Super 8

I'd love to say that Super 8 was super great, but I think I got to that party super late. I don't super hate Super 8, but I'm also not sure it was worth the super wait. Would it have made a super date? If I did say it was super great, would it leave me in a super state? Or would I still be bored and go super masturbate?

Perhaps I've said too much...


In 1970s Ohio, Joe and his friend Charles, along with assorted other friends, are shooting an amateur film for  an international film competition. While shooting scenes at a local train station, an approaching train presents an opportunity for what Charles calls "Production Value." As the train passes by and the scene is filmed, Joe notices a truck race onto the tracks ahead of the train, causing a massive derailment. In the ensuing mayhem, the camera is knocked over and continues to film the derailment. Once everything settles down and the friends are accounted for, they approach the truck to find their school science teacher. He warns them to get away and not mention the incident with the train.

You ever have someone tell you something was literally
a train wreck? Well, this was a train wreck...literally.

Strange things begin happening around town: all the dogs in the area run away; several townspeople disappear, including the chief of police; and electronic devices, from microwaves to car engines, are mysteriously stolen in large quantities. Joe's dad, now the acting chief of police, attempts to work with the Air Force personnel who've arrived to collect the mysterious contents of the train, but is thrown in prison. Shortly thereafter, the Air Force starts a brush fire, forcing all the residents to evacuate. What could they be hiding that's so important...

» Snape transformed into a what? «

In addition to boxes upon boxes of white cubes, the train that derailed also contained a space alien that had been captured by the Air Force years earlier. The science teacher who derailed the train had been a part of the team investigating the alien and its crashed ship (which was constructed of the white cubes). After being picked up by the alien, he developed a psychic link to the creature and learned of its desire to simply rebuild its ship and go home.

Alice, whom Charles invited to be in the movie in hopes of starting a relationship with, begins falling for Joe. When she's taken by the alien, the kids head to the school to find more information about the alien in the science teacher's storage trailer. With the knowledge they glean from the footage they find, the kids head back into the evacuated town to track down the alien and help it get home. They discover the alien hiding out underneath the town water tower, using the stolen electronics to try and build an electromagnetic.

Here's a shot of the alien. Totally worth it, right?

After being chased by the alien, Joe is captured, but uses the psychic link to convince the alien to finish its device and go home; to forget about the past indignities and finish what it set out to do. The alien rebuilds his spaceship using the electromagnet and leaves Earth. Joe and Alice's dads reconcile their differences, and Joe and his friends finish their movie.

Super 8 feels like two films that have been crammed together to form a single movie.

The first movie is about  a group of friends making a movie and dealing with the random shit that happens in life. In this case, Joe loses his mom in a steel mill accident when she's covering a shift for Alice's dad, who failed to come to work because he was drunk. For this, Joe's dad blames Alice's dad for his loss, so they are forever forbidden from being together. However, over the course of the movie, a relationship develops while another suffers, but ultimately things work out and a pretty amusing amateur film, The Case, gets made.

The second movie is about an alien. Yeah, that's it, a fuckin' alien.

I said more goddamned shadowy, quick-cut alien shots!

It really seems like J. J. Abrams, the writer and director, had a good idea for a movie involving something probably near and dear to him: young filmmakers and the fun-citement of small town life in the 70s. And then somebody was like "Hey, aren't you J. J. Abrams? Like Star Trek rebooting, Lost executive producing, Cloverfield J. J. Abrams? Can't be! Where the fuck is the awesomely scary spacey-mystery-monstery-shit?" So what you end up with is a pretty good movie with some alien shit thrown at it. The alien parts aren't terrible and do add a bit of excitement to the film in certain parts, but the ultimate resolution is telegraphed from a mile away and really kind of detracts from the film. I'm curious as to how the film would have turned out without the sci-fi aspect. Sure, there'd still be some major conflict separate from the minor conflict between the kids, but would it be completely dismissed because it didn't fit with J. J. Abram's string of releases? I guess we'll never know.

Also, the amateur film The Case, about a detective investigating the appearance of zombies around the Romero (see what they did there?) Chemical Factory, plays alongside the credits at the end of the movie and is worth sitting through. It's obviously a little hokey, but that adds to the amusement factor. After seeing all the little bits filmed throughout the movie, its cool to see a final film stitched together from the bits you see. And Charles' final note is good for a quick laugh.

Torn about the 2-movies-in-one premise, we've got 2 ratings for Super 8:

If you're looking for a J. J. Abrams alien film...		If you're looking for good movie about friends, films, a train crash, and can tolerate some alien crap thrown in for effect..
Netflix, cuz you'll probably be mad if you throw any extra money at this film, moreso if you don't want to sit through a bit of Romeo and Juliet.		Should have seen it in theaters to make the big moments bigger

Ron Perlman auditioned for the role of the alien, but they ultimately passed when test audiences literally peed themselves in fear during screenings. Literally.

From My Playlist
	Artist:	Flogging Molly
	Song:	Drunken Lullabies
	Album:	Drunken Lullabies