Your first time seeing E.T. Where, when, what was it like?

And it brought back memories of our first viewing.

We TRIED to see it in the first month of its release. We knew it was a huge seller, so we got to the theater at about 7pm, hoping to see the 8pm showing. We found every show had already sold out!!

So we came back a few weeks later, with high expectations, and we were not disappointed. I remember crying at the end -- something I almost never do.

The scene at the end:
E.T. - "Come"
Elliot - "Stay"
still gets me.

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Mr Smith: Like the rose trampled on the ground, you took the fall

1982, Sno King Drive-In in Lynnwood, WA, a suburb about 20 miles outside of Seattle. I was 13 years old. It's one of my most magical and memorable movie experiences.

I was 7 that summer and remember clearly going to see this in a BIG multi-screen theater rather than the smaller two-screen theater we usually went to near our house. I LOVED it, but I remember there was a woman with big hair sitting right in front of me and I kept having to move around to see what was going on on screen.

I'm not sure why I didn't switch seats with my mom or someone else we went with (a neighbor and their kids, who were about my age).

At any rate, I LOVED it. I was absolutely mesmerized. I wanted an extraterrestrial of my own. I also remember being scared when the government people showed up and sealed off the house.

And yes, I cried at the end. I still get a bit misty at the end every time I've seen it since. Yes, I'm a sap. I own it.

I guess I was 7 when it came out. My family of four was on vacation in Lake Tahoe and my parents decided to take my brother and I to this movie. I kept asking what it was about and all they would tell me was it was about an alien. I was no dummy, I knew aliens were scary! I had heard of that one horror movie with the alien! I did NOT want to see this movie, lol. Nobody would take the time to assure me it wasn't a scary movie. I was convinced my parents were taking me to a horror movie (this was probably after the time I walked in on my brother watching Psycho right when they showed the skeleton and I was scarred for my entire childhood).

The theatre was packed and we were lucky to get the last four seats in the house, right in the front row. I was PETRIFIED for a good chunk of the movie, until we finally got a good look at ET and his interactions with Elliot etc and I realized it wasn't scary. But needless to say I did not ask for any ET toys!

But damn. Parents, if your kid is scared of horror movies and they think you're taking them to one, take a MINUTE out of your day to assure them its not a horror movie.

Unless it actually is, in which case...uh, brofist, or something.

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I would have been four at the time, the local drive in had a double feature of ET and Jedi. Its one of first coherent memories.

I was 36 and i gave the ET DVD to my 8 year old nephew who wanted to see it immediately of course. Apparently in was some kind of digitally enhanced version where some of the dustier VFX sequences were polished with post-Gollum digital effects. My newphew loved it, of course. I liked everything about it up until the point that Spielberg decided it would be better if ET looked like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings.

Please directors. Please dont screw around with your best films 20 years later.

"Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man..."

Saw it first at a drive in, then a couple years later on HBO. At the time I thought it was just an okay movie because I was at the height of my Star Trek snobbery.

Now I think it's an outstanding film. It really is a magical piece of commercial film making.

At home in the living room on our VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) back in sometime around 1992, I instantly grew to love that movie and watched it over and over again.