Column Science Fiction Film Club E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: You’ve Got a Friend in Outer Space The wholesome, uncynical story about a friendship that changed movies forever. By Kali Wallace | Published on October 8, 2025 Credit: Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Universal Pictures E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by Melissa Mathison. Starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, and Drew Barrymore. When I mentioned that I was watching E.T. this week, my older sister sent me laughing emojis and said, “Just don’t freak out and burst into tears like you did when we saw it in the theater!” Thanks for the warning, Sarah, but I did not burst into tears this time. I made it through the whole movie without ever getting so frightened I had to be taken out to the lobby to calm down. What a difference forty-some years can make. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is one of the most mythologized films in American cinema, from one of the most mythologized directors, and the story of how it came about has been told so often it’s not entirely clear where fact ends and biographical embellishment begins. Most articles point back to the same sources, such as Martin McBridge’s 1997 book Steven Spielberg: A Biography. It’s not that I think people are going around lying about E.T. to hide some dark Hollywood secrets, as the information relayed later pretty much matches what was reported at the time. It just means that the story of the movie is pretty well-known. It happened like this: In 1980, Steven Spielberg was still rather new in his role as Hollywood’s wildly successful wunderkind, and he was filming Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) in Tunisia. As Spielberg would later explain in a 1982 interview with People, “I was kind of lonely at the time… I remember saying to myself, ‘What I really need is a friend I can talk to—somebody who can give me all the answers.’” This reminded Spielberg of his youthful obsession with aliens—one he had already put to film in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and was at the time still trying to make work in the unproduced project Night Skies. That led to Spielberg and Raiders of the Lost Ark star Harrison Ford talking Ford’s girlfriend (and later wife), screenwriter Melissa Mathison, into writing a screenplay about a friendly alien visitor. Mathison had a single screenplay on her resume but it was an impressive one: The Black Stallion (1979). (That is another movie that caused me to have a theater meltdown as a child, but in my defense opening a family movie with a deadly fire and panicking horse on a boat during a storm is certainly a choice.) The Black Stallion had been a box office success and a critical darling, so it wasn’t much of a risk for Mathison to take on writing Spielberg’s friendly alien film. The premise for the movie was lifted from the unproduced film Night Skies, which was intended to be a horror film written by John Sayles, with Tobe Hooper named as a possible director. That movie would have been awesome but, alas, it was not meant to be. The story behind Night Skies was ripped from the headlines about alien encounter now known as the 1955 Kelly–Hopkinsville event in Kentucky, in which several people claimed to have been terrorized in a farmhouse by a group of hostile aliens. I don’t know what was going on in Kentucky in 1955, but the resulting news reports played a big role in the developing American lore about big-eyed visitors from outer space. While Spielberg was filming Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sayles was developing the screenplay for Night Skies, which focused largely on young human characters, including a ten-year-old autistic boy who befriended the one friendly alien. At the same time, special effects designer Rick Baker was creating concept art and models for the Night Skies aliens. (You have seen Baker’s work, because it is everywhere. Literally everywhere.) But over in Tunisia, Spielberg was starting to have doubts. He wasn’t sure he wanted to make a horror movie after all. He wanted to make something more optimistic, more wholesome. That’s how he came around to convincing Mathison to pluck the one wholesome part out of Night Skies—the child’s friendship with the friendly alien left behind when the others leave Earth—and create a whole different movie out of it. Columbia Pictures, the studio that had produced Close Encounters of the Third Kind and was developing Night Skies as a quasi-sequel to it, was not happy about Spielberg’s change of heart. Columbia’s reasoning was that a wholesome kid-centric family movie simply had no chance of making very much money. Which, of course, sounds completely insane to us now, but this was in 1981. There were wholesome family movies with kid main characters, but they weren’t the big moneymakers they tend to be today. This was before the Disney revival era when animated children’s films became a major cinematic juggernaut. There have always been films purposefully aimed at being a big, splashy success, but during the Hollywood studio era they tended to be historical epics (like Ben-Hur [1959] or Cleopatra [1963]), and in the so-called New American Cinema of the ’70s those big movies came to be defined by films like Spielberg’s own Jaws (1975) and George Lucas’ Star Wars films. That level of success was not what people expected of kid-friendly movies. Not until E.T. After E.T., everything changed, to the point where it’s not an exaggeration to divide the whole genre of “family films” into a pre-E.T. era and a post-E.T. era. Spielberg and Columbia came to an agreement to end development of Night Skies; it involved Spielberg or his investors paying the studio back for the $1 million they had spent developing Night Skies and Columbia getting a cut of the E.T. profits even when the project moved to Universal. That turned out to be good deal, because E.T. made a stupendous fuckton of money when it was released. Before it could get to that point, however, they had to make the movie, and before they could make the movie they had to make the little dude at its center. The alien is designed by Italian artist Carlo Rambaldi, whose work we see all over sci fi cinema, including in Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and of course Alien (1979), where Rambaldi was the one who built the moveable head and pharyngeal jaw based on H.R. Giger’s xenomorph design. This was a guy who knew a thing or two about crafting aliens, in other words, and the design of E.T. was cobbled together from several different ideas and influences. Those included, but are not limited to: Albert Einstein’s face, Rambaldi’s Himalayan pet cat, Donald Duck’s posture and walk, and a painting Rambaldi had done years before. That painting is Donne del Delta (Women of the Delta) (1952), and if you’re thinking it’s kind of weird that he would base his idea of an extraterrestrial on his own painting of human women, well, it’s because you haven’t seen the painting yet, but that’s not your fault, because as far as I can tell only one poor-quality image exists of it online. Rambaldi built E.T. in several parts: four heads that were controlled mechanically by a huge team of puppeteers, three torso costumes that were worn by different actors (little people Tamara De Treaux and Pat Bilon, and twelve-year-old Matthew DeMeritt, who was born without legs and walked on his hands), and hands that were controlled by mime Caprice Roth. E.T. was famously voiced by Pat Welsh, a homemaker living in Marin County; sound designer Ben Burtt overheard her raspy, two-pack-a-day voice at a store and immediately wanted her to audition. Here’s the thing about E.T.: he was made and operated by a small village of cast and crew, and it shows. All of that shows. We can tell he’s made up of several costumes and puppets. There are a few moments where it’s especially noticeable because the camera angles of face and body shots don’t quite line up. His clumsiness looks like the clumsiness of a puppet or somebody in an awkward costume. We can tell, but it doesn’t really matter, because watching this movie means going along with this game of make-believe. It’s so relentlessly earnest that pointing out that E.T. is just a puppet feels a bit like telling a child that her mud pie is certainly not a delicious chocolate cake. Yes, yes, we know it’s pretend, but we’re playing along for a couple of hours, okay? I think there are two reasons it works. The first is that the facial puppets are good facial puppets. Rambaldi and the crew put a lot of work into giving E.T. a face that’s a little bit alien, a little bit cute, very expressive, and just familiar enough to not make turn us away. (The fact that he was modeled on Einstein and a squashy-faced cat explains a lot.) Producer Kathleen Kennedy insisted that E.T.’s eyes look as lifelike as possible, because she knew that all of the animatronics and sculpting and puppeteering would mean nothing if the alien’s face wasn’t convincing. (E.T. was the first movie that Kennedy produced. It would not be the last.) The other reason it works is that the child actors are great. Sure, there are some adults in the movie, with Dee Wallace as the mom and Peter Coyote as the shadowy government agent who turns out to be not so bad after all, but they’re not very important. This story is about the kids: Elliott (Henry Thomas) and his older brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton) and younger sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore). All three are very good in their roles and believable as siblings, and Thomas is especially fantastic as he shows the different facets of Elliot’s loneliness, fear, curiosity, and wonder. E.T. is, at its (red, glowing) heart, a story about a little boy who makes a friend, and the strength of that story relies on the audience’s fondness for both the boy and the friend. As I was watching, I kept thinking about how the movie never quite sheds the feeling of obvious make-believe. It’s not because E.T. is so obviously a puppet, and it’s not because there are no coastal redwood forests bordering the San Fernando Valley. It’s not even because of the too-sappy John Williams score. (I am usually neutral-to-positive on John Williams, but this one just doesn’t work for me.) In fact, I’m not sure my feeling of detachment from the movie has anything to do with the movie itself. I think it might be due to my inability to separate E.T. from its legacy. It’s very difficult to watch it now, in 2025, without seeing echoes of everything that has borrowed, adopted, parodied, or outright stole (we’re looking at you, Stranger Things) elements of the movie in the past few decades. I enjoyed rewatching it after all this time. Maybe it’s never going to be a favorite of mine, but it’s an enjoyable movie to watch on a quiet autumn afternoon. But I keep coming back to the fact that what I find truly interesting about E.T. is not the movie itself, but the cinematic perspective it provides on how America viewed itself in the early ’80s. Science fiction films have always been a way for people to comment on the culture that surrounds them, and in American sci fi cinema of the late ’70s and early ’80s there was an abundance of movies scattered along a spectrum with earnest optimism at one end and weary cynicism at the other. We’ve already watched a number of films that represent that cynical, more critical viewpoint of American life in the 1980s: Escape from New York (1981), Blade Runner (1982), Repo Man (1984), The Brother from Another Planet (1984). E.T. is the far opposite end of that spectrum, the prime example of earnest, optimistic self-representation in American cinema. That doesn’t mean it’s completely artificial. For all that people roll their eyes at the wholesomeness of Spielberg’s ’80s films, audiences loved them for a reason. Like Close Encounters of the Third Kind before it, E.T. offers a look at ’80s suburban American family life that seems quaint now, but it did resonate with people for genuine reasons. Articles about E.T. consistently report that Ronald and Nancy Reagan loved the movie and Princess Diana cried when she watched it. What any particular individuals thought about E.T. isn’t necessarily significant, but what’s fascinating is the way the opinions of people in positions of power and prominence are reported as heartfelt approval for what E.T. is showing us about ourselves. Strained marriages or single parents, working moms, messy but secure homes, noisy and sassy children running around without supervision, all of this offered a comforting view of imperfect but fundamentally good family life during that time, and E.T., for better or worse, came to stand as the most prominent example of it. What do you think about E.T.? Have your thoughts on it changed over the years? Did anybody who did a science class frog dissection in the ’80s actually have to euthanize the frogs themselves, right there in the classroom? Our science class frogs always came to us fully dead, in buckets of preservative.[end-mark] Next week: We’re leaving the verdant coastal redwood forests of the greater Los Angeles area and escaping to the mountain. Which mountain, you ask? Yes, that one. Watch Escape to Witch Mountain on Disney, Amazon, or Apple. The post <i>E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial</i>: You’ve Got a Friend in Outer Space appeared first on Reactor.

When I was writing my Dr Archville vs. Dr Braxis article, I noticed something interesting. While bad guys like having a myriad of titles in their names (like General), there’s a disproportionately high number of CONTINUE READING... The post Is There a Doctor in the House? – 80s Cartoons’ Infamous Physicians appeared first on The Retro Network.

How do we know which are the best colleges? Traditional ratings rank schools based on the average GPA or test scores of entering students. But the ability to attract bright students does not mean those colleges provide a quality education once they enroll. That’s why The Heritage Foundation partnered with The College Pulse, a research and analytics company specializing in college students, to survey students across the country—seeking to find out what current students and graduates of postsecondary institutions think about life outside of school, including starting a family, practicing religious faith, acting with integrity, protecting free speech, and other measures of civic life. The survey used data from Heritage’s 2025 edition of “Choosing College with Confidence,” a guide to nearly 1,000 colleges. This year’s guide covers three times the number of schools as last year’s report, including some of the largest colleges in the U.S. Choosing College with Confidence rates each college on our list as rigorous institutions offering a well-rounded education (a “green” rating); somewhat rigorous institutions with individual colleges focused on civics or other academically challenging departments within a university (“yellow”); or institutions that suppress diverse viewpoints and lack a strong academic core (“red”). Sure enough, the current and former students at schools rated highly in the Heritage guide display stronger character as well as employment prospects. The College Pulse surveyed 7,349 individuals across our green, yellow, and red schools, including more than 2,900 college alumni and 4,300 current students. This survey method offered insight into the kinds of people graduating from these institutions. Read the survey results here: https://report.heritage.org/bg3929 Among Heritage’s green schools—schools where officials prioritize free speech on campus, dedicate their college to a virtuous mission statement, and are disentangling their schools from diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies—a higher percentage of students and graduates said they have lasting friendships, are interested in starting families, feel a sense of purpose for their lives, and more, than did respondents from yellow and red schools. Students attending the green colleges in our guide were more likely to say they were comfortable expressing disagreement with their professors (46%) than were students in yellow (40.5%) or red schools (36.1%). Students at our green schools were also more likely to report that their administration protects free speech on campus (50.8% for green schools compared to 36.6% in yellow and 34% in red). Our survey also asked unique questions to gain a sense of personal integrity. We found that students attending green schools were more likely to say they would return money accidentally deposited in their bank accounts—and were more likely to report having friends who say they would return the money—than were respondents in yellow and red schools. Students and alumni from our green schools also reported better levels of physical health, were happier, and, were more confident that they would land a job after college than were students in yellow and red schools. A few newer college guides focus on the employment and earnings of each college’s graduates. While that is important, a quality education is about more than getting a good job. Education is, in essence, the development of good character, which includes a commitment to family, community, country and the pursuit of truth. People change as they grow and mature through different life experi­ences. Still, this survey demonstrates that students who attend universities that make the pursuit of truth a priority end up with values that reflect the American dream. These  results help confirm the very purpose behind Choosing College with Confidence—evaluating schools based on how institutions shape their students’ character. Heritage’s guide rates colleges on the full spectrum of educational goals. Our guide offers a glimpse into the culture of each campus on our list and the intellectual life fostered by the faculty and universities policies. Even if not all respondents fully live out these beliefs, they’re still well on their way to creating civic communities and authentically engaging in civic activities via their high standards for con­duct. It’s that sort of behavior that forms the basis for healthy communities—and, in turn, healthy cities, states, and nations. The post Helping Parents and Students Choose a College with Confidence appeared first on The Daily Signal.

On just its second day of the 2025-26 term, the Supreme Court heard arguments in one of its most important cases. Chiles v. Salazar involves a challenge to a Colorado law that allows licensed counselors to address issues of sexuality and gender only from the state’s approved ideological perspective. The Supreme Court’s decision will have a significant impact on First Amendment freedoms and whether young people may seek help that they need. Kaley Chiles is a Christian licensed counselor in Colorado Springs who employs solely what is often called “talk therapy” with those who voluntarily seek her help and who define their own goals. Her clients include minors struggling with issues related to sexuality and gender who want to better align their attractions and behavior with their sex and their religious faith. A Colorado law prohibits licensed counselors from “any practice of treatment…that attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” That law does not apply to “practices or treatments that provide acceptance, support, and understanding for the facilitation of an individual’s coping, social support, and identity exploration and development.” Mental health professionals who violate this law may face disciplinary action—so in 2022, Chiles filed a lawsuit arguing that it violates the First Amendment’s protection for free speech. Specifically, because it allows counselors to address sexuality and gender in one way but not another, she argued the law amounts to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. A federal district court and a U.S. appeals court denied Chiles’ request for a preliminary injunction while her case was being litigated. The argument before the Supreme Court raised several key issues. The first was whether Chiles had legal “standing” to challenge the Colorado statute. Colorado said no because the statute does not apply to her counseling work—meaning she need not fear disciplinary action. But that’s not how Colorado described its statute in the lower courts—and it’s inconsistent even with the text of the law itself. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett appeared to dismiss what they called Colorado’s “late breaking standing argument,” and Alliance Defending Freedom attorney James Campbell reminded the court that Colorado was even then investigating complaints claiming that Chiles had violated the statute. While for standing purposes, Colorado claimed Chiles did not violate the statute, it said the opposite for purposes of defending the statute itself. Talk therapy, argued Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson, constitutes “medical treatment,” giving the state wide authority to regulate it—as much as it has over medication or even surgery. Stevenson suggested that talk therapy is no different than shock therapy or other extreme, and long abandoned, practices. Another issue is the legal standard the Supreme Court should apply in this case. The conclusion may depend on whether the Court treats Chiles’ work as speech or conduct. Campbell cited numerous First Amendment precedents holding that restrictions on pure speech must meet a high legal standard called “strict scrutiny,” which requires that a government action be the “least restrictive means” of furthering a “compelling” purpose. Colorado’s law, Campbell argued, does not come close to meeting this high standard. The Trump administration, which entered the case supporting Chiles’ position, also filed a brief, and Deputy Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan participated in the oral argument. He too emphasized the difference between conduct and speech and, in responding to a question from Justice Clarence Thomas, repeated that the record contains no evidence of harm from the talk therapy that Chiles employs. Another important issue is how the Supreme Court should handle this case—even if it agrees with Chiles that strict scrutiny applies. Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson pushed for simply sending the case back to the lower court to apply that standard. Both Campbell and Mooppan, however, argued that would be an empty gesture and a waste of time, since Colorado had already conceded it had no evidence of harm from the talk therapy that Chiles actually employs with her clients. Despite winning in the lower courts, Colorado’s argument is hard to sustain. Chiles seeks to provide what the statute forbids, and the distinction between conduct and speech is clear both in the Supreme Court’s First Amendment cases and in the context of this case. This means there’s a good chance that a majority of justices will hold both that Chiles has standing and that, since it restricts pure speech, the law must meet the strict scrutiny standard. The only remaining question would be whether the Supreme Court would apply strict scrutiny itself, or whether it would instruct a lower court to do so. At least based on the argument, that’s a closer call. In his closing comments, Campbell presented this jarring summary of Colorado’s law: A 12-year-old may, without his parents’ knowledge, seek a counselor’s assistance to acquire a female identity, but a 12-year-old may not, even with his parent’s consent, seek such assistance to align his identity and sex. As he put it, the First Amendment cannot allow that. The post Supreme Court Skeptical of Colorado’s “Conversion Therapy” Law appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Kïmmeldämmerung: The Twilight Of the Yawns

Where have all the red supergiant supernovae gone? Lost in dust most of them, it seems.

Unfortunately, we’ve yet to communicate with a clam, but their shells have a lot to say.

If it does work, it would be the first test for the condition.

Bad habits run deep in our hominid family.

Maybe the legendary apple hit his head a lot harder than we thought.