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Super 8

More like, Disappointing 8.

I was glad to see a movie pay attention to the all-important aspect of character empathy. That’s sadly lacking in too many flicks. Yet, surprisingly, other important aspects of a good flick were lacking in this one.

Objective

Act 2 was awful. After the setup of the train wreck, the kids became passive and useless to the story. Act 2 is when the action should increase and when the main character should become more involved, not step aside and let others take over the story. Look at JJ Abrams’ Star Trek- one of the keys to its success was James Kirk having a clear objective in Act II and fighting many obstacles to achieve it.

The simple thing here would have been for Joe Lamb and his buddies to find clues and discover the truth about the train wreck and creature. Of course, Joe’s father and others would not have believed them till it was almost too late. And the relationship between Joe and Alice could have developed the same way on this better thread.

Structure/Plot and Ending

- It seems JJ Abrams was influenced too much by Spielberg, specifically Steven’s faux pas of deus ex machina as seen in Jurassic Park and War Of The Worlds. Here, when Joe Lamb finally learned the whole story about the alien and then heard that Alice was snatched, his rescue attempt was all for naught. It didn’t look like Alice would have been killed by the creature; any cop or soldier would have searched the opened-up ground after the creature escaped and would have found Alice; and the creature ended up escaping earth on its own! I was certain Joe would have helped the creature escape (by gathering those white Rubik’s Cube thingies).

Connected to the above, I’m clueless as to why the alien hung Alice and others in his lair and how the spaceshift was assembled from scrap metal when it sure seemed like those Rubik’s Cube thingies were the building blocks of its ship.

- The train wreck was way over the top…a pickup truck colliding with a train would not cause such mayhem. It’s always painful when a movie forces the action or drama instead of figuring out how to make it happen naturally.

- Same with the teacher- it was nice that he cared about the alien and wanted to free it, but that he was prepared to give up his life for it made him look stupid. And why did he think anything good would happen by freeing it at that location? That only would have been wise had he first prepared the spaceship for it.

- After a while, this felt like Godzilla 1998 where I wondered how did anyone not notice a huge alien roaming around?!

Premise

- This isn’t really a comment about the premise, but about the Super 8mm movie aspect that enveloped the flick. The amateur movie shot by the kids, and especially the footage of the creature escaping the train, had no connection to the rest of the story. By the time the kids discovered the footage, it was old news. Yes, it helped set the mood and was the bonding agent for the kids, yet it needed to be more since it was the title of the movie.

- The creature was uninspiring. It was too big and monstrous to take it seriously. It was nice to hear the twist about the creature being scared and wanting to get home, but it would have been better to see that. A smaller creature with features we could have related to would have made a huge difference.

- Since there was a twist to the alien’s actions, why didn’t Abrams do something different about the cliché of the evil military? The part where the big black guy took Joe’s pendant was painful in how much I didn’t believe that would happen.

- I read in numerous places how the story takes place in 1979, yet don’t recall the movie explicitly stating so. It would be weird if that were true since JJ Abrams made it clear this is his homage to the great flicks of the 1980s, like ET and Goonies. (Super 8mm movie cameras were still in use in the early 80s.)

Little things

- Not once, but three out of the first four times the creature appeared, the movie employed the cheapest trick in the book- shock value of the creature jumping into scene with little or no warning.

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