I don’t know about you, but I never emotionally recovered from watching E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial as a kid. I know that special effects have come a long way since 1982, but E.T. was one weird-looking alien. The scene where he’s hiding in the tool shed and scares Elliot (Henry Thomas) still haunts the recess of my adolescent subconscious. To this day, I’ve only seen the Steven Spielberg movie once.
The film was a huge hit when it premiered, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time until Jurassic Park took the title 11 years later. In 1994, E.T. was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress after being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The movie has stood the test of time.
In fact, E.T. was so well-liked that there was almost a sequel. As reported by The A.V. Club, director Steven Spielberg and writer Melissa Mathison concocted a treatment for a movie called E.T. 2: Nocturnal Fears.
The E.T. sequels sounds a lot more intense than the original
The sequel would have picked up after the first film, with the Thompson kids missing their alien friend. Hopeful that they’ll be able to reunite with E.T., the kids are over the moon when they find an alien spacecraft. Plot twist: the creatures aboard this ship are actually evil! These new aliens are albino carnivores with big red eyes and fangs; their species is actually at war with E.T.’s people. Elliot is so scared that he lets out a blood-curdling scream so powerful that E.T. hears it all the way out in space. This calls E.T. back to Earth to save his friends.
Fun fact about E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial: Henry Thomas, who played Elliot, is still acting and turned in stunning performances in the last two seasons of The Haunting anthology series. I would highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t already.
If you want to learn more about E.T. 2: Nocturnal Fears, then you can check out the video below. I, for one, am overjoyed that this film never saw the light of day. The original was enough alien weirdness for one lifetime.
With everything getting rebooted nowadays, I suppose there’s always a chance they could return to this well…
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