“My first personal film”: that’s why “ET” is still extremely important to Steven Spielberg 40 years later

The cult film ‘ET’ has been enchanting film lovers for over 40 years. Steven Spielberg’s 1982 work centers on Elliott (Henry Thomas), who encounters the alien ET in the shed of his parents’ house. A wonderful friendship develops in which the boy helps the alien find his way back home. DThe moving story of how a non-human being can evoke deep humanity will captivate viewers of all ages. This is proven in no small part by pop culture memory, where the phrase ‘call ET home’ is forever burned into it.

“ET” accompanied many viewers from the nursery to the teenage bedroom, from the VHS drawer of their first home to the DVD shelf in the family apartment. But we’re not the only ones who have our own stories about the friendly alien. Spielberg himself has an intimate bond with him. He addressed his parents’ divorce in the film, therefore it can easily be said that “ET” is one of his most personal works.

Steven Spielberg: “My first personal film”

What does ET stand for? To do this, we need to take a closer look at the film’s plot and understand what role the lovable alien plays in the social lives of its human hosts. Elliott is a divorced child who lives in the suburbs with his mother and siblings. Her father recently left her, so the pain is still fresh. When ET comes into the boy’s life, the friendship in many ways compensates for the loss of the father figure: The two learn together, have adventures, and develop a telepathic connection with each other that you are most likely to have with a parent as a child. So Elliott not only helped ET, but also helped fill the void in the boy’s heart.

In a bonus feature of Universal Spielberg explains how he came up with the idea for “ET.” On the one hand, it had its origins in the work on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Aliens also play a central role in the 1977 work, and Spielberg fantasized about what would have happened if one of them had not returned to the mothership, but remained on Earth – similar to an exchange student. This gave Spielberg the idea of ​​another, completely different science fiction story.

Much more important, however, was another influence that laid the actual foundation for “ET”. Spielberg explains: “There was another project I was working on and writing. It was about divorce and especially its consequences for young children and young teenagers. I experienced this when I was 15, 16 years old. My three sisters were not yet teenagers and also experienced the divorce of my mother and father.” So Spielberg combined the vision that came to him while working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind with his desire to tell a story about divorce and childhood.

In the bonus video, Spielberg explains that he didn’t expect these types of stories to appeal to many people. He expected to appeal only to Disney fans – which was a stigma in the early ’80s. Nevertheless, he quickly fell in love with the film and even calls it his first personal work in the video: “I was much closer to the story. That was my first personal film (…) ET was really the most personal work I have made as a director.”

The latter will probably have changed in 2022: with ‘The Fabelmans’ Spielberg made a kind of autobiography in which he talks about his path to filmmaking, but also about his family history. FILMSTARTS editor Michael Bendix gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars in his review.