MovieChat Forums > E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Discussion > Why does Steven Spielberg get off on try...

Why does Steven Spielberg get off on trying to traumatize kids?

posted 4 years ago by TMC-4 (20124)
21 replies | jump to latest

E.T. is I suppose, one of those movies, like Star Wars that you need to see at least once in your life due to all of the hype behind it. With E.T., it's something that if you ask me, I need to see it just to get what "all of the fuss is about", but I don't need to see it again.

There are parts in this movie that could honest to God, be legitimately out of a horror movie. It's awfully incidental that Spielberg that same year, allegedly ghost directed Poltergeist. The part where the federal agents in astronaut suits barge into Elliot's house is seriously, one of the most terrifying things I've ever experienced watching a movie.

And it's extremely hypocritical that during that one DVD edit around the 20th anniversary in 2002, Spielberg had the firearms that the feds were carrying digitally removed in favor of walkie-talkies because it's too "intense of an image" for children. But in this same movie, we have E.T. looking pale and bloated while drowning in a river. Or the infamous defibrillator sequence, where Spielberg of course, had to cut to a young Drew Barrymore crying a second later.

https://entertainment.ie/cinema/movie-news/five-times-that-steven-spielberg-traumatised-young-cinema-goers-240847/

https://www.thethings.com/heres-why-spielbergs-classic-et-is-a-traumatic-family-movie/

https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/movies-traumatized-kids.html/

Steven Spielberg is after all, the same guy who we should "thank" for the existence of the PG-13 rating due in no small part to all of the darkness that was in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (the heart ripping scene immediately comes to mind).

https://www.datalounge.com/thread/16953414-elijah-wood-talks-about-pedophile-ring-in-hollywood

Spielberg loves to traumatize kids in his movies. Almost all of them are about kids being attacked or traumatized. His new project is about a kidnapped kid. Remember Cary Duffey from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, you know the little kid that was virtually tortured on screen when abducted by aliens. It's something I could never get used to in his films. And the rumour makes me go hmm...

—Anonymous
reply 20705/22/2016

[–] Otter (24464) 4 years ago

???

Nothing about it ever scared ME!

[–] Roguemail (1614) 4 years ago

This is the second ET bashing thread the OP has started.

Now they are trying to demonise Spielberg himself and using a bunch of bullshit articles and opinions of others to make a point. But crucially, the OP does not seem to have any opinions of his own, same with the other thread. They have just read a bunch of stuff and have decided to believe it.

And they are going to ignore all of the many, many movies made for children that contain sequences that can scare children...most of the early Disney movies for example. And this goes back even further to classic fairy tales that contain nightmarish elements.

Plus most of the stuff being written about has already been discussed to death, such as the heart scene in Temple of Doom, scenes in Poltergeist and the ET revisions.

[–] TMC-4 (20124) 4 years ago

What's wrong me or anybody else making threads bashing ET? Why should you expect or insist that everybody in the world shouldn't have issue with that particular? And by the way, the stuff that I wrote prior to the first link, is my own opinion. What goes underneath is "evidence" (if you will) to help support my argument. Why is having an opposing opinion "bullshit" or an attempt to demonize Steven Spielberg? Like Steven Spielberg himself doesn't have critics like any other filmmaker!?

[–] Roguemail (1614) 4 years ago

No one is saying you cannot start threads on any subject you want. But just as you are free to do so, others are equally free to take issue with what you write.

If you cant handle people disagreeing with you and taking issue with your posts, maybe message boards are not for you.

[–] TMC-4 (20124) 4 years ago

What do you mean "if I can't handle people disagreeing with me..."? You're the one who clearly bemoaned the notion of somebody making consecutive posts "bashing" ET. How am I someone who can't handle people disagreeing with your point of view, but you're not!? If you say that I'm trying to demonize Spielberg and using a bunch of bullshit articles to make a point, then you can't handle the idea of people disagreeing with you.

[–] TMC-4 (20124) 4 years ago

So!? Is your point being that I should suck it up and stop being a euphemism for a cat since the movie isn't "THAT scary"!?

http://www.mtv.com/news/2771222/e-t-is-the-scariest-movie-ever-made/

https://onezero.medium.com/e-t-is-secretly-the-scariest-movie-of-all-time-65035677f5c0

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/et-the-extra-terrestrial/user-reviews/child

https://raisingchildren.net.au/guides/movie-reviews/et-the-extra-terrestrial

[–] Quint (957) 4 years ago

The point of movies made (also) for kids isnt to display a fluffy Lalaland. BTW E. T. isnt a kids only movie at all. Thats why it became the most successful movie of all times back then. Cause it was made for each and every age. From kids, to teens and grown ups.

Kids arent dumb. They know that life has dark spots and that they have to fight them. And therefor kids movies have to display dark scenes. Take a look at the great movies of Don Bluth. They are sometimes really dark. But like Bluth mentioned in interviews: "Thos scenes have to be included. Otherwise kids wont get any message from them. Cause the important part isnt the dark scenes during the movie. The important part is how the hero overcomes them at the end and everything is fine again". Cause thats what we call life! Getting over problems and obstacles. Not ignoring and defying them until you cant solve them anymore. Indeed this doesnt mean that we have to include slasher movie scenes into kid movies :) . But simple darkness is part of life. And even kids knowing that. So start realizing this simple fact.

[–] TMC-4 (20124) 4 years ago

I'll go back to an earlier point that I made when I say that I don't entirely understand why and how E.T. was so enormously successful at the box office. E.T. came out the year that I was born, so I don't really have any personal frame of context regarding the mania behind it at the time. I'm not saying that I think that it's a bad movie, it's just that's something I don't think has a lot of rewatch value because of how emotionally exhausting it is.

I again, reiterate that the whole section in the movie where E.T. gets chalk-white and sick is legitimately one of the most disturbing and nauseating things that I've ever experienced watching a movie. I don't know if that's a testament to Steven Spielberg's skills as a director to make us deeply care for what's essentially a "cute-ugly" puppet with a creepy voice.

But let's be real here, E.T. is a very manipulative movie. During those quarantine scenes, we're framed the narrative that these supposedly nefarious scientists and doctors are essentially out to torture (why else was Elliot convinced that they were intentionally killing him) E.T.

https://film.avclub.com/with-e-t-steven-spielberg-channeled-his-own-pain-into-1842319861

[–] AmeriGirl26 (14382) 4 years ago

I suppose 1980s kids were made of tougher stuff than the little snowflake shits we have now. Keep in mind that this was meant for kids to be watching it with their parents in the room, which is a comfort if they get scared at all.

[–] TMC-4 (20124) 4 years ago

How is me saying that a movie like E.T. is potentially traumatizing make me a "snowflake"? Marginalizing people who have the nerve to admit that a specific movie disturbed them by calling them "snowflakes" is seemingly a favorite catch-call term now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/cqznle/the_scene_in_et_when_the_guys_in_the_spacesuits/

[–] AmeriGirl26 (14382) 4 years ago

I wasn't talking about you. I can get where you're coming from. I've seen some films that traumatized me in the 80s and 90s that most people liked or loved, but I couldn't. But all this blather we hear nowadays doesn't even come from the kids; it comes from their overprotective parents, analyzing everything and assuming the kids will interpret movies the same way they do!

[–] Roguemail (1614) 4 years ago

There has always been a certain dark element to even the oldest of stories and fairy tales told to children.

You could cite stories like Snow White with the evil witch...Hansel and Gretel with its theme of cannibalism...Bambi with the mother getting killed...Red Riding Hood with a wolf wanting to eat a child...Pied Piper, kidnapping children etc.

There has always been an element of horror of some sort to such stories, and I think it very deliberately teaches children from a very young age that the world can be a scary place, and at some point you are going to have to grow up and deal with it.

Movies basically do the same. It's just a shame that the OP is not able to grasp that simple fact.

[–] AmeriGirl26 (14382) 4 years ago

That's one of the more interesting aspects of children's stories; most kids don't actually have issues with the darker, more violent aspects of some of these tales. I distinctly remember Roald Dahl not sugar-coating anything, and yet his books are still popular with children. Stories aren't very interesting without some conflict or something for the characters to overcome.

[–] TMC-4 (20124) 4 years ago

Don't give me the "what about" Hansel and Gretel, what about Snow White, because I didn't come here to talk about them, I'm talking specifically and directly about Steven Spielberg. When you use "whataboutism", then you're pretty much deflecting and making excuses. And you saying that it's a shame that I am not able to grasp at that simple fact is code for you saying that I'm too dumb and ignorant to not be in tune with certain things about life. You can't compare what's in written text like fairy tales from hundreds and hundreds of years ago and what's visual like more modernize motion pictures.

[–] TMC-4 (20124) 4 years ago

Also, how do you explain Steven Spielberg digitally removing the guns from the federal agents in the 2002 special edition if you didn't want to "sugar coat" things to children?

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bp/steven-spielberg-finally-admits-walkie-talkies-were-mistake-142746809.html

https://www.salon.com/2002/01/18/rev_history/

https://www.joblo.com/movie-news/steven-spielberg-hands-the-guns-back-to-et-for-blu-ray-release

https://www.wired.com/2002/01/sleight-of-hand/

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MijZOmZ-lQ0J:www.film-tech.com/ubb/f8/t000790.html+&cd=64&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

[–] HelpMeRhonda (1158) 4 years ago

I think that gun violence amongst children became this big issue. Maybe he didn't want to contribute to that. I'll say that when I was a kid, the scenes with ET and Eliot all hooked up to the IVs and whatnot freaked me out, but that just made the part where they escape on the bikes even cooler.

[–] TMC-4 (20124) 4 years ago

I think that Drew Barrymore (Steven Spielberg's goddaughter) had more to do with having the guns removed. Around the time that she made Charlie's Angels, she for whatever the reasons, became a big anti-gun crusader.

https://forum.pafoa.org/showthread.php?t=137995&s=9ef0250134fa7788cee30fbeec5a5035&p=1618790#post1618790

[–] HelpMeRhonda (1158) 4 years ago

Oh maybe that had something to do with it.

[–] TMC-4 (20124) 3 years ago

http://www.agcwebpages.com/BLINDITEMS/2021/OCTOBER.html

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https://www.crazydaysandnights.net/2021/10/blind-item-10_25.html

There is a drive right now to ban the firing of guns on set, and using real guns that can fire objects. This alliterate A+ list mostly movie director is opposed, so it has no chance of going anywhere. "Halyna’s Law"/Steven Spielberg (Petition Asks For 'Halyna's Law,' Banning Guns From Sets After Alec Baldwin Shooting)

[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 4 years ago

That's not Steven Spielberg's problem, it's his artistic vision and he can produce whatever film he wants to. Parents can then decide whether they want their children to view it or not.

[–] [email protected] (2017) 3 years ago

I saw it when I was about 6 on dvd and wasn't traumatized nor did I find horror elements in it. What scared me as a kid was IT, Jaws, and The Witches.