In a blatant attempt to milk your childhood for everything is worth, that still makes you cry like a baby, we somehow got an official sequel to Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” – except it’s a commercial for Universal Pictures’ parent company, Comcast and its Comcast Xfinity service.
The commercial aired this morning during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and it stars actor Henry Thomas, who played Elliot in the original film, and the titular E.T. from the classic 1982 film. Before you start chanting for the miracle of Thanksgiving, remember that Xfinity is a cable, internet, phone, etc. provider owned by Comcast, who also owns NBC, which aired the parade, and also Universal Pictures, which owns “E.T.” So it would be more appropriate to call this a corporate miracle, or a cash-grab to appeal to our collective nostalgia.
The worst part is, it works like gangbusters. As Henry Thomas said in a statement (via Deadline), “The audience is going to get everything they want out of a sequel without the messy bits that could destroy the beauty of the original and the special place it has in people’s minds and hearts,” Indeed, watching Elliot and E.T. interact and bond again is an absolute delight, and it has everything you’d want out of a sequel to the original “E.T.” without it overstaying its welcome. Watching E.T. playing with a VR set is particularly magic. You’ll definitely want to have tissues at hand by the time John Williams’ classic score starts playing.
“Looking at the storyboards, I could see exactly why Steven [Spielberg] was really behind it,” Thomas added. “Because the integrity of the story isn’t lost in this retelling.”
The fact that the commercial works so well only serves to make this blatant corporate cash-grab feel all the more insulting, especially since a longer version of the 2-minute commercial that aired this morning, will air on SYFY later tonight together with “E.T.” (Syfy is, you guessed it, another Comcast property). At least, this goes to show you Disney isn’t the only corporate overlord capable of flexing its corporate muscles to milk your nostalgia.
You can watch the commercial below:
