Renowned filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Richard Attenborough also noted the influence Ray's script had on Spielberg.

New version

Since both makeup and special effects have developed enormously in the meantime, Spielberg created a digitally revised version with the 20th anniversary version, which was released in theaters and on DVD in 2002 .

It contains five additional minutes and some special effects that were missing in the original film because they were technically not possible at the time; including a scene in which ET takes a bath. In some scenes the ET doll was also replaced by a Computer Generated Imagery -ET to make his facial expressions more lively. In addition, the weapons of the security officers in the new version were replaced by radios , as Spielberg was convinced that the use of weapons against children would be implausible. Still, Mary's saying “You can't shoot, there are still children” was still included. Her comment on Michael's Halloween costume, “You don't go as a terrorist”, was also rewritten as “You don't go as a hippie” under the impression of the terrorist attacks on September 11th . These changes, which were received rather negatively by some fans of the film, were taken up and satirically presented in the South Park episode "Bigger, more digital and recut!".

In retrospect, Spielberg regretted having made the changes to the Special Edition, as they would have robbed the audience of the magic of the film. He promised that the Blu-ray version, which was due to be released for the 30th anniversary, would only contain the theatrical version.

As announced, the film was released on Blu-ray Disc in the theatrical version in October 2012 ; the additional scenes from the Special Edition are included in the bonus material.

Product placement

ET is considered a pioneer in product placement . In the film, Elliott lures the shy alien into his room with colorful Reese's Pieces candy . The sales of these candies then skyrocketed. M & M’s refused to use it in the film because ET was not expected to be a great success.

Audi staged a vehicle of the Audi 5000 model in a media-effective manner , Atari's science fiction computer game Asteroids and the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons are mentioned by name. The BMX bikes come from the Japanese bike manufacturer Kuwahara . Several versions of the "original" bike were later marketed. A restored version can be seen in the BMX Museum Stockholm. The bike is still very popular among collectors today.

synchronization

The German dubbed version was created in 1982 by Berliner Synchron ; Arne Elsholtz was responsible for the dialogue script and dialogue direction . The newly released scenes were dubbed decades later with other speakers.

role actor German Dubbing voice
Elliot Henry Thomas Timmo Niesner (new scenes: Sandro Blümel )
ET Pat Welsh Paula Lepa
Mother mary Dee Wallace-Stone Monica Bielenstein
Gertie Drew Barrymore Caroline Ruprecht
Michael Robert MacNaughton Oliver Rohrbeck
Mr. Keys Peter Coyote Joachim Kemmer (new scenes: Frank Glaubrecht )
Greg KC Martel Sven Plate
Biology teacher Richard Swingler Thomas Danneberg
Bibo on TV Caroll Spinney Wolfgang Draeger
Uncle Ralph on TV ??? Friedrich W. Building School

Reviews

Variety described the film as "the best Disney film that Walt Disney never made". The lexicon of international films wrote: “With great craftsmanship and dramaturgical sophistication, a fantasy story of the good 'alien' staged. Mass entertainment that hit the zeitgeist at the time: The savior from space does not save humanity from our problems here, but can at least awaken humanity and compassion in the children and some adults. "

Awards

Awards from the renowned American Film Institute :

  • 1998: No. 25 in the list of the 100 best films of all time (2007: No. 24)
  • # 44 on the list of the 100 best thrillers of all time
  • the quote ET Phoning Home reached number 15 on the list of the 100 best movie quotes of all time
  • John Williams' music ranks 14th on the list of the 25 Best Film Scores of All Time
  • # 6 on the list of 100 Most Inspirational Movies of All Time
  • 2008: 3rd place in the list of the ten best science fiction films of all time

Library of Congress

Gross profit

The film is number 92 (as of August 8, 2020) among the world's most successful films of all time .

Adaptations

ET Storybook

In 1982 Michael Jackson took E.T. as a radio play for children. He tells the story - interrupted by audio excerpts from the film. The narrative begins and ends with two different versions of the song Someone In The Dark . As with Michael Jackson's album Thriller Quincy Jones, the producer was . Due to legal problems with his former music label Epic , which took action against the publication by MCA , the record had to be taken off the market very quickly. Nonetheless, Jackson won a Grammy ("Best Radio Play for Children") for his extraordinary achievement.

computer game

Warner Communications acquired the license rights for a computer game for the film from Steven Spielberg for US $ 20-25 million . Warner's subsidiary Atari developed an adventure game for its Atari 2600 game console in a hasty production period of just five weeks . Totally overestimating its success, the company produced five million copies, most of which it could not sell. The game is considered by some critics to be the worst game ever. When Atari had several surplus productions buried in a landfill near the city of Alamogordo (New Mexico) in 1983 during the so-called Atari Video Game Burial , this was quickly associated with the major failure of the ET game and became a symbol for the same year incipient collapse of the North American computer game market (so-called video game crash ). The contradicting reports on the disposal of the surplus goods sometimes led to the assumption that it was merely a modern legend . In April 2014, the accuracy of the information was confirmed during an excavation by a team of documentary filmmakers.

music

In 1983, Willem released a single called Wat? , the German cover version of Captain Sensibles Wot . Thereupon he parodied the film and in particular its key quote Phone home . With the title he reached number 19 in the German single charts. He also managed to make an appearance in the ZDF hit parade .

Calling home is becoming a proverbial one

The key quote from the film Phone home evolved, particularly in the computer science to the dictum . It still describes the often undesirable property of a computer program, an app or a technical device, its programmers, distributors or sometimes third parties in order to pass on spied data and behavior about the user, in the sense of the proverb mostly without that he learns about it.

Even in common parlance back then, a wide audience identified the well-known quote with the film.

literature

  • Melissa Mathison, Linda Sunshine, Timothy Shaner, Steven Spielberg et al .: ET: The Extra-Terrestrial. From concept to classic. The illustrated history of film and the filmmaker (OT: ET - The Extra-Terrestrial) . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89602-409-4 .
  • William Kotzwinkle : ET, The Extra-Terrestrial in his Adventure on Earth . MCA Publishing, 1982 (novel for the film)
    German edition: ET - The Extra Terrestrial . Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna / Hamburg 1982 and Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich.
  • Michael Staiger: "Home, home, home". Elliott and ET on a hero's journey . In: Klaus Maiwald / Anna-Maria Meyer / Claudia Maria Pecher (eds.): “Classics” of children's and youth films . Schneider Verlag Hohengehren, Baltmannsweiler 2016, ISBN 978-3-8340-1674-4 , pp. 91-106.

Web links

Commons : ET the Extra-Terrestrial  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jon Mooallem: Inside the Mind of Steven Spielberg, Hollywood's Big, Friendly Giant . In: Wired, July 2016
  2. ^ John Newman: Satyajit Ray Collection receives Packard grant and lecture endowment , University of California, Santa Cruz . September 17, 2001. Archived from the original on November 4, 2005 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ucsc.edu 
  3. ↑ Obaidur Rahman: Perceptions: Satyajit Ray and The Alien! Archived from the original on May 30, 2009. In: Star Weekend Magazine . 8, No. 70, May 22, 2009. Retrieved May 31, 2009.
  4. ↑ Close encounters with native ET finally real . In: The Times of India , April 5, 2003. Retrieved March 24, 2009. 
  5. ↑ Satyajit Ray Collection Receives Packard Grant and Lecture Endowment . University of California . September 18, 2001. Archived from the original on October 13, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 2, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.universityofcalifornia.edu
  6. ^ Ray influenced ET says Martin Scorsese - Times Of India
  7. ↑ Free Hat S06E09 South Park episode about digital adaptations of science fiction classics
  8. ↑ I'll Be Right Here: The Original ET Is Back
  9. ↑ Spielberg regrets "ET" changes, Blu-ray with original version
  10. ^ Steven Spielberg Regrets Altering 'ET;' Will Release 'ET' and 'Raiders' on Blu-ray in Original Forms
  11. ↑ ET  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at the German dubbing index@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.synchronkartei.de  
  12. ^ ET at Variety
  13. ↑ ET at two thousand and one
  14. ↑ Top Lifetime big things. Box Office Mojo, accessed August 8, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Editor: What the hell happened? . In: Imagine Media (ed.): Next Generation Magazine . No. 40, April 1998, p. 41.
  16. ↑ Barbara Mikkelson, David P Mikkelson: Buried Atari Cartridges ( English ) In: Snopes.com . May 10, 2011. Retrieved on October 09, 2011.
  17. ^ Nicholas Pileggi, The Warner Case: Curiouser and Curiouser . In: New York Magazine . 16, No. 4, January 24, 1983, p. 26.
  18. ^ John Wills: Pixel Cowboys and Silicon Gold Mines: Videogames of the American West . In: University of California Press (Ed.): Pacific Historical Review . 77, No. 2, 2008, pp. 273-275. doi : 10.1525 / phr.2008.77.2.273 .
  19. ↑ Samual Caliborn: The Dig: Uncovering the Atari ET Games Buried in New Mexico Desert ( English ) In: IGN . April 26, 2014. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
  20. ↑ Charts DE
  21. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8LG8HgHHcw
  22. ↑ https://www.heise.de/security/meldung/Apps-telefonieren-nach-Hause-Update-1047796.html
  23. ↑ https://digitalcourage.de/blog/2015/unfrei-hardware-wenn-geraete-nach-hause-telefonieren