

First of all, the sound and picture were digitally remastered. To make the film more interesting, Spielberg changed several details. On its 20th anniversary, Spielberg re-released the movie in theaters in a new edition.

He was able to draw life from Elliot and then his own people to slow his degeneration, but he really needed some of his own food to put an end to the "rabbit starvation" from which he was suffering. Apart from the junk food Elliot was bringing him not being all that nutritious anyway, he'd be suffering from his species' version of scurvy due to being unable to get the right chemicals from any of our food to give his cells all the building blocks they need to make more of those other two nucleotides (whatever they might be). An alternate possibility: those six nucleotides in his DNA the researchers discovered (two more beyond the four that are standard to the DNA of every living thing on Earth) mean he wasn't able to get enough nourishment from our food. When they finally got his signal and responded, he was barely clinging to the last fibers of the last thread. He'd been away from them for some time, and their apparently not receiving his "phone home" only made him reach the despair event horizon that much faster. The farther away from each other they are, the sicker they get, because their bonds are weakening.
