Lots of Holocaust movies get critiized just fine. Life is Beautiful, The Pianist. You continue to refer to E.T. as a sellout with no evidence. There was no known market of children's films to pander to then. A sell out at the time would have been making a Friday the 13th sequel. SL pops as as often as any other film on Best of the 90s lists. JP was a perfectly good popcorn movie.
Critics love the Pianist, I don't remember Life is Beautiful.
Bad News Bears had 2 sequels before ET was even started, there was an established market for PG movies about kids. Not as big as ET but there was no reason for them to think it wouldn't make money. Kids movies were doing OK, sci-fi was on a big upswing, and Spielberg was hot. And I gave evidence: it opened in more theaters than Raiders! That's all the evidence you need, no way a a movie expected to make so-so box office opens in more theaters than Raiders, just not going to happen.
Good for SL, it's still not that good a movie. It's good, I'll grant you that, but it's not a great movie.
I thought Spielberg was an ARTIST, one of the GREATEST in America. Now you're defending JP as perfectly good popcorn movie?! Hardly the credentials of the man who comes closest to making true art of any current American director. As a popcorn movie, as long as you left all of your logical skills at the door, yes JP was good. But given the quality of the book it was based on it should have been a good movie all around, there was plenty of room for things like plot in among the special effects, but plot doesn't make a lot of money.