Oversight Marathon: E.T. (1982)



E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is a movie about an alien who is stuck on Earth and befriends a boy while trying to get home.  Some military-like people are trying to find the alien and the boy fights to protect the alien.  It’s a rather simple story told in an elegant fashion.  The one problem I had with it was that I felt I had seen E.T. before.  That was when it struck me.  E.T. was ripping off the classic film Mac and Me.

Mac and Me tells a very similar story.  An alien is stranded on Earth and befriends a wheelchair bound boy while trying to get to its family.  Some military-like people are trying to find the alien and the boy fights to protect the alien.  They are very close in plot, don’t you think?

There is a six year difference between the release of Mac and Me and the release of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.  This means that there were six years in which the story could be perfected.  Six years of tampering with the story is what helps create success.

McDonalds was heavily utilized in the masterpiece Mac and Me.  It is as much of the story as MAC is.  E.T. took this McDonalds idea and changed it.  E.T. used Reese’s Pieces and Coke as elements of the story.  This is blatantly taking a story element and changing it just enough so that you aren’t culpable to plagiarism.  This is like what Vanilla Ice did when he used Under Pressure’s beat in Ice Ice Baby.  There’s that tiny little difference.

These are just a few of the things that make E.T. a rip-off of Mac and Me.  I don’t like this world we live in where a movie such as Mac and Me is so dishonorably stolen from, so that Spielberg can make a little bit more cash.  He doesn’t need any more money.  Why must he steal from the classics of our time?  First he does Jaws, completely taking the story from the 1978 classic, Piranha.  Then in 1982, he steals from Mac and Me.  What did these classic works do to Spielberg to make him cash in on their success?  Nothing.  That’s what they did.  They did nothing at all.

Spielberg, I like you and all, and I like a good majority of your movies, but you need to stop taking from other movies.  You compose some great shots, and you know how to pace a story and hit the right beats, but you depend too much on other films.

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