News/Commentary

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg regrets ‘E.T.’ censorship, says ‘no film should be revised’ to fit ‘woke’ agenda

April 26, 2023 | | Print Article

Globally recognized filmmaker Steven Spielberg admitted in an interview this week that, one, he regrets editing out government agents with guns from his classic film “E.T,” and two, he opposes such forms of censorship going forward.

“That was a mistake. I never should have done that. ‘E.T.’ is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily, or being forced to peer through,” he said during the Time 100 Summit on Tuesday.

“‘E.T.’ was a film that I was sensitive to the fact that the federal agents were approaching kids with firearms exposed, and I thought I would change the guns into walkie-talkies. … Years went by, and I changed my own views. I should have never messed with the archives of my own work, and I don’t recommend anyone do that,” he added.

“All our movies are a kind of a signpost of where we were when we made them, what the world was like and what the world was receiving when we got those stories out there. So I really regret having that out there,” he concluded.

Listen:

The moderator of the debate responded to Spielberg’s bombshell admission by bringing up the recent controversy over author Roald Dahl’s books.

As previously reported, so-called “sensitivity readers” have made hundreds of edits to Dahl’s classic children’s books, particularly to “Charlie & The Chocolate Factory,” to make them more politically correct.

Spielberg did not care for this.

“Nobody should ever attempt to take the chocolate out of Willy Wonka! Ever! And they shouldn’t take the chocolate or the vanilla, or any other flavor out of anything that has been written,” he initially quipped before getting serious.

“For me, it is sacrosanct. It’s our history, it’s our cultural heritage. I do not believe in censorship in that way,” he said.

Twitter users agreed with his assessment:

However, Spielberg did receive a little pushback.

One critic blasted him because “he fully supports democrats who censor everything.”

Another accused him of having edited the guns out of “E.T.” to appease his “liberal friends.”

It’s definitely true that Spielberg is a raging Democrat who constantly donates to Democrat candidates for office.

“Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, the most commercially successful director of all time, donated $20,000 to Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ reelection campaign,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last year.

“Spielberg and his wife, actress Kate Capshaw, were among 31 people who gave Evers the maximum $20,000 donation allowed under law, according to information from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Those 31 top donors gave Evers a total of $620,000,” the paper added.

He is, in fact, one of the top donors to the Democrat Party.

But it gets worse.

“George Soros, Steven Spielberg, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) are among the liberal megadonors who have opened up their wallets and donated generously to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin ahead of a high-stakes state Supreme Court race that will decide the political tilt of the bench,” the Washington Examiner reported last month.

“The April 4 contest pits Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge, against conservative former Justice Daniel Kelly, with control of the battleground state’s highest court up for grabs. The election has already shattered spending records for a state race and drawn millions of dollars in donations from across the country, with Protasiewicz getting help from multiple out-of-state billionaires.”

Thanks in part to Spielberg’s donation, Protasiewicz won, allowing the Wisconsin Supreme Court to become a liberal court for the first time in 15 years …

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Vivek Saxena
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