Super 8 review

Now, I'll be the first person to say that Star Trek the Star Trek also known as Star Trek Square Bracket Two Thousand and Nine Square Bracket or "The Star Trek reboot" or Star Trek 11 was a glitzy whizz-bang cash-in without a lot of heart. It just happened to be a particularly well-made glitzy whizz-bang cash in without a lot of heart.

I mention this because Star Trek 11 is the only other JJ Abrams film I've seen, and thus the only thing that I can compare it to. Now, what do I mean by "without a lot of heart?" That's a legitimate question. In between setting up seven characters (as if the audience had never heard of Star Trek) and doling out tons of 'splosions, there wasn't really time to go beneath the surface. For example, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a film with a bunch of 'splosions, but it's also about Kirk's midlife crisis. Inception is a film with a bunch of zero-gravity fights, but it's also about a guy who may or may not have killed his wife, and how screwed-up his head is because of that. Wall-E, which I maintain is one of the best sci-fi films this decade (this decade hell, it's one of the best sci-fi films since The Empire Strikes Back) is a film with a bunch of cute robots, but it's also got cute robot love. Star Trek 11 just has Kirk do the tried and true Joseph Campell's Hero's Journey thing. Spock's homeworld does the firework and his mother dies, but he's an emotionless half-alien so we can't really relate to him. That's what I mean by "without a lot of heart." And for the record, Star Trek 11 was a really good glitzy cash-in. It just didn't have a lot of heart.

Now, is Star Trek 11 better than Super 8? Oh hell yes.

Okay, so where do I begin? Let's start with the locket. In Super 8 our hero carries around a locket containing a picture of his dead mother. Now, since it doesn't play a creepy-as-hell little tune, it is automatically not the coolest locket-containing-a-picture-of-a-dead-person in film history. Since I brought that up, let's take a look at it.

In For a Few Dollars More, Colonel Douglas Mortimer carries around a locket of his dead sister. Oh, by the way, SPOILER ALERT. Okay, so anyway, one of our heroes has this locket. We don't see it nearly as prominently as we do the villain's locket, which he gets out and plays every time he kills someone. Mortimer's in it for revenge (hint: his sister ain't alive no mo'), so when that theme plays at the end, it's personal as hell. This is because Sergio Leone really knows what he's doing. And one of the few things I really liked about the third Pirates of the Carribean film was that they also had the two musical lockets that really signified something.

Now, in Super 8, it's just a picture of his mother. I guarantee you it's not the only picture he has of her, since he's got a whole film reel that he shows to Elle Fanning halfway through for no real reason except that JJ Abrams has a film fetish (no, really! The whole reason why the kids are filmmakers is because JJ Abrams either loves leaning on the fourth wall, or has a film fetish, or both). And he carries it around with him. The army guys take it away from him, and he takes it back. Then the alien takes it away using a magnet (while at the same time not taking Elle Fanning's drunken father's necklace), and our hero just lets it go. Throughout the film, it's clearly been built up as this important thing, but then he decides to let it go for some reason. Someone please explain to me the reason, or what made him change his mind, because I don't get it.

There may very well be some symbolism here, but symbolism seems kind of out-of-place in a film where, earlier on, a bunch of kids stood right next to an implausible train wreck and they all escaped unscathed. This is clearly not a film that wants you to think very much, as evidenced by the fact that a bunch of kids stood right next to an implausble train wreck...

This brings me directly to point #2. Hopefully I don't need to explain the words "suspension of disbelief." Let's say you put a character in a building and then you blow that building up. If the character survives and isn't Superman, you need to come up with a way for them to survive, and no, "he's the main character" is not a reason. Your brain is telling you that that character should be mincemeat, and it's up to the storyteller to come up with a compelling reason why they're not. Abrams doesn't do that here. One-ton freight cars steamroll everything around the kids but leave them completely untouched. Later on, the army randomly starts shooting up the town, and the only thing that happens is one of the kids gets a broken leg (because remember, this ain't Battlestar; you can't go around killing children here). An alien who can communicate telepathically by touching you has been eating people - which I assume involves touching them, in fact you can see it grab one or two people during the cave sequence - but it's magically calmed down by our hero because he's our hero. Basically things happen because the plot demands that they happen, not because they make any sort of logical sense.

Still on the subject of trains... There was a time when I thought this movie wouldn't suck. It was that space of time between the point where I realized that all the kids could act, and the point where the train crash occured. But take a look at the way that scene is set up. They're out there at the train station (because the plot demands they be there) and they do a rehearsal that is quiet, low-key, and generally perfect. Then the director-kid spots a train in the background coming towards them. He shrieks something about "production values" and insists that they shoot the scene with the train thundering by. For one brief happy minute I thought Abrams was poking fun at the Michael Bay School of 'Splosions, but then... well... you know.

The train was transporting an alien and its magic atom-bricks that are apparently capable of turning into anything it needs them to be. Why was the government transporting an alien across the country? How did Professor Bleeding Heart get his hands on the train schedule? How did Professor Bleeding Heart get his hands on enough magic to derail that entire train and still not instantly die?

After a couple of days of searching for it, the government decides to just burn down the town and evacuate everyone. They set a massive fire that's set to burn down the town in four hours. At least four hours elapse between that point and the end of the movie, but the town's still standing. Did they put the fire out off-camera? Would it have hurt to have a single line of dialogue discussing that?

Then they go around the town randomly shooting. At least, I think they're randomly shooting. What exactly was the plan at this point? Were they gonna burn down the houses, or weren't they? If so, why did they put out the fire? And if not, how were they going to explain away all the 'splosion damage?

Meanwhile the alien sets about repairing its ship and eating people. It turns the water tower into a spaceship (gee, that would suck if the townies needed water in a hurry, y'know, like if there was a massive fire on their front doorstep) and starts stealing car engines. Of course, it knows exactly whose cars to steal engines from, so that Sheriff Dad can still drive around and Alcohol Dad can nearly get himself killed.

(By the way, when the alien's finishing his ship and everything made of metal is flying at it, notice how nobody's reacting. You'd think Steven Spielberg, who once shot golf balls past his actors' heads so they'd know where the dinosaurs were in Jurassic Park, would understand that you have to have your actors react to CGI. But then, he wasn't the director, he was just along for the ride.)

And did I mention that the alien ate people? Because it did; in fact, it eats the police chief twice just to be on the safe side. It was even gonna eat Elle Fanning before she could get to hold hands with our hero at the end. But the film's too busy shoving in pointless symbolism with the locket to address this issue. In accordance with simple Hollywood morality, the alien has carte blanche to eat as many civilians as it wants because it was previously tortured by the guv'ment, I guess. But wait! Didn't Professor Bleeding Heart say that the alien was in him and he was in the alien? Doesn't that mean that the alien already knows that most of mankind doesn't actually mean it any harm? Or is Professor Bleeding Heart a big misanthropic jerkwad who wants to see a bunch of people get eaten?

So the plot is resolved when the alien joins minds with a little boy. Now, any real little boy who just lost his mother and is so hung up on her that he takes that locket with him everywhere is probably going to have some grief issues. Add to that the fact that his dad and his girlfriend's dad hate each other and each other's offspring, and he almost certainly has emotional issues. Maybe the angst is what made the alien leave. But that's probably not what Abrams et al intended to have happen. Instead they have this scene were the alien gains innate knowledge of the kid's incorruptible pure pureness and decides not to eat him. I was really hoping that it was gonna possess Elle Fanning or something and actually use one of the characters as a mouthpiece, but because that would require actually explaining its actions, I can see why they didn't go with that idea.

Conclusion: it's appalling that anyone could assemble a team of child actors who can actually act and then force them to be in a story this poorly thought out.