E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL

E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL. Steven Spielberg, dir. USA: Amblin (prod.) / Universal (dist.), 1982. Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, prod. 115 min.

A celebration of appropriate technology (bikes, very long distance communication devices) and mild condemnation of technology used by bureaucrats. A measure of E.T.'s NICEness is the variation on the classic sequence of the hero threateningly contained for technological torture: E.T. and Elliott are held down, but the apparatus imposed on them is medical, and the people working on them really do want to save their lives; E.T. is placed in a high-tech, supercooled coffin—for his resurrection. Discussed by V. Sobchack in Screening Space[1], Chapter 4. Novelized in a Berkley paperback.