Maybe we're jumping to conclusions. After all, Star Trek shows that audiences clearly don't have a problem with every franchise makeover that offers itself to them on a CGI-laden, lens-flared platter.

But we couldn't help but notice that Masi Oka's new project about videogamers who end up saving the world after it turns out that the game is more than just a game is oddly reminiscent of 1984 movie The Last Starfighter (in which a video-gamer saves the universe after it turns out that the game is more than just a game) in the same way that Stephen Chow's cute alien movie is "reminiscent" of ET (Oh, wait; he admitted that that was a rip-off). While it's arguably true that there are no new stories anymore, the similarities between these "new" movies and the 1980s originals have gotten us wondering whether ripping off cult favorites is the way forward for Hollywood's nostalgia-struck executives.

Think about it: With all the sequels, remakes and adaptations of much-beloved comics and television shows that make up the summer blockbuster slate these days, it'd be too much to ask for some genuine originality from anyone other than the animators - and, worse, we could end up with something worse than G-Force if they tried - but remaking movies with the serial numbers filed off gives moviemakers the chance to indulge their desire to relive their childhoods without risking the wrath of fans of the same childhood shows, movies and comics they want to revisit. Sure, you lose the brand recognition, but that's a double-edged sword these days: Who's to say that Terminator Salvation wouldn't have been more successful if it hadn't had the weight of the first two movies on its celluloid shoulders?

I'm not suggesting that we wish for a world where everything is Transmorphers instead of Transformers, but I can't help but wonder whether Defenders and CJ7 point to a new middle ground that would allow everyone to keep their sacred cows idealized in memory yet relive them in new forms, unencumbered by expectation, preconception and nostalgia. Put it this way: You don't want to watch a new Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie without Joss Whedon, but would you be that against a new movie about a teenage girl fighting monsters if she had a different name?

Flash back to 1982 or thereabouts, and I'm seven years old in the west coast of Scotland and have a friend called Craig McAteer who, he tells me very secretly one day, has this bootleg Betamax of this awesome new movie from America about an alien and I should totally see it. Being the entirely impressionable youth that I was back then, I took his word for it, and convinced my family that we should watch this bootleg video one winter evening, because apparently it was awesome.

Here's the problem: Not only was this a bootleg video, but it was a really, really appallingly bad bootleg video, grainy and with bad sound that kept cutting out, and missing more than half of the actual movie. To this day, I have no idea where Craig had gotten this movie from, but wherever it was, he should've asked for his money back. It was like ET: The Narcoleptic's Cut or something, the way that it just jumped from scene to scene without any sense of logic or subtlety. But the strange thing was, because of all the missing scenes, it turned into a completely different movie.

Missing, for one thing, was any scene of ET being cute. Or, for the most part, any scene where you saw ET at all. Anything to do with him healing anything? Not there. Going trick-and-treating while dressed as a ghost? Gone. What this version of ET did have was a massive jump from when Elliott luring ET with his Reece's Pieces to the part of the movie where Elliott was getting sick, and the dudes in the hazmat suits appear at the door, so what was meant to be a cute family movie suddenly became this movie where a young kid who could have been me went to befriend an alien and instead became so sick that crazy-looking spaceman dudes appeared at his family's door with guns and big tubing.

Needless to say, I was completely freaked out by this. When you're a kid, it's one thing to see a scary movie when you're expecting it to be scary - For some reason, I'm convinced that I had "accidentally" seen Alien by this point of my life, and been completely unfazed by it, although I may be misremembering (I had definitely read, and been bored by, the comic version of it, although I was thrilled to see real swearing in a comic) - but this entirely took me by surprise. I'd been expecting a heartwarming tale of everything being okay, but this bastardized version of the movie was blacking out between scenes and hissing and staticing that everything was dangerous, and by the way, aliens can somehow make you really sick and you'll probably die.
I didn't see the end of the movie that night. I can't remember if that's because it just wasn't on the shitty bootleg (Definitely a possibility), or because I was so freaked out that we stopped watching the movie in order to calm my nerves (Equally possible), but it took months - and the official release of the movie - for me to get the full story of what ET was actually about. I saw the real version as part of a friend's birthday party, his parents dragging a gang of over-eager kids (and me, utterly terrified because I was convinced that all of the reviews where people talked about the movie being upbeat and happy were lying, and I was going to be subjected to the same cinematic childhood torture as before, but on a larger screen) to the theater, where I spent at least half of the movie in awe, thinking variations of Wait, so this is what happened? That's much better than what I thought! to myself over and over again. The movie was, kind of, redeemed in my eyes.

Kind of.

Because, I admit it: Whenever people try and tell me how cute ET was, or I see those utterly hideous plush toy versions of the character, I still can't quite bring myself to believe them. Deep down, I know that he didn't mean to do it, and that his intentions were both pure and Speak-And-Spell-loving, but still, to me? ET will always be the alien that came to Earth, almost killed Elliott and brought the hazmat suit guys and large plastic tubes to the house. And somewhere inside me, the seven-year-old who got freaked out that first time still finds the movie just a little bit scary.

E.T. is penis-shaped for no reason. His face looks like a genital. His neck elongates. And there is NO good reason. You think kids won't notice the penis thing? Give me a break. When I was a kid, that was like all we talked about. I'm fine with throwing penis jokes and fart jokes into kid movies — that's the stuff of life. But doing it without any self-consciousness? Makes director Steven Spielberg look like an amateur. Makes the movie even dumber because kids can actually legitimately make fun of it for containing penises that the grownups DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE WERE THERE. C'mon grownups — get with it.

E.T. is too cute and too ugly at the same time. We've already established that E.T. looks like an unattractive genital. At the same time, he is way to freakin cute. What the hell with the waddling and cutsey voice and big giant eyes. Big beating heart? Gross. I am barfing now. Plus that egregious "looks like a toy" scene, where he hides in with the dolls? Puh-leez.

To make matters worse, the 20th Anniversary Edition of ET was redone with CGI and censorship. OK, look, grownups — trying to fix up an already too-cute/too-ugly E.T. by adding crappy CGI ain't going to cut it. Seriously, he just looks way lamer. Meanwhile, Spielberg decided to clean up the movie by replacing the bad guy's guns with radios in one scene (what? you think kids don't know those are really guns?) and then taking out the ONE funny line in the whole movie, where Elliot calls his brother "penis breath." So you take out the one intentionally-funny penis reference, but leave in the penis-shaped alien? WTF, people?

Power of healing sucks. E.T.'s one super-power is healing and making flowers grow. LAME. Healing is totally great and all, but how about combining it with the power to blow shit up or shoot giant knives through his long froggy fingers? Or maybe the power to build big lasers that kill the bad guys with their "radios."

Too similar to Old Yeller. Does it really count as a scifi movie if all you've done is take the plot of Old Yeller — boy meets dog, boy loses dog, boy learns life lesson — and transpose it onto an alien crash-landed on Earth plot? Why not just go see Old Yeller if you want to see cute little boys crying over nonhuman creatures? Just because E.T. helps Elliot fly on his bicycle doesn't make him a better dog than Old Yeller, OK?

Spawned worst videogame ever made. The E.T. videogame wasn't just the most hideous thing ever mde for the Atari 2600 — it was the worst game ever made in the entire world. Rumor has it that it sold so badly that most of the cartridges were turned into landfill.

Product placement frenzy makes movie dated and ridiculous. In their craven desire to get commercial sponsors for E.T., producers decided to use very specific brands in the movie. Elliot feeds E.T. Reeses Pieces (at that time a new candy), and E.T. uses a Speak and Spell handheld "game" (also new in the early 80s) to communicate with his alien buddies. Having these very 80s-specific products in the movie pushes it into retro-cheese territory rather than "movie for all ages" like, well, Old Yeller. I got a hint for you: If you want kids to enjoy your movie for decades, don't use it to advertise products that will look so retarded to kids twenty years later that they won't be able to decide whether to laugh at the penis-headed alien or the lameass Speak and Spell toy.

Two decades worth of kid-alien space movies I blame E.T. for all those crappy kid-alien movies (and ALF), but not for XTRO, which is like the very best alien-kid movie ever.

Neil Diamond wrote a song about E.T. called "Heartlight." Did Nirvana write a song about E.T.? Did Black Sabbath or Big Daddy Kane or Run DMC? No. Neil fucking Diamond, people. I rest my case.

Famous names: Steven Spielberg, Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Peter Coyote

Crunchy goodness: 2

Stunt casting: Drew Barrymore, granddaughter of golden-era Hollywood star Lionel Barrymore, makes her first appearance on screen as the 3-year-old kid who forces E.T. to wear lipstick and a wig.

Most painfully dated moment: The idea that the evil government can actually be stopped.

Bang for your buck: Originally brought to life via Jim Henson-style puppetry, E.T. underwent an expensive makeover for the 20th anniversary edition. Spielberg recut the flick for lots of cash to add a CGI E.T., who looks wan, wiggly and awful.

Official 20th Anniversary E.T. site