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When Steven Spielberg released E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial on DVD, he had the guns that the federal agents were carrying digitally removed. I shit you not. Apparently the firearms (which, I might add, were what added the element of suspense to that final scene where the agents are chasing Elliot and E.T. through the streets of suburban California, until Elliot and E.T. make their escape on flying bikes) were deemed too harsh for Generation Next.

They didn't worry about such things with my generation, growing up as we did under the omnipresent threat of Global Thermonuclear War.

What's next? Are they going to switch around Bambi so that rather than being gunned down in the beginning of the movie, Bambi's mother will live on to lecture Bambi about the evils of intolerance and gun violence, make some Shrek-style fart jokes and finish the movie with a rousing musical number?

And you wonder why we Gen-Xers are so cynical.

Update: George just told me that they've also changed out the end of Return of the Jedi, so now during that scene where all of the planets are celebrating the fall of the Empire, they've added in a shot of that ass clown Jar Jar Binks, dancing and crowing, "We-sah freeee!"

I give up. If they're taking requests, maybe they can just digitally remaster my entire childhood, starting by deleting out all of my parents' fights and that unfortunate two year period in middle school where for some inexplicable reason I wore purple tinted eyeglasses. And then they can add in a Sixteen Candles scene, with a hunky guy giving me a lit up birthday cake and telling me to make a wish.

Posted 16 October 2004 at 09:06 PM