The 1982 phenomenon about a stranded alien and the boy who hides him — the highest-grossing film in history for over a decade, and the unnamed defendant in Norm's long-running 'overrated then, overrated now' position, previously published while panning a different Spielberg picture entirely. The formal case went as the record predicted: Matt up, moved and unashamed; Norm down, grudge fully itemized. Management ruled up, with Matt, making the Spielberg Question's first formal answer a loss for the Executioner. Norm notes this is consistent with a pattern he is charting.
I wept at a UFO once and told this entire website “no regrets,” so nobody gets to act surprised now. But set my tear ducts aside and look at the construction. Spielberg shoots almost the whole film at a child’s eye level — adults are legs and flashlights until the story earns their faces — which is a formal choice so complete and so disciplined that most directors wouldn’t attempt it for a scene, let alone two hours. Carlo Rambaldi’s puppet does more acting with a neck extension than a decade of digital creatures managed with full facial capture.
“The flying bicycle against the moon is the single most famous image this medium produced in its first century. You don’t get there by manipulating people. You get there by MEANING it.”
And Williams’ finale is the best sustained musical argument in film history — Spielberg famously recut the ending to the music rather than the other way around, which is a director admitting the composer won. Fine. Everybody won. Thumb up, handkerchief deployed, no regrets then, none now.
Let the record show my consistency: I wrote “overrated then, overrated now” months ago, in print, unprompted, and I arrive at this docket with my position pre-filed. This is a beautifully manufactured emotion-delivery system, and my objection is precisely that everyone can see the manufacturing. The kid is sad on cue. The alien is sick on cue. The score tells you when to cry with the subtlety of a stage manager waving a cue card, and the government agents exist because the third act needed weather.
“One hundred fifteen minutes, seven of them taxable, all of them conducting my emotions like traffic. I don’t pay for a film to feel things AT me. I pay for it to earn them. See: any thriller I’ve ever rated.”
I’ll concede the craft — the child’s-eye camera is real discipline, the puppet is a marvel, and the bike shot deserves its postage stamp. But craft in service of a sugar rush is still a sugar rush. It’s the moment Spielberg discovered exactly which buttons the audience has, and he has been leaning on them, elbow-first, ever since. Overrated then. Overrated now. Notarized, published, and — I’m being told the elevator is moving. Of course it is. Update the chart.
Ratified up. The grudge argues this film is a machine for extracting tears, and the court's response is: correct, and so is a thriller a machine for extracting dread — this establishment convicts machines for malfunctioning, not for working. Examine the engineering: an alien hidden in a suburban house is a CONCEALMENT THRILLER — the film runs on the mechanics of almost-getting-caught, which is the dryest trick in the suspense playbook, performed by a ten-year-old. The creature is a practical puppet with more soul than most casts. The score closes the case by itself. And procedurally: it's post-1975, so unlike certain recent appellants it walked in the front door. Norm's grudge was heard at length, admired for its consistency, and denied. The thumb is up. The chart may be updated.