If you've recently re-watched, as I have, Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" (1975), "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977), " "E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982), or any of his kid-friendly fantasy/adventure/science-fiction pictures -- or the later, harsher "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (2001) and "War of the Worlds" (2005) -- you'll quickly recognize that J.J. Abrams' Spielberg-homage "Super 8" (co-produced by Spielberg himself) is a mere shadow of the work that inspired it. The aforementioned Spielberg movies still dazzle, shock and inspire awe -- not only in their justly famous set pieces, but in the richness and sophistication of their shot-by-shot inventiveness. They're spellbinding because they always show you more than you realize you've seen.
Spielberg is a prodigiously adroit filmmaker; Abrams is a guy who has a lot of genuine affection for Spielberg's movies. And, for me, that at least makes "Super 8" far more watchable than, say, Richard Donner's desultory 1985 Spielberg clone "The Goonies," though it's nothing as lively or inventive as Joe Dante's 1984 "Gremlins," either (and, yes, Spielberg is listed as a producer on all three of these pictues).
Spielberg's popular entertainments do tend to feature suburban kids, fractured families, monsters, and such -- but that's not what the movies are about. Beneath the surface (and what gorgeous surfaces they are), these are sophisticated cinematic works. (I long ago made the case that "E.T." and "Close Encounters" are daring abstract experimental films that just happened to be thrilling and moving narrative movies, too.)
The setting for "Super 8" is suburbia (Lillian, Ohio) in 1979 or thereabouts. The first shot is memorably Spielbergian: The camera cranes through the interior of a factory where a worker on a ladder is changing the numbers on a big "Days Since Last Accident" sign from 784 to 1. Cut to a house where people are gathering after the funeral. A kid sits alone on the swing set outside in the snow, holding a silver necklace. The dead factory worker was his mom. (Spoilers follow.)
The best thing Abrams' movie has going for it are the kids -- especially Joe (Joel Courtney), the son of the worker who's just been killed and the town's deputy, Jack (Kyle Chandler), and Alice (Elle Fanning), the son of Louis (Ron Eldard), the drunkard from the other side of the tracks whom Jack blames for his wife's death. The chemistry between these two -- she, the lead actress in a Super 8 zombie movie being made by Joe and his friends; he, the make-up and miniature special effects artist -- is charming.
But that also points out one of the movie's problems: Alice, Jack and Louis know the circumstances behind Joe's mom's death, but Joe doesn't, and we in the audience don't either. Once we and Joe do find out, in a tearful confession from Alice, it's so minor -- Louis's involvement is tangential and unintentional and not at all related to the accident -- that Joe quite rightly shrugs it off, as bewildered at his father's overreaction as we are. And once it's acknowledged out loud between Louis and Jack, as they are setting out together to find their missing kids, the "misunderstanding" or the emotion or whatever it was just evaporates. It's a cheat and an anticlimax to withhold this information (which must be known to everyone in town except Joe) from the audience for so long, to artificially build up its importance, when it's used only as a Romeo & Juliet gimmick to make it harder for Joe and Alice to see each other. (You'd think the fact that she's eventually kidnapped, drugged and hung from the ceiling in a fugitive's creepy underground hideout would be enough of an obstacle keeping them apart.)
Other structural weaknesses prevent the movie from achieving Spielbergian satisfactions. Things don't pay off -- in terms of character, story or visuals. When the kids are shooting their Super 8mm movie at an old train stop one night, there's a nightmarishly exciting crash ("Production value!" the kid director yells). Joe picks up a strange object from the wreckage that reminds him of a white Rubick's cube. Later, we learn that it's one of the building blocks of an alien spaceship, and that the U.S. Air Force, which has swarmed to the scene of the disaster, is very serious about collecting them. (Oddly, nobody from town bothers to come out and gawk at the scene of the catastrophe but the kids, even though it's all over the TV news.) So, does the alien want or need this object that Joe has? Are the soldiers looking to confiscate it? We don't really know. It just flies away and gets stuck to the side of a water tower one night and that's the last we see of it. It's not even a MacGuffin, just a dead-end distraction. (It is possible that the block is needed by the alien -- but it's not worked into the film.)
One of the Mysterious Happenings after the train wreck (and we won't even get into how a man can drive his pickup head-on into a locomotive, cause such a horrendous wreck, and be found alive, sitting behind the wheel of the still-intact truck we have just seen explode) is that mechanical and electrical devices (car engines, microwave ovens) suddenly go missing. Along with some people. And it's a nice, creepy touch that the town's dogs sense enough trouble that they evacuate the county on their own.
So, the alien spends a lot of time at night roaming around town throwing electrical appliances into the air and killing or injuring or kidnapping townsfolk. (We don't find out about the fates of more than a few, even though we see many either crushed or snatched away.) In the last few minutes, the alien uses some kind of magnetic force to assemble a whole lot of this stuff around and on top of the town water tower (kind of a stand-in for Devil's Tower in "CE3K"). Joe, an avid model-builder, says: "He's building a model." But he's not. Within a few minutes it all changes into a sleek spacecraft and blasts off. Nothing wrong with that (this is a science-fiction fantasy, after all), but we don't get much satisfaction from the way it is revealed. There's no payoff -- even with the requisite low-angle shot of the fractured-and-reunited family members staring at an off-screen light. What's missing is the sense of awe such shots are meant to express and inspire.
There is a touching moment (that feels inevitable) when the magnetic forces pulling all metal objects toward the water-tower junkpile tugs on the locket belonging to Joe's mom. He holds on, then lets go -- as if this were the last thing the ship needed before it could take off. OK... but was Joe really having difficulty letting go of his mom after her death? Wasn't he playing with his friends, making movies with them, enjoying flirting with Alice, etc. It's the adults who were having the problems, not the kids. If the climax doesn't have the emotional lift you feel it needs, it's because the emphasis is misplaced, the metaphor isn't quite right.
Another disappointing pattern in "Super 8" is that it gets the audience to ask questions it doesn't bother to resolve. Not just things like, what the alien was doing underground with all those household appliances, but, more significantly, why he (I'm calling the alien a "he" because Joe did) kidnapped people and hung them upside down and unconscious in his cavernous lair. If a movie makes a point out of the disappearance of a lady whose hair is in rollers and later she is discovered (for a comedic payoff), only to be violently dispatched, we really ought to be let in on her fate.
Spielberg is operatic -- he's not afraid to stretch out time and heighten emotion when the moment calls for it. Abrams is only directing the libretto. "Super 8" is an affectionate tribute, but it doesn't sing.
* * * * *
A few atmospheric touches I appreciated in "Super 8":
-- The alien's breath blowing Joe's hair, the threat so close you can almost smell it.
-- The casting of the pyromaniac kid, who looks like a blond Jackie Earle Hailey with braces.
-- The fat kid's line, supposedly quoting his doctor: "I haven't leaned out yet."
-- The reveal of the alien in the Super 8 footage, glimpsed on the side of a kid's t-shirt. (Can somebody remind me of how this is set up? I liked the idea but, as I remember it, it didn't feel quite right. Where is the projector, where is the screen, where is the camera, and which direction are the kids facing when the image of the monster appears?)
-- The blue pseudo-anamorphic lens flares even when there's no source for them. (Kidding!)
How'd the movie work for you?
* * * * *
Matt Zoller Seitz is collecting "Spielberg shout-outs" from "Super 8" at Salon.com.
54 Comments
Jim, in Woodward's archival alien footage, you see that when the alien fails to reconstruct his spaceship, it shatters ... into those white Rubik's cubes. Obviously some kind of indistinguishable-from-magic advanced technology, but taken together, the white cubes and whatever metal they magnetically attract transmogrify into a spaceship, like each cube contains the spaceship's DNA or something.
Yes, that's what I assumed was happening, but it wasn't visualized in the film. I can imagine an exciting sequence where we see the cube transform all the metallic junk the alien has created into a spaceship (it was a cool effect the way the one in the old footage disintegrated into the cubes)... but it's not in "Super 8." Spielberg would not have missed that opportunity.
Hey Jim
Just a quick FYI - the little cube flying into the water tower wasn't really a dead end. When the spaceship assembles all the cubes fly together to make up the ship. The setup for this is addressed in the little reel the kids watch at the school when going through the doctor's research.
Now if you're saying that little mystery's resolution isn't clearly communicated, I can take that.
We saw the spaceship break down into those cubes in the b&w archival footage, but if all the cubes come together (attracted by the one Joe had?) then that should have been a thrilling sequence, seeing them break out of those boxes the Air Force had put them in, etc. But, then, if all the blocks came together to reconstitute the spaceship, then what was the point of gathering all the junk metal? That's what I mean: Spielberg himself would have found a way to vividly visualize this, so that even if it didn't make literal sense, we'd understand it on a metaphorical/emotional level.
I found the film extremely flawed and disappointing as well, but just a point of clarification: The alien turned the water tower into a massive electromagnet in order to eventually pull all of its cubes together so it could form the ship. All of the junk metal was just a by-product of this procedure and seemed to implode or explode as the ship was taking off. This wasn't very clear in the movie, could've been explained much better and used as a major plot device. Instead it just seemed to happen. Knowing this, that the cubes formed the ship not the metal from the town, also sucks some of the emotional catharsis out of Joel releasing his mother's locket into the air... It didn't go to space with the ship, it just stuck to the magnet and exploded a few seconds later. The film never has any adequate pay-offs to its emotional scenes.
I believe the film does make it clear that the alien is building a giant electro magnet to attract his scattered cubes to the water tower. We don't fully understand why the cube blasts through Joe's wall when it does but later when everything, including the cars and Joe's locket joins the swirling mass, it makes sense. Looking back on what happened it's then clear that the alien's actions in the film were motivated by two things: hunger and construction of the magnet. This also explains the power outages.
I thought that the metal attracted to the water tower, excepting the cubes that form the ship, didn't explode, but rather imploded, like becoming extremely dense, and (perhaps?) forming a fuel source to power the flight home.
There was a moment when we saw trucks bursting open and lots of small objects flying out of them- I believe these were intended to be the cubes bursting free, just as you were expecting. (If the film showed what was written on the side of the trucks, I didn't notice it in the mayhem.) That point aside, you put your finger on some things that were bothering me about the film. I very much enjoyed it, but it didn't feel watertight the way some films do. Perhaps a director's cut will clarify it one day- it feels like just a couple missing shots would explain these unintentional mysteries.
The locket release didn't bother me- it wasn't just the kid's locket, the father had gone through some effort to get it from his wife's body. Joe was a functioning kid but the locket was a crutch for him, especially when he was talking to his father. Not only did Joe let it go but his father clearly let him do so. (Then, Joe's hand is free to reach for Alice's hand.) Maybe not a pivotal moment for Joe, more a summing up of his development over the entire film.
(OTOH, the lethal injection scene made no sense to me.)
Worth pointing out that many of the nitpicky complaints made about Super 9 could just as easily be applied to Close Encounters, a film whose aliens' actions were even less explicable. I suspect the nitpicks aren't the reason those people didn't like the film; rather, they're a symptom of the fact that it wasn't good enough for those people to willingly overlook the flaws. Either is a failure of Super 8, but let's not pretend Spielberg's 80's films don't have similar issues.
Jim--
Big fan! First time posting on Scanners, woo-hoo!
Really good analysis. I also think the film does have several loose ends that it ties up in a perfunctory fashion. In particular, the use of the car engines would be silly if lingered upon any further. This goes double for the final conversation between Alice's dad and Jack Lamb in the Jeep, which comes too quickly (although Abrams doesn't hit the point home--Chandler's line-reading in this scene underplays material that could have derailed the entire emotional thrust of what's gone before). I also agree that Joe's arc of "letting go" is a relatively obvious rip-off of Elliott's in E.T., and that his final message to the monster--"bad things happen"--comes out of left-field.
Yet for some reason, these narrative flaws never detracted from my experience. I that the film isn't really Spielberg-lite at all, but an exact replica of Spielberg's earlier works. If Super 8 suffers at a basic plot level compared to E.T. or Close Encounters, it nonetheless compensates with a story that explores Abrams' intentionally slavish retread of his cinematic influences. I find the film to be a more powerful and interesting metaphor for Abrams' artistic vision, because in a summer of sequels and reboots, it dares us to define it. Is this a lazy interpretation of Spielberg's work, designed solely as nostalgia porn? Or is an act of cinematic humility, with Abrams finally owning up to the criticism that he has no "voice" by creating an entertainment that simply apes the great ones from thirty years ago? I think it's the latter.
Thoughts?
I think that's a reading worth well worth considering. I first became aware of Abrams in the early 1990s, around the time of "Dying Young" and "Regarding Henry" (both 1991), and I've never detected a particular "vision" in the things he's been associated with. Perhaps he's the Richard Fleischer or Franklin J. Schaffner of today?
Abrams may be as Jim and you suggest a workmanlike director with more competency than personality, but I don't believe this is any work of humility; I think Abrams wants to pay homage by saying "look, I can make this kind of movie too." I agree with Jim's assessment of its flaws, although I think he leaves several others unexplored (such as what is the point of the creature's telepathy since it's never used to any effect, etc.), but to suggest it's some meta-commentary on Abrams' own blandness is bending over backward to the point of hernia to justify its merits, which exist but are unfortunately outweighed by its many, many more problems.
Matt, I'm being genuine when I say your theory is far more interesting and touching to me than the movie itself. I only wish I believed it. Unfortunately, I found the only effective metaphor in this film to be the train wreck, which seemed to me to represent the second half of the movie. The abandoned camera might also similize the absence of a director at the helm once the alien story began to kick in and the human drama (which had really started out interesting and colorful) sunk into utter contrivance. The locket scene was especially artificial. Not only did the alien adventure have no clear relationship to the boy's working through his own grief, but it also seems implausible that at just that moment he would realize consciously that he had undergone this particular development. And what compelled him to make such a dramatic symbolic gesture of it? Surely if it was between holding on to the locket and letting it go, he'd want to hold onto it.
I agree completely with your take on the film. Not bad, but not exactly good, either, though certainly much better than Goonies! (Walking out of the theater yesterday, I heard another moviegoer comment to her friend that Super 8 was "so Goonies." I'm sure she meant it as a compliment but it didn't sound like one to me.)
Spielberg's magic, when it works, always feels effortless. Here, I felt like Abrams' attempts to mimic that magic were calculated, and as a result they didn't generate magic, for me. The film is about a bunch of kids who break the rules in their spirited pursuit of making a film. Disappointing, then, that Super 8 itself feels so conventional. Thankfully, though, Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning and the rest of the cast generate some magic of their own. I also felt that the attempt at creating a sense of connection between Joe and the creature at the end fell comically flat. Unlike in, say, Peter Jackson's King Kong, where the once-terrifying monster forms a meaningful relationship with a character and eventually becomes a sympathetic character himself, pitted against the evil of mankind's hubris, here the shift was much too sudden.
I was trying to figure out why the keychain moment didn't hit harder. I think you nailed it.
Incidentally (and you may know this), there is a mention at one point that the cubes are the building material of the creature's ship, and when it falls apart in the footage the kids find at the high school, it falls apart into those cubes, and it seems he does need them back to rebuild it. But it's very unclear what the purpose of all the appliances and other metal is, then. If he can't get back all of the cubes, it seems he can substitute other material, I guess, but he still needs some of the cubes...gah, I'm thinking about this too much. It doesn't matter.
I couldn't stand that annoying kid with the braces; I wanted the magnetic force to pull him up by his teeth. Also did you know that the actor who played the old professor guy is the same guy who played the professor in Gremlins. I only enjoyed the first half of this film; the train crash scene is worth seeing. But I thought it went downhill pretty much after that, and the whole subplot with the girl and her father was just too much. Even ET never got that melodramatic. Also since when was Jaws ever "kid friendly"? Good review.
I was absolutely annoyed by that kid, too -- but I think I was meant to be. Good point about "Jaws," which scared the bejeezus out of me at age 16 (when it was originally released). I think I was trying to lump too many pictures together in that sentence.
My favorite part is that a giant two-story tall alien digs a hole into a teeny-tiny storage garage, and then doesn't even bother breaking the door open to get out of the garage.
Wow, now you're inviting the wrath of Goonies fans as well? (I think it may be a "guess you had to be 11 when it came out" movie)
Another annoying loose end in Super 8, to me, was that the actual Super 8 footage...you know, the source of the film's title...really didn't amount to anything. I thought the soldiers would try to find where those film boxes at the crash came from (you'd think they'd be upset about someone filming their top secret train)? Nope. You'd think the footage would would hold some key to the mystery, after all the trouble the kids went through, waiting three days for it to be developed! Nope. Seemed like a missed opportunity.
As for details, it was kind of corny but I chuckled at the end when Abrams did his whole montage tribute to the Spielberg face (http://www.ugo.com/movies/the-spielberg-face-a-legacy), and the stoned guy was asleep in the car when it was his turn.
This is definitely a flawed film that doesn't quite reach its full potential but I loved it eight ways from Sunday and I think it has everything to do with the "replica" approach previously mentioned. But not so much of the style but of my own childhood. The neighborhoods, the streets, the huge fields just on the outskirts of town killed me for completely personal and indefensible reasons. I grew up in a place that looks exactly like the town depicted in this film, PA's not to far from OH so I suppose that makes sense. If I had seen this film when I was 12 it would probably be my favorite film of all time...when I was 12. As it stands now I can't see it clearly, or rather the flaws don't bother me as much because it's giving me something that I love and would not use in defense of the film. What you get a sense of in Spielberg is a truth to the emotion of the fractured family that just doesn't come across here all too well for the reasons you pointed out. The moves are right but the melody is off. And while I think that saying how they should have done things is kind of pointless because you have to deal with what's in the frame let me tell you what they should have done in an attempt to bore you to death. When I hear the term Super 8 I think about the film, I think about films kids make in their backyard, but, for nostalgic reasons I suppose and when specifically used as a title for a film, think about superheros. The failure here may very well be with the monster, with not giving it a personality. When you're a kid you almost instinctively know who E.T. is. Learning later that it stands for Extra-terrestrial seems like unnecessary information. It's E.T. and it's adorable. So maybe it is this Spielberg connection that's making me think this but Super 8 should have referred to the monster's personality and the monster should have been a man. An alien, sure but what would be more mysterious and wonderful, especially if you're a kid, and Spoiler I guess but why are you reading a comment on a review of a movie without knowing...anyway, what's more exciting, a space crab crawling away from this insane fiery wreck or a man unaffected by the flames and debris who flies off into the night sky? You probably already see the correlative, a very human mother and this immortal being from space. Still plenty of opportunities for crazy action with a more human alien and maybe even the chance for some dialogue. You can have the army fighting this thing, trying to keep it under wraps, trying to protect the innocents from the inevitable but failing. His methods would be incomprehensible, too much for the boy to understand, the mysteries of the beyond, etc. But again I cannot see this movie in any way other than through the lens of nostalgia. That and they mention April 8th, the date of my birth, a couple times in the scene with the old alien footage. That kind of freaked me out and would have caused 12 year old me to think "Did they really make this for me?"
I haven't seen Super 8, but all I can say at the end of the day is I wish Spielberg made movies like Spielberg used to make movies. I watched all the Indiana Jones films a few months ago, and the "heedless joy" that Ebert refers to in his Greatest Movies essay on the first one can still be felt, though in somewhat diminished degree, in the next two films. The fourth feels more like a funeral dirge.
Honestly, I haven't really liked very much that Spielberg has done since Schindler's List, with the exception of Saving Private Ryan. Not that Spielberg owes us any more great films, the first fifteen years of his career was more successful and at times brilliant than the entire careers of most other of the the "great" directors. Once you've made Jaws, Close Encounters, ET, Raiders and Schindler's List, you don't have to explain yourself to anybody. Still, I miss that brave guy that made a killer shark movie where you can almost count the number of frames on a couple of hands where the shark actually appears.
With all due respect, my friend, have you not seen Munich, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, 85% of War of the Worlds, etc...?
I'd argue that Spielberg has made some of his GREATEST works in the '00s.
I still haven't forgiven Abrams for Star Trek, so Super 8 isn't anything I want to see. Even with my dislike of the filmmaker aside, the film just doesn't to be all that interesting.
Mr. Emerson, here is a copy of my "Super 8" review, posted on both IMDb and Amazon.com
A Collision Between "The Goonies" and "The War of the Worlds", with "E.T." as an afterthought
8 out of 10 stars
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Under producer Spielberg's assumed tutelage and inspiration, director J.J. Abrams has constructed a more-than-serviceable homage to the master in "Super 8". Okay, here's the umpteenth reiteration of the plot - a group of charismatic junior high adolescents shooting a zombie film for a contest stumble upon a train wreck, a government space conspiracy and deception, and a monstrous alien that escapes the wreck. Therefore, as I said in the title, you have an amalgamation of "The Goonies", "War of the Worlds", and "E.T.", but not in equal proportions.
Abrams handles the "Goonies" component skillfully and appealingly. The preteens are spirited, energetic, clever, occasionally profane, but always endearing and sympathetic. I especially appreciated their accurate, amusing speeches, especially the exchanges between the sweet, Elliott-like Joe (home movie special effects artist) and his bossy, portly friend Charles (the home movie director). The budding relationship between Joe and the older, more mature, but demure Alice was also convincing and engrossing, especially since both have the loss of a mother in common. All the kids' reactions to and investigations of the train wreck/alien mystery were finely tuned and interesting. Abrams does not neglect kid/adult interactions either. Joe and Alice each have to deal with distant, emotionally reserved fathers and somehow manage to connect with them.
The "War of the Worlds" component was handled nearly as well, although some logic lapses do occur. The train derailment is suitably spectacular, but as another poster pointed out, it's highly unlikely that a pick-up truck, even ramming into the train head-on at full-speed, could cause such damage. It's like trying to trip a giant with a toothpick. The train would have stayed on course, but the pick-up and its passenger would have been throughly mangled. Therefore, the pick-up's driver, Mr. Woodburn, would not have survived to give the kids the dire but cryptic warning about the train and its contents. Nonetheless, the infiltration, evacuation, and surreptitious behavior of the nefarious, devious U.S. Army into the Ohio town where the train collision occurred are workmanlike, efficient, and well-handled. Many of the military adults, and some of the townspeople, may be corrupt and selfish, but they are not boobs. And Joe's dad, the deputy sheriff, is neither corrupt nor foolish, as he tries to penetrate the military's cone of silence regarding the crash.
Unfortunately, the "E.T." aspect of the film, despite being its focal point, is the least developed. Abrams keeps the elusive alien beast largely concealed for most of the movie as it smashes its way out of the box car, randomly attacks the townspeople, and burrows underneath a cemetery for refuge. This suspense-building works. However, it leaves the audience (and the kids in the movie) little time to bond with or even communicate with the alien. (MAJOR SPOILER WARNING ABOUT THE BEAST'S ORIGIN AND APPEARANCE). The alien and his crashed spaceship (now broken down into magnetic cubed components) was being transported from a Roswell-type military base. The roughly 12-foot high (I guess) alien looks like a hybrid of Alien, the "Cloverfield" monster, the Transformer Optimus Prime (especially about the face), and the Ymir from "20 Million Miles to Earth". And, oh yes, a spider. It's described as frightened and distrustful because of the mistreatment it received from the U.S. Army, and actually benevolent. But throughout the movie, he acts malevolently, smashing cars and buses, apparently killing at least two people, and hanging people (including the kidnapped Alice) upside down in his subterranean cave apparently for food! Joe's short, calm confrontation with the alien in his cave seems to change its mood. At the movie's end, he assembles a new spaceship out of magnetized metal (including the locket containing a picture of Joe's mother and him as a baby), and takes off. See, very inconsistent and abrupt. Was the alien inherently sinister, or benign? Why didn't the alien construct a new spaceship immediately, as soon as he escaped? Why bother terrorizing the townspeople? "E.T." gets shortchanged here.
Nevertheless, I do recommend the film as a funny, suspenseful, kinetic good time. If you are a Spielberg fan, you'll probably enjoy it even more, and be more inclined to overlook its flaws.
Regardless of what you think of the pyromaniac kid with the braces, he does deliver the funniest line in the movie, in my opinion. In the scene where the kids are eating in a diner or restaurant, Charles complains that the others are eating his french fries. The pyromaniac kid (forget his name) says to the waitress, "Please get another plate of fries for my friend, because he's fat!"
As usual, Jim, you helped articulate my thoughts about why the film was enjoyable, but only a Xeroxed homage to Spielberg's better movies. Curious: What did you think of the moment where Elle Fanning "acts" the scene in the kids' Super 8 production? There was really something there, and I thought the film would have been so much better if Abrams could have explored more of the emotions of the kids. Along those lines, the other scene in the film that rang very true to me was when the fat kid auteur ("I'm going to lean out soon") got mad at the other kid over the girl and looked like he was about to cry. If the film had found a way to tap into more of those feelings, it would have been, ironically enough, much more Spielbergian.
I liked Super 8 a lot, but it's definitely flawed. As you point out, Abrams sets up a lot of really good stuff, but at the end of the film things jar, fade out anticlimactically, or take odd turns that don't really fit. But for all that, I found it really fun and engaging to watch. The kids do really good work and Abrams and the script make them cute and likable without being too saccharine or unrealistic. The action is big and impressive, thrilling without being off-puttingly chaotic. The setting of a middle class town with fairly realistic middle class families is something you don't often see in action/adventure movies anymore. It was just extremely watchable, and I wish it had all come together in a more satisfying way.
I find myself nodding in agreement at everything you say, yet I still found myself walking away from the movie totally satisfied. Call it lowered summer expectations dulled further by a litany of same-old sequels and hopeful new superhero franchises, but Super 8 was exactly what the doctor ordered.
One thing that might have helped me find satisfaction is I didn't need it to actually BE a Spielberg movie. Which is good, because as you point out, it's not. Spielberg would've fused the two stories together elegantly and seamlessly so that each one supported and reinforced the other. Abrams doesn't even try and Super 8 is a lesser movie because of it. On the other hand, I really responded to the central story of Alice and Joe and I liked that late 70s midwestern world Abrams recreated. The monster story added suspense and thrills to the humor and drama of the human part, even if neither story made the other better.
I'm at peace with a movie that shows affection for Spielberg even if it is ultimately Spielberg Lite.
The other thing, I think Giacchino's score really helps the move distinguish itself. If Abrams had used Williams, well then it would've been blatant robbery with lesser results.
To me this is ultimately a nice but forgettable bit of summer fluff that makes me want to rewatch 70's - mid-80s Spielberg... and I'm ok with that. I wouldn't want every movie to be this way, but as far as "mainstream" movies this summer go, it's the only one besides Bridesmaids that has made me actually feel something besides boredom.
Also, I have to say I love how the marketing for this was handled. It made it really easy to go into it with a basic sense of mystery and the excitement of the unknown intact. That's the experience I try to have with every movie, but it's generally getting harder and harder to avoid if you write about current cinema at all.
You remind me of why I haven't sought out a Spielberg film since Jurassic Park--and I used to. (Not that I haven't seen any Spielberg films since then--just not because they are SPIELBERG films)
Something happened to Spielberg--as Mr. Ebert noted in his review of Jurassic Park (and I'm paraphrasing) "the young Spielberg understood why you needed to keep the shark off screen for the first hour."
What has happened to Spielberg seems to happen to a lot of directors I admire--as they become more successful they can command more budget and more effects and more glitz and forget that the process is also about telling a great story in a great way.
Remember that feeling when you didn't know WHAT Richard Dreyfuss was building in his living room? By Jurassic Park, Spielberg didn't seem to understand how to create that type of wonder anymore.
And now that he is arguably the most commanding director around, his power has become the story.
I hold out hope that the failure of "The Last Airbender" will sink in with another of my favorite directors, and that Night won't be a lost cause.
Spot on review. I liked Super 8 but I didn't love it. I couldn't figure out why I didn't love it. So, like you, I went home and watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.
Encounters is not one of my favorite early Speilberg films, I lean more towards Jaws and Raiders (a perfect movie). I even have a pretty powerful love for Empire of the Sun. Having said that, Speilbergo's storytelling talent and awesome visuals can not be denied in Third Kind.
I was only two years old when E.T. was released but watching it transported me to my childhood from beginning to end. There was a lump in my throat the entire time. Just a great movie.
As for Abrams, I think he had a good idea and just went with it. He didn't flesh it out and work on the details, the small stuff, that would have made it a great idea. Could he be surrounding himself with "yes men" a'la George Lucas? Let's hope not!
Never mind the cemetary shack still standing, I want to know where all that dirt went. It was a huge tunnel.
The revelation of the wife's death was ridiculous. Why wouldn't the father be mad at the person responsible for dropping the girter? Instead he holds a grudge on the guy who skipped work that day? Whatever.
How did the guy in the pick-up survive?! Why was the train carrying car after car of fuel and high explosives? Why were the creature and his building blocks being transported together? Why was the creature being transported at all?
All these questions and more point to sloppy screenwriting. The talent involved in this project should not have worked with this script. The third act totally ruins the first two fairly good acts of the movie.
I did enjoy the actors. The kids were great, Kyle Chandler should be in every movie.
Do better next time J.J. Your audience's patience will run out otherwise.
Interesting take, Jim. I hadn't put my finger on it but you deftly nailed the reason the locket holds no emotional value at the end and why Joe's "issue" (his Mother's death) holds no weight once its revealed how/why she died and how/why they're all connected together. I did find it bizarre that Joe doesn't know the "secret" between his father and Louis, since it seems so simple and straightforward.
I enjoyed the acting from the leads quite a bit. Abrams shows once again that he has an eye for talent and casting, although I have to mention that I'm so incredibly tired of Ron Eldard being trotted out to play the same basic role over and over again. The instant you see him you know his character will have a pronounced inner darkness and a violent streak but he'll feel real bad about all that and the script will want to make him sympathetic at some point as well.
I thought this film had glaring holes throughout the narrative, but the biggest for me was how a 2-ton pickup truck travelling about 40 miles an hour at best (it *is* driving on train tracks, afterall) could have any hopes of causing 300-400 tons of freight train to fly willy-nilly through the air? I looked it up and that's a conservative estimate on the train. The train would derail, sure, but it wouldn't be hurtled around like a Dukes of Hazard crash sequence. And the truck and its driver would both be unrecognizable after the accident.
But this is Summer popcorn sci-fi, so who needs the laws of physics, right? Or logic for that matter.
Finally saw this yesterday and I really liked it. BUT, I wanted to love it and I didn't. I thought Abrams did a nice job evoking early Spielberg, but it lacked some of the magic. I think the biggest problem lies with the alien itself. It's not scary or interesting looking; it's just a big CGI boogeyman that doesn't really seem to have a purpose. I saw an interview with Spielberg and Abrams recently where they themselves acknowledged that it's very hard to come up with a new monster/creature/alien these days because audiences have pretty much seen everything. So I think that John Keefer makes a good point that an alien "man" would have been much more interesting. Maybe a scarier version of Jeff Bridges' Starman? Maybe 8 different aliens that form one big alien or something? I don't know...but the big alien crab thing didn't really do it for me. But it could have if the kid had met him earlier in the film and bonded with him, maybe.
Overall I liked it though. Good period detail, great performances from all the kids, and one of the most beautifully composed opening shots I've seen in ages. Super 8 is a good flick. But it could have been a Great Film.
Side question: I think it's been discussed here in the past, but which version of CE3K should I see? I get a little intimidated of making the 'wrong' choice, and so have never taken the plunge. Briefly (and spoiler-free), which is 'best'?
I agree with this comment.
I'd say the "Collector's Edition" (not the "Special Edition").
Me, too.
I really liked Super 8, but I can't help but think the movie was perhaps the victim of editing. That is to say, I feel like this might be a great 2 to 2 hour and 20 minute movie that was cut down to a theater friendly sub-2 hour running time.
I have a feeling that some of the hazy sub-plots that bugged you probably were intended to be more fleshed out. I picked up some things, but the references were hasty, at best...
1. Jack and Louis. Jack makes a very quick and subtle reference to Louis having "always" been a troublemaker and slacker. This hints at a relationship between the two that goes deeper than the mother's death. There's obviously more there that the film omits. Were we able to see some of this, it might make more sense how Louis skipping work (and the mother taking the shift) became more the "straw that broke the camel's back."
2. The electronics. Clearly we see that the alien was building a machine of sorts. In the black and white footage, it seems there may also be machines (I'd have to watch it again) in the background. It's pretty clear from the way all of the metal in town reacts that it's an electromagnetic generator of sorts. My assumption is that this is what was needed to jump start the cubes. But this could have been better explained.
3. The people. A quick throwaway line when the kids are in the underground cave says that the creature is alone and hungry. My take was that he was gathering and storing food. This may not be a plot point that is victim of a timing edit, but more a very sticky plot contradiction. We're clearly supposed to have sympathy for the creature by the end, but that's extremely hard to pull off if we're blatantly shown that it devours innocent people. It's already a stretch given how violent (even justifiably so) it has proven to be.
It will be interesting to see if the home video release includes an extended or director's cut, and if so, how that compares to the theatrical version.
I think I enjoyed it more than most people, even with its limitations. I would watch another film with this exact set of characters again, I enjoyed them so much, and I really liked playing "spot the Spielberg shot". There's a scene where the father looks out the air force base window and spots a old fuel truck and a Prop plane that reminded me of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
As much as I enjoyed the film, I found three problems: 1. The ending isn't magnificent enough. I had no idea we were headed straight into the end until five minutes into it. I loved the blatant metaphor of letting go of the locket -- remember, his mother was killed by steel, and the alien needs that last piece of steel to make up his spacecraft -- but the scenes just weren't big enough. The shots weren't right, the alien was too dark to see...it worked, but wasn't the sort of ending the film needed: grand, huge, low angle shots and huge music swells. 2. Spielberg, along with Lucas, depends on John Williams to make a lot of the emotional beats work, and Super 8's score never hit those heights. I mean, where's the Theme? The huge theme that needs to be played bombastically over the end scenes? And then they just play "My Sharona" over the credits? If you're doing a Spielberg pastiche, you need a huge, moving score. 3. The "Hey, look! It's 1979!" moments during the first 30 minutes or so were sometimes distracting, but they're easy jokes. Fortunately, they take a back seat for the rest of the film.
Other than those problems, I really enjoyed this film, just for the kids alone and the idea that a summer film might go with a cast of relative unknowns, put a bunch of kids who aren't Disney cardboard cutouts in serious danger, and do so with a lot of style and energy. The back end doesn't work as well as the first, but this is the first summer movie in a long time that I actually want to see again. Abrams is getting there, but I have a feeling that the present mentality in Hollywood isn't helping out. It's far too conservative from a story and idea standpoint that it seems more like he's fighting the studio for his vision than himself. It's a more commercial version of what Speilberg was trying to do (if that makes sense), but still pretty damned fun.
I thought it was a great movie and enjoyed it immensely. The points raised are all valid and make sense, but since I was sucked in right from the beginning I wasn't pausing to bother asking the logical but pesky questions you raise that would have otherwise prevented me from enjoying it. But then, questioning a movie's logic, even a bad one, has never been my strong suit. I may not wholeheartedly agree with your opinion, but I found it to be extremely well written and insightful nonetheless.
Abrams's M:I has a bit more soul than John Woo's but doesn't provide the visual pleasures of de Palma's. Star Trek has good story and cast, but I hated the distracting camera moves and the pointless in your face light beam (where is the freaking light coming from. Cloverfield just made me glad I did not see it on the big screen.
My favorite JJAbrams is the WB coming of college age series Felicity. I think he's a better writer of characters and dialogue than he is a story teller or director.
I haven't seen Super 8 but it looks promising. If you're going to ape someone for a summer pic, there aren't many better than early Spielberg. Re-watching Jaws and E.T. recently, it seems like Spielberg already got everything he knows about filmmaking back then. Jaws, CE3K, Raiders, ET feel like the movies he wanted to make and are pretty much perfect, whereas many of his later work -- AI, Minority Report, SPR -- feel like the movies he thinks he should be making and aren't as satisfying. They still contain incredible sequences that I always catch when they come on TNT or whatever, like the initial attack in WotW. We need to strap Michael Bay , Zack Snyder, et al into chairs and make them watch, Clockwork Orange-style, how it's done.
Saw the movie yesterday (in a highly altered state of perception, which I would highly recommend for this two hour long movie, BTW). My comments are primarily regard the alien creature, which I thought was fabulous. It is described as being probably subterranean, exesting below the surface of his home planet. This makes perfect sense for his spider like physical form, Tarantula like gait and movements - for digging and tunneling. But it is not an arachnid and has to be oxygen breathing and warm blooded. It is highly intelligent (could you assembled a space ship out of junk yard parts?), telepathic and sporting a highly magnetic force field which in all likelihood is the source of his advanced technology. His race are obviously underground miners, massively built and uber strong. He is also described by a sympathetic scientist, as not being malevolent (initially) towards humans. He is said to be compassionless and disassociated from his human jailers. However after a telepathic experience with the being, Alice says he is only terrified, starving and home sick (sounds like ET, right?). I see this being as eating all the dogs and then a dozen humans, seeing them only as protein food items, not because he personnaly enjoys devouring them. He does feel anger and has a sense for revenge as demonstrated when he tears his tormenting keeper to pieces in one scene. As for why he came to Earth in the first place, my guess he is a prospecting scout looking for planets like earth with strong magnetic fields and vast metallic resources to plunder. I think we will be seeing him return with a whole lot of friends in the inevitable sequel.
I think this was an example where the trailer was more interesting than the film itself. The trailer promises the sense of awe and the emotion of one of the Spielberg films you mentioned, and takes me to that emotional place.
It seemed like Abrams was a bit calculating in his efforts to mimic (and, I think, capitalize on) Spielberg's success. But the equation works out like this.
1/2 the emotional weight of the children's alienation in E.T.
+
1/2 the sense of wonder at an alien encounter as Close Encounters of the Third Kind
+
1/2 the visceral monster movie thrills of Jurassic Park
=
a movie 1/2 as good as a Spielberg classic.
That's movie math for ya.
Thanks for this great page. Really great to read everybody's comments after seeing the movie today.
Stuff I really agreed with: how the h*ll does the spaceship get built. We see the one rubricks cube burrowing into the water tower. If he only needed one cube somehow we should have known that. And how did that one cube get activated. Was it the emotion in the room with Joe and Alice that activated it? And if so, had none of the other cubes been around that kind of emotion.
We are told the alien needs them, the white cubes (plural). Unclear then how he can get by with just one.
Loved the kids. But their reactions after seeing the aliens seems a bit false. Really... you can be that together? You wouldn't be completely traumatized?
Minor irritation. How do the kids serendipitously find the right footage to screen after they break into the high scvhool?
Agree that Mr. Woodward being alive after the truck runs into the train is strange after hearing the comments, but I thought all along he was part alien now.In fact he says "he's in me." So what happened to him by the movies end..
Biggest irrtation. What was the stake for Mr. Woodward. Is he the alien now so there is no distinction? If not, is he meerly horrified at the treatment and has to stop it at any cost even to himself? What will happen if the alien is not freed? Are there consequences to earth? Is there a ticking clock of when he has to leave?
I could go on but the above suffices. And also, let me be clear, it was a great summer ride. And part of it was the post movie conversation around the table with my fellow/sister movie goers and here on this site. Thanks for the inspired cyber conversation.
My review here:
http://letsnottalkaboutmovies.blogspot.com/2011/06/super-8.html
Basically, we're on the same page. I thought the necklace schtick was a nice touch, but was confused because I had the impression an Air Force guy comfiscated it. I never saw a shot where Joe got it back.
Nice dance-around on the fate of Alice. That made me smile a lot.
The train thing bothered me for a brief second at first, as I wondered how in the world a giant train would explode into bits and pieces from hitting a little truck. Then I realized the exaggerated chaos was THE POINT of the whole thing. The kids are filming a movie, and all of the sudden they're plunged into a movie of their own, happening to them, right then and there, bigger than anything they could have shot themselves. There's a scene where Charles and Joe are watching the news about the train crash, and Charles says "doesn't it look like a disaster movie?" Precisely.
Funny you call it "Spielberg lite." Well, it certainly isn't Spielberg "light." A lot darker than Close Encounters or E.T... And I think there's something to that that partially responds to some of your (and I suspect many others') complaints, Jim...
I would call it something more like... "post-9/11 Spielberg by way of Abrams" or something more like that and I think that's really what Abrams is going for here, an updating of the Spielberg sentimentality...
The key line is: "I get it. Bad things happen."
This movie is two hours of, ahem, 'bad crap' happening to some likeable (perhaps slightly sheltered) kids (and their parents) and, I mean, think back on it -- dead mother as a child, separated from girl you like, she is abducted, aliens invade your town and a corrupt army that's supposed to be protecting you but instead puts you in danger and tries to kill you does too, crashes and smashes and horrific accidents and near death experiences abound. They really do throw in everything but the kitchen refrigerator landing on one of the kids. (My #1 complaint about the movie: One of them kids should definitely have died amidst all that chaos, if even just for some sense of credibility, and probably the pyro at the end monster chase, at the least. I can put these things aside though all and all.)
But, again, to me it wasn't really about any one particular metaphor, it was something else, something a little different that maybe younger audiences part of the internet age (and front pages of newspapers full of, on a daily basis for the last few months, fires and explosions, violent clashes between troops, a general sense of impending doom in all our futures) maybe relate to easier: Overwhelmingness. It's not any one thing, all that would be fine, but there's just so much that's... "bogus," as 'the fat kid' puts it.
I'm not saying it was done all that well... but I think the idea wasn't that he was letting go of his mom, he was letting go of a picture perfect world "E.T. go home" world in general. And maybe, in a way, Spielberg was too by executive producing...
The trailers before the movie -- a non-stop reel of destruction, explosions and war via super-hero and blockbuster flicks (Transformers sequels and the like) only prepped me for the feeling all the more. The final shot of "Super 8" is supposed to bring to mind the hopeful ending of "Close Encounters" ...but it's almost a parody of it, after all those terror-ifying explosions and then this uglier, crueller bug-eyed alien sucking up little town America's household appliances and, well, all their scrap and junk -- and material odds and ends into a great big ball of blah to build his rocketship off this strange, hostile planet.
It doesn't work on an intellectual level... but on an emotional level... I got some sense of what they were going for: How did we ever go from Close Encounters to... whatever this is? To a disaster flick -- or actual disaster... or post NHL finals hockey riot -- being the things people seek awe and wonder from?
I think that, like in a Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," the answer key to that question may be in the movie's opening factory shot.
Ps. I agree though with your comments on Spielberg's experimental film (err... film editing, to be exact) versus what Abrams is doing here, which is more of a Michael-Bay-if-he-could-only-restrain-himself-and-not-just-destroy-stuff-up-bigger-and-bigger. (I thought the Jackie Earle Haley kid was meant more to be a young Michael Bay.)
To the point about one of the kids dying, I would remind you that Abrams does end the movie with ELO's Don't Bring Me Down over the end titles, which is about as on-the-nose as on-the-nose credits music gets;
Very interesting comment by Karl right there. I saw this movie a couple of days ago, and although I think that Abrams misses on many points (his movie just isn't interesting enough visually to be Spielbergian), he's got some interesting things going on.
I like, for instance, that the alien makes it so the biggest danger in the movie comes from the military not being able to control its own machinery (I actually also 'wish' there was a character death involved in this part). The point Karl brought about the alien using our materials for an infinitely more meaningful purpose than what we do with it (he has to return home to survive) is also interesting. It's also interesting that those kids are making a monster movie while they're IN a monster movie, and the obvious comment that could be made about this and those kids' innocence (or clueless-ness) facing the "monstrous" world we inhabit could have been pushed a bit.
Maybe I'm looking for meaning where there isn't, but I kinda feel it is there, somewhere, just not masterfully brough to the screen enough to be analyzed correctly.
Well, I definitely got the allusions to E.T., Close Encounters and The Goonies--only a blind person or anyone under eight couldn't see them--but they didn't bother me at all. Like Star Trek, Super 8 is a big wash of nostalgia for my childhood, both for the late Seventies era and the Spielberg spectaculars.
I will say, however, that I found Super 8 MORE satisfying than Close Encounters because it didn't try to make the alien into another E.T. Although he didn't kill Joe, and he left without killing anyone else, there's no sense that he was thinking anything as he left other than "Thank Christ I'm free of this planet of assholes." Super 8 was a hell of a lot scarier than Close Encounters--for me, anyway--and more realistic. The final twenty minutes of C.E. made me want to vomit, or go into a diabetic coma.
And I know you don't like Abrams' directing style, Jim, but for me, it works just fine. Sure beats the hell out of Michael Bay. Why Spielberg is producing that man's work (apart from the $$) is beyond me.
Oh, yes--I do think it says a lot about this summer that Super 8 is one of only two films that I've had ANY interest in seeing (the other being Midnight in Paris). Last summer we had Inception, the rerelease of Metropolis, Toy Story 3, and even the second-tier Despicable Me was a lot of fun. And The Social Network to look forward to. This summer is a vast wasteland in comparison.
After having watched the previews for "Super 8" for the past few months, I was really looking forward to the movie. I really liked it, but like it has been said before, I wanted to love it. It just fell flat on so many levels. Still, better to reach high and not succeed, right?
From a story-telling point-of-view, I think the screenplay tried to do too many things, and not enough of any one thing. It lightly touched on pre-teen crushes. It lightly touched on a child losing a parent. It lightly touched on so many things but just couldn't decide what to do with those ideas. Maybe a monster movie is not what Abrams wanted to do but more of a coming-of-age movie? Or perhaps the other way around? Who knows...we can only comment on what was on the screen.
I can't imagine that children of that age wouldn't be more freaked out that a train was speeding past them so close and at that high of speed. I can't believe that Joe wouldn't be more terrified when he was being held by the monster. I'm also disappointed that after all that Abrams said about wanting to make a movie as if it was set in and made in the late 70's, he comes up with a monster that only modern technology could make. Looking back, I was hoping for something more along the lines of the monster/alien from "Signs." Something humanoid, but more.
But, I've felt that Abrams just isn't quite there in his movies and TV shows. I thought his "Mission: Impossible 3" was very good, but "Star Trek" bombed for me--highest grosses doesn't mean it was any good--and I thought "LOST" failed in the last season. It's like he's got all the toys but still doesn't know what to do with them. Just because you can show a speeding train come within inches of kids doesn't mean you should. Sure, it may be 'easy' to show a monster that is similar to a spider, but that doesn't mean that a monster like that is going to be believable.
While I liked some things about it, the whole time I was watching it I just kept thinking "I'm watching a movie." Scene after scene I just kept looking at the screen thinking "That looks very movie-like." I was always outside the film looking in and ever lost myself in the story the way really good films make you do.
It makes more sense once you understand that Joe isn't grieving for his mother when he stares at the locket. Rather, he is trying to grieve. Joe is constantly baffled by the emotions of his friends and father. It's the other characters who cry, who lose control. Joe himself has no emotions of his own. His attachment to the locket, like his attachment to Alice, is the expression of his futile desire to feel human feelings.
Joe's epiphany comes when he and the creature see each other in the cave, when they look into each other's eyes and know each other. Joe realizes that he is more like it than they. When he lets go of the locket, he's shedding the last vestiges of his humanity. He will be the creature now. He will hang them from the roof of the cave, and paint death on their faces.
Um...?
Terrible film; no soul, no magic. It's most definitely Spielberg Lite (and that's stretching it).
It's just one scene after another of paying homage to the "what" and "how" of a Spielberg film with none of the "why". Even at that, Abrams can't seem to stay within the confines of credulity, wrap up any of his own loose ends, or deliver any real closure in his own film.
A few examples:
Remember Joe's dog, Lucy (if I remember the name correctly)? Remember how she goes missing along with all the other town dogs? Remember the brief attempt in the film to make her disappearance a matter of concern? Do we ever see Lucy again? Nope. Do we ever see Joe shed a tear over his missing dog? Nope.
Speaking of Joe shedding a tear, here's a young boy who has just lost his mother. From the opening sequence to the conclusion of the film is a span of ~4 months. Do you recall ever seeing him shed one tear or evince heart breaking grief over the recent death of his mother? Neither do I. Kind of amounts to, "Gee, mom's dead...eh". Appears extremely upbeat and/or detached for a child who's entire world has just been torn apart.
The military has Woodward in custody. A scientist who has worked directly with the alien while it was in captivity and was able to establish a psychic link with the being after having been grabbed by it. Quite possibly the one person on the entire planet who knows the most about the creature. What's the military's solution? Give him a lethal injection.
Others posters have already covered the set-up and failed payoff of the military finding the Super 8 film cases at the crash site as well as Woodward miraculously surviving a head-on collision with a speeding train.
Speaking of the crash, how did Woodward find out the alien was being transported by train? Yes, he had previously been a part of the team studying the alien. But he was kicked off the project/dishonorably discharged after locking horns with Colonel Nelec. Only to wind up as a high-school biology teacher. Not exactly the best location for keeping tabs on top-secret military projects.
Jack Lamb (Joe's dad) states at one point that his wife had referred to Louis as just "misunderstood". And this goes...nowhere. What was the nature of her relationship with Louis? Were they having an affair, perhaps? We'll never know.
For that matter, why did Louis' wife leave him? Was it because he's an alcoholic or did he only start drinking after she left? Again, we'll never know.
Jack rescues Louis from the hands of military personnel and tells him, “We have to save our kids!”. Aaaaaaaand…they don’t. They drive in a Jeep, have a perfunctory kiss-and-make-up apology/acceptance scene, and that’s it. Jack and Louis don’t save the kids; the kids pretty much save themselves.
When did the Air Force acquire tanks? I thought they were...you know...the AIR force. No mention or indication is ever made that this is a joint operation with the Army; it's solely an Air Force operation. Yet we see tanks rolling through town.
Now on to the alien:
First point of clarification. The alien wasn't collecting junk metal to build a ship. It was collecting car engines, microwave ovens, power transmission lines, and raw materials to build a giant electromagnet to attract all of the cubes to its location. That's also why the power in the town kept blacking out; it was tapping into the electrical grid as part of its efforts to rebuild its ship. All of the metal objects attracted to the water tower at the end were irrelevant...including the locket.
Also, while in captivity, it wasn't the alien in Woodward's archival footage that was attempting (and failing) to rebuild the ship; it was the Air Force. But they couldn't get it to stay together (which is why we see it collapse into its constituent cubes).
We are made to understand that the alien species is primarily subterranean. Okay, I'll buy that; nice twist. But no one is noticing several hundred tons worth of displaced dirt cropping up on the surface? I have gophers that make a 3 inch mound of dirt in my lawn and I notice it. But a 12 foot tall alien burrows all over town and no one notices? Okay, so it's careful to displace the dirt away from town under cover of a forest. But what about the tunnels it has made that come right up in the middle of the living rooms of the homes of some of the townspeople? Okay, it has captured the people living in those homes so no one is the wiser. But nobody notices these people aren't showing up for work, school, church, grocery shopping, etc.?
Now to the issue of capturing people. Here is an alien of obvious advanced technology and intelligence. But it's capturing people and EATING them. And this is after having made the psychic link with Woodward in which it would have become aware that not all humans wish to harm it. Granted it's under duress, but it's still making a meal out of people. Why not capture some cows from a field? They would make a much more satisfying meal than people (we even see what appear to be whole sides of beef being fed to the alien on meat hooks in Woodward's archival footage; so it knows what beef smells and tastes like).
Furthermore, a few missing cows would raise a lot less suspicion than a whole lot of missing people. Instead it is actively seeking out humans for food. Then, to make it all better, it picks up Joe, peels back its nictitating membranes, reveals big, soulful E.T.-ish eyes and now we're supposed to feel some kind of sympathy or pity? Please.
If you're an intelligent and technologically advanced species making food out of other intelligent and technologically advanced species, that calls into question the moral values of your own species or at least the alien itself. Twenty-one years of incarceration and experimentation may have driven the alien mad; that's about the only excuse that would work. Short of that, there's nothing about the alien's behavior that is worthy of eliciting sympathy or pity, in my opinion. The condition of its treatment at the hands of the military, yes. Its subsequent actions, no. That was pretty much the point at which the caboose at the end of this very long train wreck of a film finally derailed for me.
I feel so much better knowing that a 12 foot tall alien that can burrow through the earth at will, shrugs off automatic military rifle fire at point blank range, was subjected to cruel treatment at the hands of the military for 21 years (giving it good reason to hate the human race), has no moral qualms about using homo sapiens as a food source, and has technology so advanced it can build spaceships out of white Legos is now free to return home to share with the rest of its species the wonderful experiences it had during its trip to Earth. But no worries. In "Super 8 Two: The Revenge" you'll be safe as long as you're a cute kid or a conscientious high school biology teacher.
Abrams, don't just mimic what you "see" when you watch an old Spielberg classic. Try to mimic what you "felt", as well. Sadly, if all you ever felt was, "Gee whiz, look at that! They're flying through the air on their bicycles with E.T. in the basket! That's SO cool!!! “, then you completely missed the point.
Like so many films in this genre, Super8 fell apart for me the more it attempted to "explain" things. The film was much more fun when the characters (and the audience along with them) were trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
I think the basic problem is that in most of these films the explanations for amazing phenomena and experiences are seldom amazing. Big spider alien? He's suffering and just wants to go home? He touches you and you understand? LAME. Been done before (and wasn't necessarily better the first time). Who cares?
It's a real failure of imagination. Why can't an encounter with aliens be something we can't understand? Thank you, Russian version of Solaris! Thank you, 2001! (2010 is a perfect illustration of this problem, by the way. 100% explained = 0% magical.)
Absence of over-explanation doesn't mean there's no story. The characters still have to deal with events and situations. Wouldn't the story be better if the characters were struggling (and yes, failing -- at least in part) to come to terms with their experiences all the way through?
I found so many stupid little mistakes that bugged me. after the train crash, why were the headlights on (Alice's Father's car). After the locket flies away the camera falls back on the crowd, Alice's father still has a necklace on and half the soldiers are still toting guns. Are they trying to say Alice's father is a cheap bastard and half the military uses squirt guns?
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