Reviewing Fanhome’s ‘E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial’ Build-Up Subscription Stages 96-99

The antepenultimate shipment (I think) has arrived for my E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Build-Up Subscription from Fanhome.* Things are getting… interesting. There have been stages of this build that have truly tested my gorilla hand dexterity with itty bitty little parts, and I have always been nervous about electricity and wiring. All of that comes into play as I prepare to get Zrek’s skin all lined up and permanently glued together for the final presentation. 

These stages require a lot of open time, clamping, and setting time with adhesives. There are also a few steps that will require disassembly and reassembly, disconnecting and reconnecting wiring harnesses, and testing between stages to make sure nothing is wrong before sealing this sucker up for good.

Build Stage 96

This stage’s magazine features pieces on a 2019 commercial featuring an adult Henry Thomas and a hybrid ET created from a physical model that was enhanced by CGI, Italy’s 2022 ET Experience, and… surgical robots? 

ET’s right foot is in this package, but isn’t required quite yet. It’ll be attached to the lower body and left foot in the next stage. This stage is all about controlled demolition. In order to attach the lower body and feet once they’re assembled, the entire upper body has to be removed, which means five of the wiring harnesses also have to be removed, to be threaded through the feet and hips and reattached later.

I could not get my fingers to the circuit board in the front of ET’s body, so I removed his abdomen plate for access. I labeled the wires with painter’s tape so I’d know where they went when they were reattached, and then I removed the upper body. 

Build Stage 97

Magazine #97 has an article on why Steven Spielberg never intended for there to be a sequel to ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, a piece on historical context for the film, and one on superconductors. The piece about the nonexistent sequel makes a lot of fair points about how the public may have thought they wanted a sequel, but that the sequel would have watered down the impact of the original film. 

A lot of fans speculated that Spielberg was setting up a second film with the “I’ll be right here,” line toward the end of the film. If you rewatch that scene, however, you’ll see that Zrek touches Eliott’s head when he utters the line. As in, ‘We’ll always have the memories.”

This build stage is one that I’ve been a little anxious about. Fanhome’s instructions indicate using a ‘quick-drying glue” that is “recommended for soft materials.” I went into research mode. There’s a builder online that I reference when I get stuck, who, due to his residing in the UK, gets his build stages from the European distributor. That usually means he has them a couple weeks before I do, and has had time to make assembly videos by the time I get stuck and need guidance. (Check out World of Wayne here. He’s rad.) The glue Wayne uses is also apparently a European thing, because I couldn’t find it anywhere. 

The internets were not super helpful, either. There are adhesives out there that fulfil maybe two of the three requirements (quick-drying, flexible, and made for smooth silicone/latex application). I ended up with a tube of E6000, which is flexible and works on smooth surfaces, but has a lengthy cure time, and a pack of those little tubes of cyanoacrylate, which is quick drying, but not very flexible. 

I used the cyanoacrylate to tack the pieces while I glued the majority of the seams with the E6000. This is probably too many steps, but I really wanted to make sure everything stayed lined up while the E6000 was curing overnight, and I didn’t trust the clamps I had purchased for this stage. 

At this point in the build, my little bar definitely looked like a crime scene.

Build Stage 98

In this magazine, we learn that, while Spielberg was adamantly opposed to a film sequel, he was open to the idea of companion novels expanding the world of ET. William Kotwinkle did such a good job with the film novelization that Spielberg allowed him to continue the story with The Green Planet, which is the basis for the beloved Universal Studios ride.

This build stage is where Zrek’s foot and lower body skin is fitted over the leg armature, feeding the wires back through the legs to reconnect to the circuit board, and the body is reattached to the pelvis. The included part for this stage is the belly skin, which won’t get used until the next stage. 

Build Stage 99

The emotional impact of ET, renewed relevance, and popular literature are subjects in this stage’s magazine. On the subject of renewed relevance, ET is one of very few 80s films that haven’t aged out of relevance. Most of the films of that era are still important to the generation that grew up with them, but just don’t connect to younger generations, due to outdated references, slang, and styles, use of racist, homophobic, and xenophobic slurs, weird predictions about technology… ET somehow dodged all of those pitfalls to continue connecting with new audiences.

Chatting with my buddy Anton just now, we came up with a couple others that fall into this subset of nostalgic films, despite the fact that Zrek is his least favorite movie monster of all time. We have The Princess Bride and Willow. Back to the Future was in the conversation, but it does have that really rape-y scene, a bunch of drinking, and the weird predictions about tech.

Anyway, in this stage, I attached the lower belly skin to the rib skin. I used the same combination of cyanoacrylate and E6000 to achieve instant tacking to hold the parts while allowing the slower curing, more flexible adhesive to do its thing.

*Fanhome provides this subscription to me free of charge for the purposes of review.