Super 8 Review

E.T for a new generation? Not really, but it’s still that summer blockbuster that we have been waiting for with all the charm of a coming of age story, with the action that movie goers of today have come to expect. Anyway, E.T. never had an exploding trains in it, so suck it Spielberg!

I don’t know what I was expecting. O.K. maybe I do know, an E.T for the new generation, or perhaps another Goonies, but with aliens. Well Super 8 isn’t really any of those things, but it certainly plays homage to that now seemingly passed age of cinema that those films represented, when a group of kids can have an innocent adventure, save the world, and be home in time for tea. It is certainly trying to evoke the same vibes, even setting itself within the same time period into which those films were created, evoking all the same 80’s vibes. It would be wrong to suggest that super 8 is nothing more than this though, and it has levels of intrigue and action which far surpasses these contemporaries of genre, even if the story elements aren’t as perfectly constructed.

At its core super 8 is about a group of friends, Joe, Charles, Cary, Martin, Preston, Alice (played by rather unknown actors Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Gabriel Basso, Zach Mills and Elle Fanning respectively) who witness a devastating train crash late one night, after they had snuck out to film something for a film competition. Everything is not as it seems though, and the film sets up a number of good unanswered questions, what was really on the air force train? Why did one of their school teachers, Dr Woodwood (played by Glynn Turman), want it to crash? The film is good at keeping these questions unanswered while ramping up the mystery, with the number of strange things increasing throughout the town, with car engines, TV’s, and electrical wires disappearing all over the town, as well as the fact that all the neighbourhood dogs have run away, which has the local police force, mainly centred on Jackson Lamb (played by Kyle Chandler), the father of Joe, in confusion. Soon the army move in and things start to get suspicious. Cue area 51-esque army escapades and a touch of the extra-terrestrial.

The film is not only solely focused upon this high sci-fi setting, and is certainly rooted in reality with the number of entwined side plots and central plots about the relationships between the characters. Joe Lamb, who is essentially our main character, has a number of emotional and personal interacts which play out across the film, namely the death of his mother and coming to terms with her passing, his relationship with his dad, as well as the relationship between himself and friends, especially Alice, whose father and Joe’s father don’t get along, causing much tension, tension which is inevitably resolved in a Disney fashion.

All these emotional side plots and main plots are all extremely well executed, mainly because all the individual character seem to fit their positions within the story perfectly, and there are none that seem out of place or odd. Nor are they ever overbearing or get away from the main sci-fi alien tone of the film, but provide the film with a greater substance than your average family orientated martian romp.

This in some ways can be put down to the magical work of J.J Abrams who both wrote and directed Super 8. Mainly he should be congratulated in finding such high quality actors, most of which are mostly unknown. I can't really say there were any big names to be found within the cast, though there were some recognisable faces. For the majority of the child actors, this was either their first feature film, such as in the case of Joel Courtney, or within the second or third film within their onscreen careers. They were all brilliant in their roles, even if some of those on the fringes of the group remain small time players in the plot. Never work with children or animals they say, well Abrams had a bucket full, and he certainly succeeded in moulding them into believable children, ones who could display emotion but also be funny and get along quite well in the action scenes. Sometimes I find myself cringing at child actors (you can’t tell me you can watch the first Harry Potter without doing so), but I never once did in Super 8.

That is not to say that it was only the child stars who were great, all the adult actors and actresses were great too, especially Kyle Chandler as the I-don’t-really-know-how-to-connect-to-my-child dad, and Noah Emmerich as the main villain army commander, Nelec.

One thing that I totally didn’t expect from Super 8 were the intense action scenes. Though from the trailer I knew there were going to be the odd explosion, I didn’t expect them to be so well created, and so well...explosive. The train crash is certainly one of the best action sequences I’ve seen this year and though many of the others don’t quite live up to it, they are all exciting enough to propel the story forward throughout its running time. In terms of CGI, say, for the alien technology or the alien creature (I won’t say more than that), this was all fine, though after seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes quite recently before hand, I couldn’t help noticing that this was certainly not as well created. Perhaps that is just a bit nit-picky though, and it serves the film well. For most the film, at any rate, Abrams does a good job of hiding the monster until the later stages, with the classic Alienesque approach, showing only mere glimpses of the creature, and keeping the abductions and destruction, at least at the beginning of the film, hidden from the viewer, which certainly heightens the tension.

There certainly is a lot of tension through the open half of the film before the main action sequences sets in: a lot of people hearing noises, going out to investigate, and disappearing off the face of the earth, as with many alien films of this genre. There are also a number of jumps and bumbs to keep it exciting, but not in a way that would scare away younger members of an audience.

That is not to say that I didn’t have any problems with the film. I felt that the final quarter of the film it started to tail off a little. This was mainly because the main army threat in the form of Nelec resolves itself too early on , leading to a premature deflation of much the tension before the final moments and left me wondering where the main threat to the protagonists was coming from, if it was coming from anyone at all. Also I felt that there were a number of answered questions which were either only vaguely touched on, or not really explained at all, though not in a way that broke my enjoyment of the story.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Super 8. It had that innocent adventure sort of vibe which makes it a great summer blockbuster, though with a great mystery element as well as character development which stands it above its contemporaries. I don’t know if Abrams meant this as a throwback to those old style adventure films, and really that isn’t important, it funs, it emotional, its explosive, it’s definitely worth the watch.