MovieChat Forums > E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Discussion > Accusations of plagiarism

Accusations of plagiarism

posted 9 years ago by Balibari
5 replies | jump to latest

There's always been talk of E.T. ripping off an unproduced Satyajit Ray script. Ray's story, The Alien, is about an alien landing on earth and forming a close friendship with a vulnerable boy. I remember hearing two defences from Spielberg and co. Firstly that Spielberg was in school when the script was doing the rounds. This isn't true, but it's hardly evidence of anything. The second is that the child in Ray's script is mentally handicapped, a detail that's crucial to the story. But I just saw in the trivia section that the seed from which E.T. grew (a proposed sequel to Close Encounters) originally featured a mentally handicapped boy. In digging further it seems Ray's child character formed some sort of supernatural bond with the alien allowing them to share feelings. All this starts to make it look like there could be some truth to the theory E.T. essentially rips off The Alien script.

Does anyone know any more about this? I'm not into conspiracy theories but it does seem quite possible based on what I've read.

[–] sage2112 9 years ago

It's a ripoff of Sigmund the Seamonster.

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] IceboxMovies 9 years ago

If you want to talk plagiarism, try the story of Jesus in the Bible. E.T., a being from "heaven" comes down to Earth, forms a human following, does miracles, dies, is resurrected and ascends to heaven. Yeah.

Spielberg once said:

"The only time Melissa [Mathison] and I sort of looked at each other and said, 'Gee, are we getting into a possibly sticky area here?' was when E.T. is revealed to the boys on the bicycles and he's wearing a white hospital robe and his 'immaculate heart' is glowing. We looked at each other and at that point said, 'This might trigger a lot of speculation.' We already knew that his coming back to life was a form of resurrection. But I'm a nice Jewish boy from Phoenix, Arizona. If I ever went to my mother and said, 'Mom, I've made this movie that's a Christian parable,' what do you think she'd say? She has a kosher restaurant on Pico and Doheny in Los Angeles."

[–] AsUSeeMe299 9 years ago

Thanks for this. I came to the boards to see if there were other people who thought that E.T. was portrayed this way or not (and got sucked into other threads!)

[–] Kurt1960 9 years ago

Then again, it could simply be a case of two different people (among billions of people on Earth) coming up with similar ideas for a story, completely independent of each other.

I've read a good bit about this and while Ray's story does bear a number of similarities to the Spielberg / Mathison story that became E.T. there never seemed to be any evidence that proved or otherwise implicated that the story was ripped off from Satyajit Ray. That's just my take on it. We'll probably never know for sure, one way or the other. Either way, I'll enjoy watching this movie over and over again through my final days.

"Well, can't he just beam up?"
"This is *reality* Greg."