E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

       He's a man from outer space and we're taking him to his spaceship.

The film opens in a California forest as a group of alien botanists collect vegetation samples. U.S. government agents appear and the aliens flee in their spaceship, leaving one of their own behind in their haste. The scene shifts to a suburban California home, where a boy named Elliott (Henry Thomas) plays servant to his older brother, Michael (Robert MacNaughton), and his friends (K. C. Martel, Sean Frye and C. Thomas Howell). As he fetches pizza, Elliott discovers the stranded alien, who promptly flees. Despite his family's disbelief, Elliott leaves Reese's Pieces candy in the forest to lure it into his bedroom. Before he goes to bed, Elliott notices the alien imitating his movements.

Elliott feigns illness the next morning to avoid school so he can play with the alien. That afternoon, Michael and their younger sister, Gertie (Drew Barrymore), meet the alien. Their mother, Mary (Dee Wallace), hears the noise and comes upstairs. Michael, Gertie and the alien hide in the closet while Elliott assures his mother that everything is all right. Michael and Gertie promise to keep the alien a secret from their mother. Deciding to keep the alien, the children begin to ask it about its origin. It answers by levitating balls to represent its solar system, and further demonstrates its powers by reviving a dead plant.

At school the next day, Elliott begins to experience a psychic connection with the alien. Elliott becomes irrational due partly to the alien's intoxication from drinking beer. Elliott then begins freeing all the frogs from a dissection class. As the alien watches John Wayne kiss Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man, Elliott's psychic link causes him to kiss a girl (Erika Eleniak) he likes in the same manner.

The alien learns to speak English by repeating what Gertie says in response to her watching Sesame Street and, through Elliott's urging, dubs itself as "E.T." It enlists Elliott's help in building a device to "phone home" by using a Speak & Spell toy. Michael starts to notice that E.T.'s health is declining and that Elliott is referring to himself as "we." On Halloween, Michael and Elliott dress E.T. as a ghost so they can sneak it out of the house. Elliott and E.T. ride a bicycle to the forest, where E.T. makes a successful call home. The next morning, Elliott wakes up to find E.T. gone, and returns home to his distressed family. Michael finds E.T. dying in the forest, and takes the alien to Elliott, who is also dying. Mary becomes frightened when she discovers her son's illness and the dying alien, before government agents invade the house.

Scientists set up a medical facility in the house, quarantining Elliott and E.T. The link between E.T. and Elliott disappears as E.T. appears to die. Elliott is left alone with the motionless alien when he notices a dead flower, the plant E.T. had previously revived, coming back to life. E.T. reanimates and reveals that its people are returning. Elliott and Michael steal a van that E.T. had been loaded into and a chase ensues, with Michael's friends joining Elliott and E.T. as they attempt to evade the authorities by bicycle. Suddenly facing a dead-end, they escape as E.T. uses telekinesis to lift them into the air and toward the forest. Standing near the spaceship, E.T.'s heart glows as it prepares to return home. Mary, Gertie and "Keys" (Peter Coyote), a government agent, show up. E.T. says goodbye to Michael and Gertie, and before entering the spaceship, tells Elliott "I'll be right here," pointing its glowing finger to Elliott's heart. E.T. then picks up the flower pot Gertie gave him, walks into the spaceship, and takes off, leaving a rainbow in the sky.

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