Remember when  E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (which no one ever calls the movie because that would be like saying A New Hope when you simply meant Star Wars) was rereleased in movie theaters in 2002 and you went to see it because you wanted to remember what it was like to feel? Everything was going nicely and the boys were escaping on their bikes, and then you said to yourself, “Wait a minute, why do all these FBI guys have walkie-talkies instead of guns? Spielberg, why are you Lucas-ing this!?â€
Spielberg had since admitted he made a mistake in digitally reediting those guns out of the film. (See what we’re talking about here, at about the 1:13 mark.) Last fall, he said:
“For myself, I tried [changing a film] once and lived to regret it. Not because of fan outrage, but because I was disappointed in myself. I got overly sensitive to [some of the reaction] to E.T., and I thought if technology evolved, [I might go in and change some things]…it was OK for a while, but I realized what I had done was I had robbed people who loved E.T. of their memories of E.T.â€
Thankfully, for those of us who like to see reality reflected in movies about space aliens, those guns will be back in when E.T. is released on Blu-ray in October for its 30th anniversary. See the trailer here. (And see the guns at the 25-second mark.)