E. T. The Extra Terrestrial

In E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, a spacecraft seeking botanical specimens lands near a California suburb. One of the botanists, a ten-million-year-old elfin creature, strays too far from the ship and misses the takeoff. Alone and millions of light years from home, he approaches the house where Elliott and his family live. The fatherless household is boisterous and disorganized. Elliott in particular seems doomed to mediocrity by his lack of a father.

After the first, mutually terrified, meeting of E. T. and Elliott, Elliott hides him in his closet to protect him from unimaginative adults. He learns to love E. T. and realizes that E. T. possesses tremendous knowledge and wisdom. When Elliotts siblings meet E. T., five-year-old Gertie gives him a potted geranium and introduces him to her Speak-and-Spell toy, from which he deduces the phonemic structure of English. He also recognizes a computer in the toy, and by using parts of it, he constructs a device to signal his home planet. On Halloween, Elliott and the disguised E. T. bicycle to a hill to leave the transmitter. When they are followed, E. T. makes the bicycle fly, allowing them to evade their pursuers. They leave the transmitter.

The government, having kept surveillance on the house, closes in. When a government team descends on the house, E. T. is captured. Although a medical team tries to keep him alive, E. T. begins to die. He whispers to Elliott that the rescue ship has come, and he and the children make a heroic escape. They elude the officials chasing them by once again flying on their bicycles. As they bid a tearful farewell, E. T., carrying Gertie’s geranium, boards the ship. Pointing to Elliott’s forehead, he promises, “Ill be right here.”