Customer Reviews
Happy Oooops 
2007-12-30
I meant to buy the movie and bought this in error. However, as a fan, I listened to it and liked it. I will keep it in my car instead of in my DVD collection.
Different "Goodbye" cue at the end... 
2007-11-19
This is a fantastic expanded edition of John Williams' last great score. This is his peak, folks, and it is one to carry with you forever.
But why the four stars, you may ask? Because the "Goodbye" cue at the end is not as it is in the film. A few bars during Elliot's goodbye to E.T. are different; the sweeping strings suddenly drop out and the woodwinds take over, losing all emotional impact. I suspect this is how the scene was originally composed, but Williams felt that it wasn't working for him so SS told him to write it the way he felt it would work best, and that he (SS) would go back to the cutting rooms and cut it to match. But that's not how it is in the film and it's really disappointing to get all the way through this glorious score just to have the dramatic power sucked out in the end. It's nice, but it isn't what's in the film. I will keep a death grip on my original album release, since that has the correct ending to "Adventure on Earth."
I've always held this score close to my heart, along with Jaws and CE3K. I remember listening to it, as a teenager, on a Walkman, while walking through the woods at night. My father was burning some brush down in the stand of trees at the bottom of our hill and just as the ominous theme at the beginning welled up in my earphones, the dark trees before me lit up with the orange glow of firelight. It was an amazing, magical and scary coincidence and I'll always associate it with the original album (since that's all that was available at the time!).
Get this disc for the body of the score, but get the original album (if you can find it) for the original ending. It is emotionally and artistically more satisfying.
This Soundtrack is Great ! 
2006-08-01
Through watching this film I felt that the music made it what it is. I only just decided to listen to the soundtrack a few days ago and i think it is interesting and varied. I have to say that the older edition of the soundtrack is in my view the better, in comparison with the remastered version. I really have enjoyed listening to the soundtrack i feel that John williams captures the character of the film with just the right approach. Many people will know of this theme through the famed grandeur of the Flying scene. However my preferred tracks are the ones which have captured that relationship between E.T. and Elliot. When i listen to Track 16 E.T. is alive it always seems to make me emotional, I really adore the way that the melody of the strings glides. I also really enjoyed the end credits , mainly because of the piano solo, which i think its utterly amazing!
Heartfelt, Adventurous, Purely Magnificent 2006-06-01
John Williams, the best composer of our generation (and a personal favorite), creates one of the greatest film scores ever. He won a well-deserved Academy Award for this magical feast for the ears. The beauty is that this score represents so many genres of film score, inlcuding adventure, romance, mystery, and many more. I would have to say that the last track in this Anniversary Edition, entiteled 'End Credits,' is by far one of John Williams' most emotional and moving pieces of music. The start of the track is of a piano, but the piano is played so perfectly well and is paced and toned more of a heartfelt tune. This is truly the best part of the track, and is a perfect ending for the magical film, directed by Steven Spielberg. It satisfies the audience. Then, Williams gives the tone of the "Flying Theme' of the film and brings us adventure and excitement, beautifully composed with violins and trumpets. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial is flawless, and John Williams at his best.
Splendid remastering of wonderful music 2006-01-17
First of all, I always wondered why this recording, dating from 1981 - when digital recording was already possible - was being done with analogue machinery. Anyhow, one could (almost) not tell the age of the original recording when listening to this remastered version: so much more of orchestral detail has become apparent that could hardly be heard on the original LP, really opening up the sound-picture, with very little noticable tape hiss.
Firstly, some reflections concerning the film and the music. I must confess, that after seeing this movie as a child, my soul had been affected in ways which I cannot fathom. This may all sound pathetic, but it is true nonetheless. In certain ways, this tragic story of frienship and ultimate loss (we will all die ultimately, however strong the connections between befriended souls may be) 'changed' me as a person, from then on looking out into the world with a somewhat shifted focus. In a more intellectual kind of way I kind of detest this motion picture, with its (over-)emotional sentimentalities, so perfectly and grandiloquently translated into music by maestro Williams. But at the same time it resonates with the strings of the heart (mostly John Williams to blame?) and its deep truths cannot be ignored. The little boy in me screaming: why the hell could these two soulmates NOT be united! Why would these two friends have to be separated! Why did Steven Spielberg have to be so cruel! Well, because life is not so soothingly simple, and because in the end, we all have to go our separate destinies, while our hearts always ring out to the other, maybe only after passing the 'Big Doorway to Another World' being reunited in the light of 'Eternal Love' ;-)
Anyhow, the music in itself is pure, vintage Williams in its ability to weave veritable webs of orchestral colors and emotions. Indeed, where would ET be without John Williams! As Steven Spielberg himself once said: John Williams IS ET!
I personally feel no need to ever again watch the movie itself though (lodged as it already is in my memory), but I do regularly listen to some of the music, evoking for me all the necessary images, emotions and sensibilities from the film. John Williams to me remains maybe the greatest film music composer, and his music for ET remains one of my all time favorites (beside his music for Jurassic Park, which I consider to be even better).
John Williams 2005-09-12
While director Steven Spielberg has sometimes termed his blockbuster hit
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial a loose sequel to his similarly themed
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that notion only underscores the breadth of John Williams's talents as a composer and tempts the listener to consider this score a sort of second, more nakedly emotional movement to his
CE3K music. As in his epic
Star Wars work, the musical touchstone is early-20th-century Russian romanticism, a link that becomes even clearer with the restoration of three fragile, largely atmospheric cues ("Main Titles," "Meeting E.T.," and "E.T.'s New Home"). While Williams has often suffered odd accusations of emotional manipulation--which is, after all, precisely the job of a film composer--his
E.T. music is still some of his most compelling, recalling Herrmann's delicate, pastoral touch on
The Magnificent Ambersons in its first half, then steadily ratcheting up the tension as the score's insistent brass motif intrudes ever more ominously. Two decades later, the 15-minute sweep of "Escape/Chase/Saying Goodbye" remains one of Williams's most powerful and memorable film-music achievements. This edition also features an illustrated booklet with a new interview with the composer.
--Jerry McCulley
Awesome Soundtrack, Timeless Themes 2005-08-17
E.T. is quite simply the best score of the eighties, or nineties, maybe it's still the best score.
Anyhow, this soundtrack will try it's hardest to move you emotionaly, and this will work every time you slide it in.
The soundtrack has many sides, dark, horror, mystery, excitement, love, childlike themes, and a grand ending theme that will blow you away.
The addition of Yoda's theme in track 13 was extremely clever.
A Musical Blockbuster... 2005-04-12
...is perhaps the only description that can encompass this inspired score for the movie that touched everyone's hearts past and present. The simple, yet moving theme for everyone's favorite alien is considered by many to be John Williams' greatest theme. It is ethereal, yet moving; simple, but majestic. With one theme, Williams single-handedly created an emotional connection that brings the story of a home sick alien vividly to life. It is hard not to get choked up as E.T. finally says goodbye to Elliot and blasts off into space while his theme swells majestically in the background before ending with a bang! Definitely in the top 10 list of Williams greats!
Farewell E.T. .... 2004-12-03
The finale to this piece is so emotionally charged and moving, I cannot recall another movie soundtrack fitting so completely congruently, especially with the final events of the movie itself. What is that magical, secret ingredient that Williams captures so well within the main E.T. theme, that leaves such an indelible impression? A truly magnificent, timeless and powerfully moving composition - in an instant reminding the listener of the desperately sad and tear-jerking farewell scene as our beloved alien leaves to return home.
Gosh, cinematic goodbyes have never been so powerful, before or since. Williams was born to write for the screen.
Wonderful As Ever, Yet I Still Prefer MCA 6109 2004-01-16
It's hard to argue against those who would lobby to hear every film cue that John Williams has ever written, as each is a masterwork -- be it a miniature gem or a lengthy, multi-thematic suite -- which deserves to be appreciated. It's also hard to believe that a fair-to-middling jazz pianist who cut a couple of very forgettable recordings for EmArcy during the late 1950s under his full name of "John Towner Williams" would one day come to be regarded as the greatest film composer of the latter half of the 20th century (and my personal favorite of them all), churning out memorable themes like a gumball machine over a ten year period, while lesser composers would starve themselves for just one such idea during a lifetime.
What is also hard to argue is the fact that soundtracks serve, in the end, the very utilitarian purpose of augmenting the images on the screen (although in the case of Williams' efforts, "augment" is too mild a word for what takes place in the souls of theatergoers upon having his music wash over them). For this reason, in the days of the 12" vinyl LP (which by the early 1980s held at best about 55 minutes) the composer selected those movements of his score which most represented the entire film thematically, and re-recorded them in suite form so as to make a more "listenable" overall package.
On the one hand, some may say that this was a cold commercial calculation which cherry-picked from an abundance of worthy material and shoe-horned what would fit into an allotted space. I would say that since John Williams himself wrote, arranged, conducted, and chose what material would appear on the LP, this is a farcical argument -- but I won't deny that it exists among purists who wish to hear the actual cues used IN the movie AS used in the movie. (I got my first distaste for this practice upon hearing the Cantina Band song on the expanded "Star Wars" reissue just END -- whereas on the original double-LP it faded out nicely.)
On the other hand is my opinion that MCA 6109 (the label and catalog # of the original 1982 LP) is, on the whole, a more coherent, more pleasurable, and more deeply emotional experience than any of the subsequent CD reissues available, including the widely-expanded release in question here. Granted, not even the new SACD mastering can match the majestic full-frequency output of vinyl ("E.T" was, after all, digitally recorded and mixed from the beginning, yet is still only overpowering on LP), and I am also coming at the subject as an 8-year-old boy who played his record countless times until it simply wore away. So, sprinkle the prejudices of childhood sentiment and the sensibilities of a modern audiophile into what I'm saying here.
Despite those biases, however, and despite my satisfaction in knowing that John Williams' full original recordings are now being made available on expanded CD reissues to document his greatest achievements in their entirety, I cannot bring myself to prefer them over the original vinyl issues. Perhaps it has something to do with the "concert arrangements" on LP which sound more like the progression of a musical work rather than the lumping of a bunch of unrelated cues together in the approximate order of the film's chronology of scenes. Or maybe it is the nagging suspicion that Mr. Williams' selections for re-recording and inclusion on the LPs were as carefully chosen as were his themes, and that the 45 minutes or so on the album really does encapsulate the music and the movie so beautifully that further cues are neither needed nor yearned for. And as for re-recorded "concert arrangements," is there anyone who really believes that the world-class musicians who performed Williams' scores couldn't play them EXACTLY the same way 50 times in a row, if they wanted to? Aside from the smoother integration of cues on the re-recordings, there is scarcely any discernable difference between them and the actual film cues. If anything, the re-recorded suites may well be more powerful, being un-beholden to the ever-changing series of images on the screen to which the tempos and dynamics must conform.
Of course, if you're a John Williams archivist then this expanded issue (along with those from his other Lucas/Spielberg associations) are indispensable, and probably every Williams fan should at least hear the vault material once. But when it comes right down to it, I still find myself spinning MCA 6109 (a new copy, not the beat one!) more often than I do this CD. Although it lacks almost 30 minutes of music that are present on the CD, to me the LP recording sounds more "complete" by virtue of its arrangement. Maybe that arrangement is all in my 8-year-old mind and won't let go, but seeing as how the same sentiment is reflected in other reviews, I don't know...maybe less really IS more.
