After 1977's Close Encounters (see no 11), director Steven Spielberg reversed the alien encounter formula to wonder not what we would make of them but what they would make of us. The result was this 1982 blockbuster, which eclipsed even the original Star Wars and received nine Oscar nominations (winning four) – a feat unheard of for a film with such overt sci-fi content.
Despite its genre trappings, ET balanced its fantasy content with an academy-pleasing dose of sentiment, played out in the home life of Elliott (Henry Thomas), a lonely 10-year-old whose parents are separating. Little time is spent revealing where the film's ET has come from, or how he came to be left behind. Instead, Spielberg focuses on the film's unlikely-buddy story; the middle child of three (Drew Barrymore is the sweet but clingy younger sister, Robert MacNaughton the cynical teenage big brother), Elliott takes in the ET as the friend and confidant he doesn't have.
Largely filmed from an adult-waist-height perspective, the film prioritises this world of children and indulges them in their harmless naivety. So when the mean-minded authorities find out about the presence of ET, the effects are doubly shocking. The faceless hordes of uniformed, flashlight-toting militia make an intimidating and brutal sight.
After a light-hearted first half, the film takes a plunge into darker drama in the second, when ET is captured and quarantined. Pale and half‑dead, the creature draws uncanny performances from its child cast, and the religious parallels in ET's subsequent "resurrection" have never gone unnoticed. However, they are likely accidental; Spielberg has said he sees his film more as a "minority story" about two outsiders who join forces in isolation.
There is also more than a hint of fairytale about ET, notably in the film's final, famous chase sequence, in which Elliott takes to his bicycle with ET on the handlebars and soars, Peter Pan-like, up into the sky.
As in Close Encounters, there is a healthy scepticism about authority on show, but ET: The Extra Terrestrial is a less worldly film. Like much of Spielberg's work, it was heavily influenced by his parents' divorce and based on an imaginary friend he created at the same age as Elliott. "A friend," he said, "who could be the brother I never had, and a father that I didn't feel I had any more."