If Teague doesn't like ET, he's dead to me.

I just watched it about a month ago for about the 20th time. It was on cable in HD. I refuse to buy the DVD because of Spielberg's meddling. (giving the federal agents flashlights instead of guns, etc) Oddly enough, when they play it on cable, they play the original version, which is fine by me. I think I saw it at least 5 times in the theater when I was a kid...but that was also back when movies stayed in theaters for like a year.

A great movie and I personally think it still holds up.

I don't think I've ever actually sat down and watched all of ET. And, after doing a full watch-through with DIF, I don't think I need to.

Perhaps it's just because the Spielberg aesthetic has become engrained in the rest of the culture that I just don't *need* to watch it. Similar to Blade Runner in that respect.

I'm interested that none of you made the obvious Jesus connection in the story. Spielberg, being Jewish, toned it down a bit but in the novel which I had it was more pronounced. I mean, ET shows up, gathers some followers, heals the sick, dies, and comes back from the dead before going off into the heavens.

So I watched E.T. today in the theatre for the first time and they showed the original 1982 version, so it was interesting to see how it compared. One of the more glaring changes was that the crazy Halloween sequence wasn't in the original cut, which I did not expect at all. And when they're getting ready for Halloween, what the older kid was going to be was a terrorist, not a hippie and I don't think it's as funny that way. Although the special edition was released in early 2002, so that's a more understandable (and better) change. Otherwise, the original is better.