The three people E.T.’s face was based on
The titular ballsack of an alien in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial might be one of the ugliest cinematic creatures ever put to the screen, with the bulbous sweaty cake shuffling through the film like it was embarrassed to be on screen. Yet, the alien is so hard to dislike, thanks to just how charming the lil’ fella is, radiating enough love that even the Xenomorph would think twice before ripping its giant head off.
Indeed, while in the world of the film, he may not possess much luck in the looks department, when it comes to his cinematic creation behind the scenes, E.T. is nothing short of a work of art. Designed by Carlo Rambaldi, the same mind who worked on Spielberg’s 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the aforementioned Xenomorph effects on Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror Alien, the E.T. mechatronic took three months to make to the tune of $1.5million.
The film very much made this money back upon its release in 1982, earning a staggering $792m at the box office, while, decades later, the mechatronic sold for $2.56m at auction, almost double what the model cost to make. A genuine masterpiece of special effects, the E.T. mechatronic represents a point in time when visual effects were a matter of skilled engineering rather than digital mastery, with Rambaldi winning an Oscar for his work on the film.
Yet, perhaps the most fascinating feature of the alien is his distinctive look, with previous cinematic extra-terrestrials being generally more basic in design.
Spielberg revealed the inspirations behind the face of the creature in The Making of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, stating: “I remember saying to Carlo, here’s some pictures of Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandburg. I love their eyes, can we make E.T.’s eyes as frivolous and also wizened and as sad as those three icons”. Rumours suggest that, for good measure, the look of a pug was also tossed into the bizarre cauldron.
Sadly for E.T. himself, he didn’t exactly gain the humanoid intelligence of Einstein, the literary genius of Hemingway or the lyrical beauty of Sandburg; instead, gaining all his IQ points from the pug. Sure, he was a magical mind capable of remarkable, magical feats, but no one is going to take him seriously in the future if he can’t hold a basic conversation.
Take a look at Spielberg explaining E.T’s original design in the fascinating featurette below.
