E.T. Influenced by War of the Worlds 1953

 Obviously Speilberg liked the film, he did a remake. But the two scenes with the brown aliens… suspiciously short, with long fingers… bulbous on the tips (ok, suction cups)… were so reminiscent of ET. One scene when the man n woman were stuck in the house, she sees a backing up alien w arms raised high.  Looks like ET, big wide “head”, little skinny arms. Seemingly tiny legs. Another time, they throw an axe at an alien… he basically runs away arms flailing…The alien looks excited and worried, sound familiar? That ET scene were he gets scared and runs super fast arms flailing. 

ET’s head is shaped like the metal periscope head… almost like a triangle back to front. 

But where WotW had badguy scary aliens, they made ET goofy and non threatening. Still, the similarities are all over. ET even gets sick after a while… is it the germs of Earth again, like in 1953? I wonder. 

So which of these two look more similar? 

Above is the WotW alien backing up with hands held high. In the closer encounter, hit by the axe, it runs away arms flailing... need to get a better screen of it or a video b/c unclear so far. 

Still unconvinced? How about... add the periscope head with the long neck on top of the Martian body. You get something uncanny...