Super 8: Super or Super Sucky? Also: Now With Hyphens!!

Hihi,

Since my current status is trapped-inside-until-a-certain-major-weather-entity-has-the-decency-to-go-away, I figured the most productive use of my time would OBVIOUSLY be to write a new post.

Because really, who can concentrate on the fifth (yes, fifth) draft of their thesis proposal when a hurricane looms in the distance?  Who, really?

So last month a beloved reader took issue with my rating for "Super 8" (2011), which I saw in June.  I promised to respond to her comments, and now I'm finally making good on that.

For the purposes of making this seem like a flashy dialogue/clash of movie-loving titans, the reader's comments will be in italics and I will respond to each of her arguments in normal text.

Here we go! 

we must fight over super 8. It'll be fun. annnnnnd go! 

Woooooooo battle!!

So ya, I liked super 8 i'd give it a 4. for several reasons. 

My rating: 2.

omg an alien movie?! ya well: kids. 

I know I'm cutting you off just as you're starting to make your argument, but: one of my biggest complaints about this movie seems to be one of the things you liked a lot about it.  In other words, "Super 8" was both a coming-of-age or look-at-the-adorable-kids-making-a-movie-they-think-they're-people movie AND a science fiction alien-invadery movie.  It felt like two completely unrelated movies mashed together.  Different commentators said they really loved one plot line and were bored with the other, but I just wasn't into either.  For me, combining them only made the movie that much more annoying because it felt disjointed.

The sad thing is, apparently J. J. Abrams wrote the original kids-related screenplay (no alien) before partnering up with Steven Spielberg to actually make the movie.  The way I understand it, it was not going to be an alien/monster movie until Spielberg had his say.  The pre-Spielberg project would at least have been focused, instead of getting dragged in multiple directions the way the finished product is.

What makes this even sadder is that the kids plot was apparently semi-autobiographical for Abrams, who actually worked for Spielberg as a young aspiring filmmaker.  I would like to have seen this mentor-mentee partnership produce cooler material, but it just didn't deliver for me.  It's a shame.

Douchey dads: unite!

 
and you know, I don't like kids, but yet the thing that i enjoyed the most about this movie was: kids. The group of them weren't your average, I'm the fat one I must be a big dummy I'm the wild one I must be the ladies man. No. The fat one was a movie director trying to win a competition for making zombie movies A, yes. love it, B really gave him dimension while he was a side character. The wild one was good lord he was wild, made an excellent zombie and was a chicken despite his lust for exploding things. 

See.... I definitely agree that for the most part, the kids were the best part of the movie.  The child parts were mostly very well-acted--Elle Fanning was delightful as a zombie in the movie within a movie.  And also, you know I'm a complete sucker for anything zombie-related.  In any event, the kids were sure as hell less wooden and boring than the adult characters.

Adorbs.

However, while the kids had more depth than the average trite movie-with-kids-in-it, I still felt like they were pretty two-dimensional--more twists on expected stereotypes than truly real-feeling, complex characters.  This is probably not all that revelatory (being a psychologist in training), but generally I find characters way more interesting than plot.  Which is part of the reason I get hostile when characters suck.

To explain my stance, I have to back up a little bit: honestly, I'm just pretty over Steven Spielberg.  He seems like more of a plot guy than a character guy, so maybe we just weren't destined to get along.  And I know he was the producer and not the director or writer of the film, but I thought his influence was very apparent throughout the movie, from the flatness of the characters to the overly epic, sweeping and showy camera work.

I don't mean to belittle his earlier movies.  As happens to many artists, I feel like Spielberg has lost the hunger and freshness that made him such a remarkable filmmaker in his early career.  Now, the same crowd-pleasing heartstring-tugging tricks he used before seem tired, over-used and cliche--and his characters lack dimension.  Frankly, I feel like he kind of insults the intelligence of his audience sometimes, expecting them to get so distracted by his flashy gimmicks that they don't notice the characters aren't believable and there are holes in the plot.

Obvi counterexample to my beef with Spielberg.

It's been a while since I saw "Super 8", but the best example I can think of for what I'm talking about involves the explosives-addled kid you mentioned.  As soon it was revealed that he was really into blowing things up, I thought to myself, "Well that's going to be a major plot device in the last quarter of the film."  And an hour or so later, there it was: when a diversion is desperately needed to liberate some human hostages from the big scary alien, guess who has fireworks in his backpack??

I hate that kind of predictability.  A lot.  I don't want to be able to spot these things from a mile away.  I want filmmakers to try to outsmart me.  I just feel like Abrams and Spielberg weren't trying that hard, or maybe they just thought their audience wouldn't be paying attention.  Either way: annoying.

And seriously: characters are supposed to be people, not plot devices.

Also wtf you *so* do not like kids!  I mean really.

 The fact that the main character in the opening scenes loses his mother to the most normal thing's you can fathom in a alien movie, good job. 

I definitely take your point that they went to an interesting emotional place by opening the film with the kid's mom's funeral.  That was a cool choice.

But... she died because something fell on her in an industrial accident? She worked in a factory??  In the seventies???  That just didn't hold up for me.  I'm definitely being nit-picky at this point, but I found that particular detail of the plot really distracting.  If they really needed the drunk dude to kill off that kid's mom, wouldn't it have seemed way more plausible that he killed her by getting in an accident with her while driving drunk or something?

I loved the heck out of it, some people complained about length, I had no issues. There was one scene where i was like mm, bad which was the them being attacked on a bus scream scream escape and oh... hey look we are back at this bus for this locket and ya giant angry monster isn't here anymore? bad call. I dunno the alien to me was secondary, the movie was about he kids who were filming during some crazy nonsense in a perfectly logical way cause we'll we'd have to pay bajillions for a train crash and LOOK, here it is. Also, I love the train crash scene I dunno, maybe people focus on what the movie was about ie: monsters rrrrrr, but I really just could not get over what a good plot they had going with the variety of run of the mill children. It was a plot within a plot within a larger plot. Dimension /faint.

I will definitely not argue with you about the train crash sequence.  That was totally baller.  It was by far my favorite part of the movie, and it was Spielberg/Abrams doing what they do best: balls-out spectacle.  It was totally transfixing and AMAZING cinema.  It also made it worth seeing the movie in a theater.

However, this is another reason I'm pissed at the movie.  The set-up was so cool!  Some kids set up their little camera to make a movie and capture a mysterious and catastrophic crash and discover something completely unexpected in their footage... what could it BE??

Oh, a really steroided-up version of E.T. who seems all scary and grouchy but really just wants to go home?

Okay well that's lame.

but anyway
<3 you

<3 you too, like crazy.

Stay away from hurricanes, everyone!

<3