Movies Like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (What to Watch After)
If you enjoyed E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, will enjoy these picks that questions the purpose and weight of our choices while maintaining targets the intellect with complex, multi-layered ideas. Carefully balances character depth with narrative flow makes this a compelling continuation of these themes.
Standard feature-length experiences.
Best for fans of who appreciate concise storytelling.
★ Top Picks
Flight of the Navigator
12-year-old David is accidentally knocked out in the forest near his home, but when he awakens eight years have passed. His family is overjoyed to have him back, but is just as perplexed as he is that he hasn't aged. When a NASA scientist discovers a UFO nearby, David gets the chance to unravel the mystery and recover the life he lost.
Jules
A flying saucer lands in the backyard of an elderly suburbanite with memory problems, who forms a bond with the scared alien inside.
Avatar: The Way of Water
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, learn the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.
Solaris
A troubled psychologist is sent to investigate the crew of an isolated research station orbiting a bizarre planet.
Lilo & Stitch
The wildly funny and touching story of a lonely Hawaiian girl and the fugitive alien who helps to mend her broken family.
Earth to Echo
After a construction project begins digging in their neighbourhood, best friends Tuck, Munch and Alex inexplicably begin to receive strange, encoded messages on their cell phones. Convinced something bigger is going on, they go to their parents and the authorities. The three embark on a secret adventure to crack the code and follow it to its source, and discover a mysterious being from another world who desperately needs their help. The journey that follows will change all their lives forever.
Planet 51
When Earth astronaut Capt. Chuck Baker arrives on Planet 51 -- a world reminiscent of American suburbia circa 1950 -- he tries to avoid capture, recover his spaceship and make it home safely, all with the help of an empathetic little green being.
More Movies Like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Arrival
Taking place after alien crafts land around the world, an expert linguist is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
A surprise visit from Spock's father provides a startling revelation: McCoy is harboring Spock's living essence.
Home
When Earth is taken over by the overly-confident Boov, an alien race in search of a new place to call home, all humans are promptly relocated, while all Boov get busy reorganizing the planet. But when one resourceful girl, Tip, manages to avoid capture, she finds herself the accidental accomplice of a banished Boov named Oh. The two fugitives realize there’s a lot more at stake than intergalactic relations as they embark on the road trip of a lifetime.
The Astronaut
After returning from her first space mission, astronaut Sam Walker is placed under NASA’s care at a high security house for rehabilitation and medical testing. However, when disturbing occurrences begin happening around the property, she fears that something extraterrestrial has followed her back to Earth
Signs
A family living on a farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields which suggests something more frightening to come.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Light years from Earth, 26 years after being abducted, Peter Quill finds himself the prime target of a manhunt after discovering an orb wanted by Ronan the Accuser.
Ad Astra
The near future, a time when both hope and hardships drive humanity to look to the stars and beyond. While a mysterious phenomenon menaces to destroy life on planet Earth, astronaut Roy McBride undertakes a mission across the immensity of space and its many perils to uncover the truth about a lost expedition that decades before boldly faced emptiness and silence in search of the unknown.
Explorers
Middle schooler Ben spends his free time watching sci-fi films, playing video games and reading comic books. Surprisingly, his affinity for all things fantastical yields a real result – when he has a vivid dream about technology, his prodigy best friend Wolfgang manages to create a working spacecraft. Joined by their buddy Darren, the boys take off into outer space and encounter some very odd extraterrestrial life.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Adventurer/surgeon/rock musician Buckaroo Banzai and his band of men, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, take on evil alien invaders from the 8th dimension.
Star Trek: Generations
Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D find themselves at odds with the renegade scientist Soran who is destroying entire star systems. Only one man can help Picard stop Soran's scheme...and he's been dead for seventy-eight years.
The In Between
After surviving a car accident that took the life of her boyfriend, a teenage girl believes he's attempting to reconnect with her from the after world.
The Martian
During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982): Science Fiction and Adventure themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
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