E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial/YMMV
From the film:
- Award Snub: It was nominated for the Best Picture and Director Oscars, but lost both to Richard Attenborough's Gandhi.
- Attenborough even stated in his acceptance speech that he believed E.T. should have won, since it was truly the better film.
- This was at least partly due to a rather sleazy Oscar campaign by Paramount, where they more or less stated that a vote against the film was a vote against Gandhi himself.
- Awesome Music: See John Williams/Awesome Music
- Memetic Mutation: "E.T. phone home."
- Nightmare Fuel:
- When the scientists show up at Elliot's home in environmental suits. The whistles of the train set in the background don't help.
- E.T.'s appearance may be unsettling for younger viewers, even more so when he's dying.
- The whole first fifteen minutes or so of the movie are pretty scary, from when the scientists show up at the spacecraft's landing spot to when Elliott explores the backyard and sees E.T. for the first time and both scream.
- Retroactive Recognition:
- Drew Barrymore is Elliott's little sister. She has had the exact same face for over 20 years.
- Erika Eleniak, who would later be known as Shauni in Baywatch, in the role of Elliott's classmate on whom he has a crush. Also a case of Dawson Casting - a 13 year old girl playing a classmate of a 10 year old boy?! Yeah, right!
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks: A response generated by the edits for the 2002 20th Anniversary edition, which included replacing guns with walkie-talkies and changing "terrorist" to "hippie." Mercilessly lampooned in the South Park parody episode "Free Hat." Incidentally, while said episode portrays Steven Spielberg as the diabolical mastermind behind editing Raiders of the Lost Ark, with George Lucas only reluctantly following, in Real Life Spielberg later stated that editing the movie was a mistake.
- Ugly Cute