Steven Spielberg is reflecting on one particular “regret” regarding his iconic film E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
Recently appearing at Time’s 100 Summit, the famed director called out his decision to edit guns out of a scene from the film years after its release, calling the lapse in judgment a “mistake.”
“That was a mistake,” Spielberg admitted in a clip shared on YouTube earlier this week. “I never should have done that because E.T. is a product of its era.”
The 1982 theatrical cut of the science fiction film includes a scene where officers carrying firearms chase a group of young kids.
However, Spielberg nixed the guns out of the scene for the 20th anniversary re-release of the film and replaced them with walkie-talkies.
Explaining his directorial decision, he revealed: “E.T. was a film that I was sensitive to the fact that the federal agents were approaching kids with firearms exposed, and I thought I would change the guns into walkie-talkies… Years went by, and I changed my own views.”
Spielberg insisted he made the changes due to his evolving views but said it eventually dawned on him that he felt he should have left the movie the way it was.
“I should have never messed with the archives of my own work, and I don’t recommend anyone do that,” he said.
Arguing that movies should never be retroactively edited for modern audiences, he added: “All our movies are a kind of a signpost of where we were when we made them, what the world was like, and what the world was receiving when we got those stories out there. So I really regret having that out there.”
Spielberg’s admission comes a month after he called E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial the “perfect movie” in an interview with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show.
“It’s one of the few movies I’ve made that I can actually look back at again and again,” he told Colbert at the time.
From Jaws to Jurassic Park, Spielberg has been at the helm of some of pop culture’s most iconic films.
Most recently, the 76-year-old filmmaker directed his “first coming-of-age story”, 2022’s Oscar-nominated The Fabelmans, starring Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as characters based on his parents.