Director Steven Spielberg reflects on his regrets regarding the removal of guns from his 1982 film E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. The film follows a young boy named Elliott who comes upon an extraterrestrial, befriends him, and eventually enlists the help of his family and friends in getting E.T. back home. E.T. was an instant critical and commercial success, becoming the highest-grossing film of all-time for a period after its theatrical run.
While speaking at a Masterclass at the 2023 TIME100 Summit, Spielberg discussed the changes he made to E.T. for its 20th anniversary re-release in 2002. In the film, which Spielberg has said is near perfect, police officers were originally carrying guns, but the director replaced them with walkie talkies. Spielberg admitted he regrets the decision and said that movies should not be censored based on contemporary lenses. Check out the full quote and video (quote begins at 3:30) below:
[Removing the guns] was a mistake. I never should have done that. E.T. is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily, or being forced to peer through. E.T. was a film that I was sensitive to the fact that the federal agents were approaching a bunch of kids with their firearms exposed, and I thought I would change the guns into walkie-talkies. Years have gone by and I changed my own views. I should have never messed with the archives of my own work, and I don’t recommend anybody really do that. All our movies are a kind of a signpost of where we were when we made them, what the world was like, and what the world was receiving when we got those stories out there. So I really regret having that out there.
Was Spielberg Right To Alter E.T.?
While Spielberg clearly thinks he should have never tampered with the original E.T. film, the question remains whether he was actually right. George Lucas, who has often collaborated creatively with Spielberg, doesn’t feel the same way, as he has taken full advantage of evolving technology to tweak the original Star Wars trilogy and significantly changed The Phantom Menace two years after its release.
The answer to the E.T. question can be found in the latter part of Spielberg’s quote during his Hollywood Masterclass, where the director talks about how a film is something of a snapshot in time that provides commentary about the period when the film was made and who the filmmakers were when they made that particular film. Therefore, there is no need to alter a film so that it aligns more with contemporary values or to take advantage of emerging technology.
There are other ways to try to adhere to current values while remaining true to a film that was created in a different time and social climate. For example, rather than removing some very insensitive and controversial depictions of racial stereotypes from some of their older animated films, Disney+ has included a disclaimer for those films on their streaming platform so that viewers can be aware of the content. For better or for worse, films from different eras such as E.T. the Extraterrestrial are a representation of the time in which they were made, and that should be respected.
Source: TIME100 Summit
