I found E.T. to be one of the more intellectually offensive movies
I've seen. For example:
-- ET dies. ET comes back to life. No explanation is ever given or
hinted at. (But maniuplating audiences by having them think someone
is dead and then showing they aren't is an old, old trick of Spielberg's.)
-- What mother walks across a kitchen littered with empty beer cans
and never notices?
-- Why is the hard-working mother living in a $500,000 house?
-- If ET can teleport, or at least fly very fast, why didn't he do
his thing to get to his ship in the first place. (Answer: because
in what we refer to as "idiot plots", if everyone doesn't act like
an idiot the book is over in 5 pages and the film is over in 5 minutes.)
-- OK, ET rigs a phone to call home. He calls home -- or at least
he calls a ship traveling at multiples of the speed of light. Now, you
might think the sun would go out, supplying that kind of power; the
lights in the house don't even flicker.
There's 20 more examples. When my wife and I watched it, we were just
about the only adults in the theater. The average age of the audience
was about 5, and they were silent as a tomb, totally caught up in a
film aimed exactly at them. On the way out, she turned to me and said,
"I'll race you to see who can say 'Bah! Humbug!' first." I won in a
walk.
-- Mike Resnick
|