James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash has done exactly what was expected at the box office, and in its continued march towards $1 billion the third entry in the visually stunning but occasionally repetitive sci-fi franchise has now passed $800 million worldwide. That means it has also surpassed some incredible and beloved films of the past in the process.
As well as passing every James Bond movie, many Marvel and DC titles, and Christopher Nolan’s incredible Interstellar, Cameron’s latest juggernaut has told one of Steven Spielberg’s greatest movies to go and phone home. That movie is, of course, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the 1982 classic family sci-fi movie that is not only one of the master filmmaker’s best movies, but one of the most beloved movies of all time.
While James Cameron’s Avatar franchise harnesses the power of modern filmmaking technology to deliver one of the most awe-inspiring franchises ever put on the big screen, when Steven Spielberg made E.T., over 40 years ago none of it existed. Yet, if you had to compare the two movies side by side, there would only ever be one winner, and it is not the elongated Smurfs of Pandora.
E.T. tells the story of Elliott, a young boy who discovers an alien that has been stranded on Earth after the spaceship he arrived on leaves without him. The movie is a story of adventure, friendship, and family told in the way that only Spielberg can, which helped it turn a $10 million budget into a $797 million box office. While aliens have never been far from Spielberg’s thoughts – even infamously finding their way into the Indiana Jones franchise – E.T. stands head and shoulders above the likes of The War of the Worlds, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and, most likely, his latest offering, Disclosure Day.
‘Avatar’ and ‘E.T.’ are Worlds Apart in Scale, Scope, and Heart
As immersive and mesmerizing as the Avatar franchise is, Cameron’s trilogy has been criticized for having a “thread-bare” plot in its first two films, and now Fire and Ash has been called “repetitive” in many middling reviews, after the plot follows very similar beats to The Way of Water. This is something that has led to the movie landing a divisive, if not catastrophic, 67% score from critics, and many believe that the new movie has finally seen Cameron deliver much more style than substance.
This is certainly not a complaint that has ever been leveled at E.T. With its 99% critics score, Spielberg delivers something that no amount of CGI technology can: a great and timeless story. As Matt Brunson of Film Frenzy puts it:
“Spielberg has made a handful of films I would rate higher than E.T., but in terms of emotional investment for the whole family, this one is peerless in his canon, evoking laughter, tears, and everything in between.”
This is classic Spielberg before classic Spielberg existed. A story of childhood innocence and adventure that evokes more emotion from an animatronic puppet of the early 1980s than many actors can manage to generate. While Avatar: Fire and Ash may have easily sailed past E.T. in terms of unadjusted box office figures, it is hard to imagine a world where Cameron’s movie surpasses Spielberg’s masterpiece in the thoughts of audiences when asked to name the greatest movies of all time.
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