March 22, 2002

E.T. - The Edited Terrestrial

Today marks the 20th anniversary release of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. While we're sure it's still the same heartwarming tale of a squooshyheaded (see Ann Coulter reference below) alien turning on his heart light, Spielberg felt compelled to make some edits for this release. Edits which, in our self-important opinion, are silly.

Digitally removing guns from the hands of government agents chasing an alien to replace them with walkie-talkies? We've seen the X-Files, damnit, and we know that agents always break out the guns when they are chasing aliens, vampires, and other creepy-crawlies. Seriously though, what's the harm in showing government agents properly using the tools of the trade? You may hate handguns - that's perfectly fine - but agents do, in fact, use them. No wanted person has ever been stopped by pointing a walkie-talkie at them.

Second - this change had apparently been made for the video release as well - what is the point in having the mother tell her son he can't go out on Halloween looking like a terrorist, and then changing "terrorist" to "hippie." Spielberg says it's due to the current post-9/11 environment, and while his heart may be in the right place, if the kid looked like a terrorist, he looked like a terrorist. Or is he saying that hippies look like terrorists? Also, in this post-9/11 country of ours, it isn't exactly cool to be a pacifist hippie either. Peace, out, people.