sycasey 2.0

Oh yeah, they're super-interesting companion movies. Family separation from the dad's perspective and then one from the kid's. I was also thinking about E.T. as sort of the bellwether for a new era of children's entertainment. Before this I don't think there were many movies that told stories from the kids' perspective. In fact, most movies with kids in major roles were either scary movies about kids with weird powers (The Shining) or literal demon children (The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby), or where the kids basically acted like miniature adults (Paper Moon). In the 80s and beyond there was a lot more kid-focused entertainment, much of it in an effort to replicate the success of E.T., which is a story very clearly and resolutely shown through a child's eyes. People who study generations tend to look at this (how the country views children) as evidence of a generational shift. Perhaps it's not an accident that what is usually cited as the first birth year for Millennials is . . . 1982.

I agree that Spielberg's career has been more varied than people think (he's like Scorsese, in that people only remember the biggest hits and forget about the breadth of his filmography), but that said . . . daddy issues do show up a lot. That's not a criticism, just an observation. Most great filmmakers tend to return to the same pet themes.

Hah, same. I've never understood my own generation's fascination with that movie.

This movie had maybe the most literal song choices I've ever heard.

This movie is terrible, but I will say that Vanessa Hudgens is doing yeoman's work to try to make her scenes work at all. Terrible dialogue, terrible character, but she's the only person consistently bringing any warmth and humanity to the screen.

Right, he's definitely not a father figure. He is a new subject of love: someone who Elliott loves and who loves him in return. And then like Elliott's father, E.T. has to go away . . . but this time Elliott understands why. That doesn't make it easier, but it does mean he now has a way to process it.

Yeah, I don't remember if very well from childhood either. It got me when the "special edition" came out in 2002 and I saw it in theaters. I would have been 21 or 22 at the time. Waterworks at the end of it. I immediately understood its power. And it's not because it's cute and sentimental, though it is that at times. It's that it takes that sentimentality and teaches kids and parents the hard lesson about learning to let go of something you love, because even though it may hurt, it's sometimes necessary. That's what brings the tears for me: the kind of simultaneous happy/sad emotions of the ending. To what Paul said on the podcast, yes, I think E.T. does also represent the absent father, in an abstract way. He comes in and kind of fills a hole in this family's life, and then also shows them how to deal with his eventual absence ("I'll be right here"). I think it's a remarkably deep movie in that way, and hardly the pure treacle its detractors would claim.

I should also say that despite the forcefulness of some of the negative comments, E.T. is easily winning the Facebook poll for "Does this belong on the list?" by about a 2-to-1 margin. And the Facebook group doesn't always vote for a movie. I think Swing Time and The Sixth Sense both failed.

The Facebook group has had a lot of comments along the lines of "this movie is only on the list because of nostalgia" and "this is too sentimental/treacly" or "not Top 5 Spielberg." That seems nuts to me (and given the popularity the movie also carried with adults at the time, a bit wrong-headed to chalk it up to nostalgia), but I think there is a certain mistrust people have for movies that wear their emotions on their sleeves. Especially film bros on Facebook. All I know is that this movie makes me weep every time I've seen it as an adult. I don't think it's nostalgia making me do that. I only remember watching it once as a child, so it's not something I cherished from that era. It's just that effective.

Amy used this for the Simpsons reference. I was conflicted because technically that "finger" shot doesn't actually exist in the movie. It's from the marketing. But the music is definitely E.T. inspired, so I think it has to count.

https://comb.io/Zu2SXI

Best answer.

John Goodman and the Coen Brothers. Always a welcome addition!

So when you say "people," I assume you mean "people within the movie's fictional world." I think those people are "correct" (in a sense) to view Travis as a hero, because they don't know anything more about his mental state or what else he was planning to do. If "people" includes "people in the audience," then I'd argue the movie has some interesting complexity here. We who have watched the movie know exactly what Travis was planning. We know that he only failed to shoot the Senator because he was stopped, not because he had a change of heart. We know that within his world "bad guys" are not limited to pimps and drug dealers. Another thing that I think can cause disagreements in interpretation is the difference between (1) what literally happens on screen and (2) how it's presented emotionally (this happens a lot with Scorsese, and I think the divergence between literal plot and audio/visual presentation is a common feature with him). It's true, what literally happens is that Travis rescues a young girl and only kills bad guys to do it, then is recognized as a hero. But in presentation? I would argue that Scorsese presents Travis' "rescue mission" about as dark and disturbing as possible. The music also goes "full dark" in this section, with none of the jazzy theme used as counterpoint earlier in the movie. We even see that Travis also wanted to kill himself and was unable to because he ran out of bullets. Because of that, to me the "happy ending" reads as ironic and not literal. But I have no logic or plot-based argument for that. What happens at the end is exactly as you say. Visual presentation can be harder to argue, but I can only speak to how it makes me feel about the ending. It does not make me happy.

I think she's deliberately looking for the negative reviews so that we can get a sense of the fact that while a film may become regarded as an unassailable classic over time, very rarely were they universally loved upon release. It's interesting to get that snapshot in time. If a movie is on the AFI list, it's obviously survived whatever negative criticism was thrown at it. I think Amy does tend to have skepticism towards films that are super "macho," but I don't get the sense that Paul has to pull positive comments out of her week after week. She's been largely positive about the movies they've discussed.

I think Goodfellas is pretty great, but I agree. If I have to remove one, that's the one.

Were we also kinkshaming the dolphins? Asking for a friend.

Yup. I do think it's telling that Goetz's harshest consequences came much later, in 1996. This was well after New York City had started to come back from what it had been in the 70s and crime had declined. He wasn't as much of a folk hero then.

Yeah. I don't think the movie ever stops trying to unsettle you.

I'd say it doesn't "fit" with the rest of the movie because we've spent so much time just with Travis and people who come into his orbit. It's safe to assume that the reporters and Iris' parents never actually met him. They don't know he was planning on killing the Senator. They only know him as the guy who killed a bunch of criminals and bad guys and rescued a young girl. If the media turning such a person into a hero seems far-fetched . . . it probably does now, but for the era? Let me introduce you to Bernie Goetz.

Spielberg must have really done a lot for them, then.

I'll need to do a rewatch of Raging Bull to see where I might find ways to identify with the protagonist (it will come up on the podcast eventually!). But yeah, for now I think Taxi Driver speaks to me more. It's probably my favorite Scorsese.

I'll answer as to why this movie affects me deeply. To me it's a brilliant depiction of a lonely, stunted guy. I was never as extreme as Travis, but on some level I understand this kind of seething anger underneath the loneliness. There was a time in my life when I felt similar things (again, not to that extreme, but along those lines). The highly subjective presentation of this individual’s psyche has never been done so well, IMO. I find it mesmerizing. What I also love about the film is that I don’t think it lets you off the hook for that: it shows how that mindset can lead to extreme violence, how ugly it can be. I know, not everyone takes the right message from this. Some people think it's practically an instruction manual. I can only describe what it says to me. I think the film shows SOCIETY vindicating Travis for his actions. I don't think the FILM itself endorses that vindication. I absolutely agree that in 2018 it feels like "Incel: The Movie" (someone on the Facebook group posted that). But to me that is just further proof of how sensitive and prescient it was to this particular kind of social disease.

I'm pretty sure Schrader and/or Scorsese have confirmed that they did not intend for the end to convey Travis' death. Yeah yeah, death of the author and all that. People can interpret it as they like. But personally I also don't think it plays as a dream sequence. I think the film is taking yet another turn and challenging the audience who would hero-worship Bickle, showing how his "heroism" is basically made-up and not actually a fix for what ails him.