10 Movie Scenes You Didn’t Know Used CGI Trickery
3. Walkie-Talkies - E.T.
Depending on which version of E.T. you've seen, this one might not have been in the movie at all.
In the original 1982 release of the film, the famous bike-chase sequence features several police officers - who are there to subdue Elliott and his extra-terrestrial friend - carrying guns.
But in the 20th Anniversary edition - released in 2002 - these guns have been digitally replaced with walkie-talkies.
The LA Times revealed the reasoning behind this seemingly needless change in an article back in 2001, where they quote Mr Spielberg himself:
"I regret that a gun was used as a threat to stop children on bicycles. And I regret that last cut, before E.T. opens his eyes and the bikes take off, of the gun coming up.... And if I ever reissue the picture, I'll use the digital miracle of, you know, CGI [computer-generated imagery] to take the guns out of the cops' hands. And I'll just simply delete the shot of the cop holding the gun up, which, in the current film, causes E.T. to fly. I think those were, you know, distasteful moments to me."
Apparently, this was due to the outcry of several parent groups, who were not pleased that guns were being used to stop children on bikes.