“You came back.”
Thirty-three years after Elliot (Henry Thomas) made contact with an alien, took a magical bike ride through the air, and sent the otherworld back home, “ET” returns to Earth in a brand-new sequel to Steven Spielberg 1982 movie. Fans can now watch it, as the sequel will be in the form of a commercial for Xfinity cable TV and the Internet.
“The audience will get everything they want from a sequel, without the messy parts that could destroy the beauty of the original and the special place it has in people’s minds and hearts,” Thomas said in a statement. “When I look at the storyboards, I can see exactly why Steven (Spielberg) is really behind it, because the integrity of the story is not lost in this retelling.”
In the four-minute short film, E.T. turns up at Elliot’s backyard and befriends the kids of his old friend on time for Christmas. As a found family they eat dinner, bring dead plants to life, organize snowball fights, play with the family’s VR headset – it’s 2019! – and E.T. to the wonders of the internet. In particular, Xfinity high-speed Internet. Which kids love.
The E.T. holiday sequel extends canon in a way that only Mac and Me dared to do in the 1980s. In one scene, a hologram message shows us the E.T.’s family celebrating whatever they’re celebrating (or maybe they just walk around, which looks good). Although the video voluntarily visits Elliot this time, it convinces E.T. go home. It’s a great excuse to fly a few bikes.
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Once upon a time, Spielberg actually became a sequel to E.T. In the summer of 1982, when the original movie appeared like a gangbuster, the director wrote a treatment with scriptwriter Melissa Mathison for E.T. II: Nocturnal fears. You can still read this treatment today, but the essence is that another race of aliens crosses with Elliot and they . are not good. Here is a selection.
The aliens on board are EVIL. They have landed on Earth in response to distress signals indicating their current coordinates. These aliens are looking for a stranded alien named Zrek who sends a call for help.
The evil creatures are carnivorous. Their leader Korel orders his crew to disperse in the forest to raise food. When the squat aliens leave the gangway, they each emit a hypnotic humming that has a crippling effect on the surrounding wildlife. These creatures are an albino faction (mutation) of the same civilization E.T. belongs. The two separate groups have been at war for decades!
The movie would have had a different tone.
This sequel has never happened and has given Xfinity the runway for the first direct sequel to Spielberg’s mythology. The sequel is not the only canonical expansion in the world since the 1982 film; The alien species appears in the Galactic Senate in a shot of Phantom Menace (meaning that ET exists in the Star Wars universe), and the character appeared at the awards ceremony of a 1995 episode of Nickelodeon’s Guts (which means ET in Mike O exists) ‘Malley Universe).
But why did Xfinity choose Thanksgiving Day to make a four-minute sequel to E.T. to publish?
“People are not interested in technology,” said Jeff Goodby, co-chair of advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, in a statement. “They care about how they connect with other people. This story is an emotional reunion of two characters we know and love. It’s a perfect story for the holidays at a time when our emotions are very close to the surface. “