8 Movies That Were Changed AFTER They Were Released

Excuse us for stating the obvious, but directors spend a lot of time with their movies - normally, it's a minimum of two years from inception to release.

All that effort can lead to a growing feeling of ownership, which, in turn, can lead to a desire to continually tweak their movies in order to make them "perfect" - at least, in their eyes. Ever wallpapered a room and noticed a small bump that nobody would ever, ever notice, but you want to fix it anyway, and it keeps you up at night knowing that it exists? It's like that. Except more expensive.

The great Steven Spielberg had this type of relationship with his 1982 classic E.T., with the director choosing to make several unnecessary edits to the movie long after its original release - alterations that made it onto the 20th Anniversary edition in 2002.

One of these changes stands out as particularly bizarre. During the scene where Elliot and E.T. ride a bike away from some federal agents, those agents were originally holding guns. For some reason, this had been bothering Spielberg, and so, he delved back into the film and changed the weapons... into walkie-talkies.

He also made a litany of other changes too, including improvements to certain visual effects and dialogue, but funnily enough, he now regrets them. The director has stated that he will never re-edit one of his films again, and for all post-2002 releases of E.T., only the original theatrical version was used.