ET shock: The original ending was VERY different and showed Elliot still in touch with ET

Grown men and women still well up with tears at the memory of the blockbuster's emotional ending.

The dark forest, the spaceship, Drew Barrymore in floods of tears, the long finger and the immortal line: "I'll be right here."

It's a classic moment of Spielberg movie magic that perfectly tops off one of the greatest films of all time.

It could have all been very different, though, if the legendary director had stuck with his first plans for the finale...

Robert MacNaughton played Elliot's older brother, Michael, and has been revealing some remarkable moments about the film shoot.

He told Yahoo! Movies that the original ending was far more low-key. Even though it lacked the overt emotional punch of the final version, it still provided a sense of catharsis and also symbolised how Elliot had grown up thorughout the movie.

Even more excitingly, it also demonstrated that Elliot was still in contact with his alien buddy.

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MacNaughton said: "The last scene in the movie wasn’t supposed to be the scene that ends up in the movie.

"The last scene was going to be all of us playing Dungeons and Dragons again, except this time, Elliott’s the dungeon master. Because he was the one that found ET, he sort of got in with the group. And so that was supposed to be the final scene, it was in the script and everything, and then they would pan up to the roof and you’d see the communicator and it’s still working — in other words, Elliott is still in touch with E.T.

"But after they did the score, the music, and they saw what they had with the spaceship taking off and everything... How can you follow that? I mean, it was a wise choice."

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At the start of the movie, Elliot was shown trying to join in with Michael and his friends when they were playing a version of Dungeons and Dragons.

They kept pushing him away and eventually send him out for Pizza. This, of course, leads to his first ever encounter with a certain friendly botanist from another planet. 

Dungeons and Dragons was always being played at the house of E.T. screenwriter Melissa Mathison and her husband at the time, Harrison Ford.

MacNaughton revealed that his own childhood love of the game may have helped him get the part.

"And I said, 'I play Dungeons and Dragons.' And he goes, 'That’s in the movie too.' [Laughs] So it was just I said all the right things, I guess."

MacNaughgton retired from acting when he was 30 and now works for the US postal service.

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