ET is a touching family movie starring a creepy alien that set the template for the particular brand of whimsy Steven Spielberg would mine for years to come. The story of the eponymous extraterrestrial with a hankering Reese's Pieces trying to phone his way home struck a chord with kids and parents alike upon its release in 1982, sending Spielberg into the stratosphere. The emotional connection many felt to ET was no doubt helped by the element of autobiography in his creation, as the director based him on an imaginary friend he created after his parents' divorce in 1960. That's a nice little origin story for ET, huh? Aw. Poor ET. Nicer than the original concept for the film Spielberg had, back when it was called Night Skies and was supposed to be a straight-up horror film riffing on UFO concepts he previously explored with Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. He ended up filing off the spooky stuff for Poltergeist and the alien stuff for ET, but apparently he still had a scary sci-fi itch that needed scratching. And, for reasons that we can never hope to comprehend, he decided to best place to do that was in a sequel to ET which he eventually decided "would do nothing but rob the original of its virginity". We're not so sure. ET II: Nocturnal Fears would definitely have been a change in direction for the series, but who wants to see films repeat themselves? Not us, that's for sure. Maybe we're just morbidly curious, but we would've dug a sequel to ET which saw Elliott and his friends trying desperately to get in contact with their nicer extraterrestrial friend after kidnapped by evil aliens, who look a lot like ET, except they're albinos who hunt other species for sport using their psychic powers. ET writer Melissa Mathison's nine-page treatment also revealed that ET's real name was Zrek, includes a sequence where the kids from the first film are tortured for information of their space-bound pal, and the man himself doesn't even make an appearance at the very end, when he frees them. Which sounds immensely disturbing, traumatic, and totally a sequel we'd pay good money to see. Shame we'll never get the chance.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
