‘PRODUCT OF ITS ERA’

Spielberg Says Scrubbing Guns Out of Later ‘E.T.’ Cut a ‘Mistake’

In the 20th-anniversary edition of the movie, the firearms carried by its law enforcement characters were replaced by walkie talkies.

Steven Spielberg may have exhumed history in the course of his storied career, but he’s no champion of revising it, particularly when it comes to the question of appeasing modern audiences. Speaking at Time’s 100 Summit on Tuesday, the director expressed regret over the choice to edit the firearms carried by law enforcement out of the 20th-anniversary cut of E.T., replacing the guns with walkie talkies. “That was a mistake,” he said. “I never should have done that. E.T. is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily, or being forced to peer through.” He went on to say that he “should have never messed with the archive of my own work,” adding that he doesn’t recommend anyone follow his example. “All our movies are a kind of a signpost of where we were when we made them,” Spielberg continued, “what the world was like and what the world was receiving when we got those stories out there.”