Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

[HistoryProf]

I find it curious that Domino seems to think this was made for "90s kids" when it was set in 1979 w/ kids were were just a bit older than I was in that year. Seems to me it's for that Jaws to Indy period that I, born in 1970, grew up with and that had faded by the 3rd Indy in 1989. I guess 90s kids did too, but on home video, not going to the theater every weekend all summer. Seems like THAT is what Abrams was trying to emulate...no?

I honestly can't imagine a better decade to have been 5 to 15 years old going to the movies than that running from 1975 to 1985 that I was so lucky to enjoy. From Spielberg to Hughes we had everything! That said, I can't wait to see this, and am trying to talk the wife into seeing this instead of the limited engagement of Lee Chang-dong's Poetry that's playing this weekend.

[domino harvey]

It almost surely was made for (from?) the generation you describe, but the great thing about being a 90s Kid is we "get" it too, since we saw all these hallmarks over and over on home video and cable-- I may not have been alive in the era depicted, but you get inundated and infused with these touchstone elements growing up on this material that it feels "right," at least from a pop culture stance, in a way devoid of the dreaded period fetishization

[Tom Hagen]

We had Hughes too, only his shitty movies, like Curly Sue. Ditto Spielberg. Hook anyone? But boy did Disney ever treat us right.

[tarpilot]

Camp Nowhere is still awesome!

[knives]

We also got the better Gremlins movie. I think it's with television though that the culture was kindest to a '90s kid. Growing up with the DCAU and basically have television always be great art is a nice little deal (not that there weren't shows for adults that were great before the '90s.

[Roger Ryan]

You guys got it all wrong...and you were born too late! SUPER 8 is made for people like me who were actually making Super 8 movies in the 70s. Hell, I had that same Hunchback of Notre Dame glow-in-the-dark model! This film was great fun because it was not in the style of CLOVERFIELD, TRANSFORMERS or Abrams' STAR TREK, but an attempt to find a few nuggets left in a mine well-excavated by Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Dante. There is not a single original idea in the film, but with the child performances being spot-on (I was a little worried this would dip into GOONIES excess; it doesn't) and Abrams delivering some well-staged fright scenes, I was taken in by the good-natured approach. Abrams shamelessly replicates Spielberg's classic late 70s/early 80s tropes throughout, primarily borrowing from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and E.T. with a little JAWS thrown in. I even noticed a full line of dialogue taken from E.T. and I'm sure there are other ones I missed. You can tell Abrams really wants to achieve a cathartic E.T. effect from the finale, but it actually comes closer to Dante's EXPLORERS. Given the pathetic merchandising tie-ins, the snarky too-cool attitude and the auto-tuned emo soundtracks of recent science-fiction action films, I'm thinking it would be a good idea to set all future genre efforts in 1979.

Anyway, what was cool about being my age was seeing the New Hollywood films first run as a kid and being able to see the blockbuster mentality of JAWS and STAR WARS wreck their havoc!

[Tom Hagen]

It's alarming to consider how much Nickelodeon I watched as a kid. To this day, I still want to take a shot at the aggro crag.

[matrixschmatrix]

Given the pathetic merchandising tie-ins, the snarky too-cool attitude and the auto-tuned emo soundtracks of recent science-fiction action films, I'm thinking it would be a good idea to set all future genre efforts in 1979.

Haha, because back in the 70s and 80s nobody did horrible merchandising of sci-fi movies (I grew up with Return of the Jedi bedsheets.)

It's alarming to consider how much Nickelodeon I watched as a kid. To this day, I still want to take a shot at the aggro crag.

Nickelodeon had a lot of genuinely good kid's shows in the 90s- I mean, there's the watchable but dumb stuff like Hey Dude and Salute Your Shorts, but there was also Pete & Pete, Clarissa Explains it All (well, that one's sort of borderline), Doug, and Ren and Stimpy. Plus they showed Looney Tunes all the goddamn time when I was a kid, along with the Bosco stuff from before then.

[Roger Ryan]

Given the pathetic merchandising tie-ins, the snarky too-cool attitude and the auto-tuned emo soundtracks of recent science-fiction action films, I'm thinking it would be a good idea to set all future genre efforts in 1979.

Haha, because back in the 70s and 80s nobody did horrible merchandising of sci-fi movies (I grew up with Return of the Jedi bedsheets.)

Well, the worst of it didn't hit until about 1980, so I think '79 is relatively safe (...and it's really the snarky attitude and soundtracks I despise the most these days).

[swo17]

I was more of an '85-'95 kid, and feel as though no decade will have me. Where is the movie for me?

[Tom Hagen]

Nickelodeon had a lot of genuinely good kid's shows in the 90s- I mean, there's the watchable but dumb stuff like Hey Dude and Salute Your Shorts, but there was also Pete & Pete, Clarissa Explains it All (well, that one's sort of borderline), Doug, and Ren and Stimpy. Plus they showed Looney Tunes all the goddamn time when I was a kid, along with the Bosco stuff from before then.

Absolutely. I watched those dramedys on a loop every summer -- really great stuff.

I always found it weird that the show I absolutely hated as a kid - "Rugrats" -- became a huge thing like a decade after the fact.

[dx23]

I was more of an '85-'95 kid, and feel as though no decade will have me. Where is the movie for me?

Didn't you like Bio-Dome, Encino Man and all those films by the great thespian Pauly Shore?!?

[mfunk9786]

I totally quoted the hell out of this movie without even trying yesterday. "Production value!"

[domino harvey]

I imagine I'll have a lot of use for

SpoilerShow

"DRUGS ARE SOO BAD!"

in the future

[LQ]

I didn't see that as absurd, or a distraction. Its not about keeping him away from Alice alone, its about keeping him far away from her father. Its obvious Joe's father holds an irrational grudge against Alice's father, but furthermore, it is suggested that he has been troublesome, even dangerous in the past...and we certainly see the effects of his drinking in the film. It makes perfect narrative sense, and I don't see how it's "milked" either; its not like it has any effect on their developing relationship. Its more to further the idea of Joe's father's grudge. Plus, Alice's father makes it quite clear to Joe's that he doesn't want Joe hanging around (again, out of overblown animosity towards Joe's father than out of any mistrust/dislike of Joe).

The fact that the threat doesn't have anything to do with the development of their relationship isn't the moment's strength though, but its weakness. It belies the fact that the whole grudge exists to create narrative energy with superficial, easily resolved obstacles to make up for Abrams' inability to imagine what engaging any of the possible complications of Joe's desires, a potentially much more interesting set of obstacles, would look like.

I wouldn't say inability - Abrams isn't going for Romeo and Juliet here, c'mon. As wonderful as I think it is, you're right, it is just a summer kids movie, after all. Its unfortunate that it didn't meet your expectations, but I daresay they skewed a little high. And I don't see this particular obstacle, The Grudge, as superficial even if it was irrational...Joe's father is still deeply grieving and cramming a gnawing wound with anger probably hurt less than acknowledging his sadness. I don't find that its too easily resolved either, if it involves a life-or-death scenario...I felt the fathers' exchange in the truck was entirely merited and well-earned considering the circumstances. I can't see what about this conflict or its resolution rang false.

Why would a film which wants credit for dealing with the estrangement of a father and son choose to work through this by pulling them further apart? When the father suggests early in the film that what they both need is for Joe to go off to baseball camp for six weeks, don't we think it's absurd? "No!" we say. "You need to spend more time with your son!" But according to the film, his father is right. The film imagines that actually being together is incidental to the development of a human relationship and that consciousness-altering events which take place while you are apart ("child may be dead! now care about child more! hurr durr!") are all that matter. If the film was really interested in the father getting to know the son, it would have made it so that the monster brought the father and son together, forcing them to deal with each other. As it is, the film barely shows them together at all, and never really shows what a pleasant coexistence would even begin to look like. If Abrams wasn't prepared to do that he shouldn't have made the father's inability to know his son one of the film's major problems.

I really don't think it was Abrams' objective to resolve the father-son relationship any more than to allow for a sense of optimism going forward, out of the boundaries of the film, after Joe's father is completely jarred to his core when faced with possibly losing his son too. That may be too simple for you, but it sufficed for me. The overwhelming narrative emphasis in the film is on the kids and their relationships, and then to a lesser extent, Joe and his father's. Their embrace at the end was one of relief, and although I found

SpoilerShow

letting go of the necklace to be a little hokey

it spoke to a sense of "maybe these two can finally get to know each other" rather than a full resolution.

*I honestly don't know how much of this, if any, to spoiler-tag.

[LQ]

It almost surely was made for (from?) the generation you describe, but the great thing about being a 90s Kid is we "get" it too, since we saw all these hallmarks over and over on home video and cable-- I may not have been alive in the era depicted, but you get inundated and infused with these touchstone elements growing up on this material that it feels "right," at least from a pop culture stance, in a way devoid of the dreaded period fetishization

I love this description. Although I too qualify for that title, while growing up television and video were strictly restricted, and I'm still playing major catch-up today. One thing that I love about this movie is that it made me feel nostalgic for that era of film and television even if I still have never seen The Goonies, say, or only recently saw Jaws for the first time. I feel invited to the 90s Kids' party while watching Super 8, probably for the reasons that Roger Ryan laid out above.

[HistoryProf]

Got to see this today and agree wholeheartedly with the consensus here that the kids were phenomenal and the film as a whole was just fantastic. Most fun i've had at the theater in years. I thought it hit every note just about perfectly, right down to the corny ending and the monster with a heart of gold. Even that felt perfectly 80s to me. Keeping the focus on the kids through the majority was great, and each and every one of them was hilarious. I especially liked the pyromaniac w/ braces - who looked like he walked right off the set of Bad News Bears. Elle Fanning is proving to be everything her eldest sister thinks she is, and the lead boy had a vulnerability to him that made him just right for the hero.

as for this....

The fact that the threat doesn't have anything to do with the development of their relationship isn't the moment's strength though, but its weakness. It belies the fact that the whole grudge exists to create narrative energy with superficial, easily resolved obstacles to make up for Abrams' inability to imagine what engaging any of the possible complications of Joe's desires, a potentially much more interesting set of obstacles, would look like.

I wouldn't say inability - Abrams isn't going for Romeo and Juliet here, c'mon. As wonderful as I think it is, you're right, it is just a summer kids movie, after all. Its unfortunate that it didn't meet your expectations, but I daresay they skewed a little high. And I don't see this particular obstacle, The Grudge, as superficial even if it was irrational...Joe's father is still deeply grieving and cramming a gnawing wound with anger probably hurt less than acknowledging his sadness. I don't find that its too easily resolved either, if it involves a life-or-death scenario...I felt the fathers' exchange in the truck was entirely merited and well-earned considering the circumstances. I can't see what about this conflict or its resolution rang false.

I just want to echo every word of LQ's interpretation here, and suggest that Foam seems to be bringing in some extremely spurious expectations of the movie to be something other than it is. I thought the two dads in the jeep at the end was entirely realistic - a guy who probably really did wish it was him at the mill that day, and another who could only cope with his grief through anger. That wasn't about the kids - it was about them. Frankly, reading so much into the father-son relationship and criticizing the film for not being something it was never intended to be is just silly. Why is suggesting he go to baseball camp so hard to understand? the dad did it when he was a kid, and he doesn't know what else to do - the natural response for many who lose loved ones is to pretend they didn't. it's called denial. So 4 months passing and faced with losing their kids would seem a perfect time to break through those feelings and come to terms with now - which is what happens in those scenes.

Works for me.

[Foam]

I don't find that its too easily resolved either, if it involves a life-or-death scenario...I felt the fathers' exchange in the truck was entirely merited and well-earned considering the circumstances. I can't see what about this conflict or its resolution rang false.

I didn't mean "easily resolved" in that it's emotionally easy for the characters to resolve it. I'm saying that it's an easier narrative problem for Abrams to solve than the problem of the father's inability to know his son. Abrams just puts both kids in a dangerous position and the parents re-evaluate their priorities and the problem is solved. The exchange between the fathers in the truck was merited and made sense given the circumstances, but it's the circumstances themselves that I find to be a distraction from other more interesting dynamics the film itself introduces and I don't see as being followed to resolution (which is why I don't think I'm being too hard on it or asking it to be something it's not).

I really don't think it was Abrams' objective to resolve the father-son relationship any more than to allow for a sense of optimism going forward, out of the boundaries of the film, after Joe's father is completely jarred to his core when faced with possibly losing his son too. That may be too simple for you, but it sufficed for me. The overwhelming narrative emphasis in the film is on the kids and their relationships, and then to a lesser extent, Joe and his father's. Their embrace at the end was one of relief, and although I found

SpoilerShow

letting go of the necklace to be a little hokey

it spoke to a sense of "maybe these two can finally get to know each other" rather than a full resolution.

Fair points. I interpreted the father-son problem as a lack of his ability to get to know his son, whereas you seem to see the crux more as willingness, in which case the ending is more satisfactory than I first thought.

I just want to echo every word of LQ's interpretation here, and suggest that Foam seems to be bringing in some extremely spurious expectations of the movie to be something other than it is. I thought the two dads in the jeep at the end was entirely realistic - a guy who probably really did wish it was him at the mill that day, and another who could only cope with his grief through anger. That wasn't about the kids - it was about them. Frankly, reading so much into the father-son relationship and criticizing the film for not being something it was never intended to be is just silly. Why is suggesting he go to baseball camp so hard to understand? the dad did it when he was a kid, and he doesn't know what else to do - the natural response for many who lose loved ones is to pretend they didn't. it's called denial. So 4 months passing and faced with losing their kids would seem a perfect time to break through those feelings and come to terms with now - which is what happens in those scenes.

Not sure I can respond to all of this without getting repetitive, partly because I'm not sure what you're trying to get across. My problem is not with the psychological plausibility of the characters' actions within the situations, but with how the situations themselves develop and what this shows us about the difference between the sort of problems Abrams would like to deal with and the problems he's capable of dealing with. What I'm not clear on: did you think the film agreed with the father that baseball camp was a good option? It seems to me that it clearly doesn't in that one limited example (given the look on Joe's face when it's suggested) but the larger narrative does seem to agree about this sort of strategy for mending human relationships, and it's this incongruity that confuses me.

Tomato tomahto--glad that others got more out of this than I did.

[Brian C]

...the pic certainly has the most protracted, absurdly complicated and expensive-looking train derailment in cinema history going for it, if nothing else!

Alex Proyas's Knowing beats it on the first count handily and roughly ties it on the second, though it falls far short on the third.

Hasten to add, in case I'm miscontstrued: none of this is meant as complimentary to either film.

[HistoryProf]

My problem is not with the psychological plausibility of the characters' actions within the situations, but with how the situations themselves develop and what this shows us about the difference between the sort of problems Abrams would like to deal with and the problems he's capable of dealing with. What I'm not clear on: did you think the film agreed with the father that baseball camp was a good option? It seems to me that it clearly doesn't in that one limited example (given the look on Joe's face when it's suggested) but the larger narrative does seem to agree about this sort of strategy for mending human relationships, and it's this incongruity that confuses me.

I guess I can only say that I honestly don't know what it is you are asking. Obviously we are supposed to empathize with Joe and see that the dad is seeking to escape rather than confront his grief and thinks he can do that by sending his son to the same camp he went to as a kid. What you are asking in your final sentence is something that is apparently beyond my ability to grasp. I don't see any incongruity between a guy in denial w/ a lot of anger and then cathartically realizing/breaking through this via the crazy events he is caught up in. I don't understand who you think is agreeing with what.

Why is it so hard to see the dad thinking camp is a good idea - out of sheer desperation and a lack for any other ideas or answers - but realizing later it wasn't?

[HistoryProf]

AICN has posted an extended version of the vintage reelthat the doctor had in the trailer the kids watched to figure out what was going on. Good stuff.

[mfunk9786]

Foam, I mean this with all due respect: I'm starting to feel as if you went in looking for reasons to dislike this film, rather than sitting back and trying to enjoy yourself.

[Foam]

I guess I can only say that I honestly don't know what it is you are asking. Obviously we are supposed to empathize with Joe and see that the dad is seeking to escape rather than confront his grief and thinks he can do that by sending his son to the same camp he went to as a kid. What you are asking in your final sentence is something that is apparently beyond my ability to grasp. I don't see any incongruity between a guy in denial w/ a lot of anger and then cathartically realizing/breaking through this via the crazy events he is caught up in. I don't understand who you think is agreeing with what.

Why is it so hard to see the dad thinking camp is a good idea - out of sheer desperation and a lack for any other ideas or answers - but realizing later it wasn't?

I probably wasn't clear enough here. First, Joe's father suggests that what he and Joe "both need" is time apart (baseball camp). When we watch this scene, the audience understands why he would suggest this, but because of the way Joe reacts to this news, we disagree with him and think that what they both really need is precisely the opposite: to spend more time together and get to know each other. I assumed the film would follow up on this, but instead the film solves this very problem by doing the same thing it supposedly condemns: keeping them apart (just through the narrative rather than the baseball camp). For me that's the incongruity. Now, obviously there's a difference between being apart because of a monster and being apart because of your dad sending you to camp; my point is merely that I think the film recognizes that spending time together is the key to healing and getting to know each other, but it's not able/willing to show this process, which I thought would have been more interesting. I really don't think this is asking too much of a summer blockbuster; all you have to do is look at Spielberg's War of the Worlds. It's a film not without its share of problems, but at least it gets that if a problematic family dynamic is going to be a concern in your monster-disaster movie then the monster-disaster situation should probably force the estranged family members continuously together, generating emotion that way, rather than bringing them together by forcing them apart for the majority of the runtime. Watching a father and son grow together through the monster crisis would have been more interesting than seeing the father have an epiphany away from the son because of the monster crisis. Of course, Super 8 can't do this because it wants to devote a lot of time to the group of kids being funny, which is fine, but I think it shows that Abrams wasn't quite sure how to get the two types of movies he obviously likes to coalesce very neatly.

And I definitely think Abrams wants credit for this being a film that deals with the father-son dynamic just as much as Joe's relationship with the other kids. Compare it to The Sandlot where we also have a (in this case step-)father-son problem but it really is secondary to his relationship with the other kids: the scenes with the stepfather are just used to develop Scott's character before he can even approach the other kids, whereas in Super 8 none of the kids but Alice have anything to do with the family dynamic at all. The Sandlot shows a kid growing from being a sheltered kid not entirely at ease in his family to one who finds belonging both to his neighborhood and eventually the world through baseball. Super 8 noticeably begins and ends with scenes focused on the family, which to me signals that it sees this as its "heart", even though it weirdly chooses to spend more time with the kids' relationships which didn't strike me as all that incredibly important to the emotional energy of the film at all (other than the relationship between Joe and Alice, which I've already explained my problems with). In fact, I think there were two kids who seemed barely there at all other than that one of them had a proclivity for puking--in Stand By Me and The Sandlot each and every kid is more memorable than those two. I wondered if that one kid who stays behind at the crisis center was written in at the last minute just because they needed a kid to tell Joe's dad where they were. It certainly wouldn't be hard to just go back and throw another kid with another zippy line into those kid-banter scenes.

Foam, I mean this with all due respect: I'm starting to feel as if you went in looking for reasons to dislike this film, rather than sitting back and trying to enjoy yourself.

I never know what to do with these comments because if that's what you want to think I can't really prove otherwise. All I can say and hope that you trust is that I did go in hoping to enjoy myself. I've always thought Abrams would be able to pull this sort of thing off. Years ago I saw a TED talk with him where he said some things about how when people copy Spielberg, they always copy the wrong things. He showed the scene in Jaws between Brody and his son trading gestures, pointing out that this was the sort of crucial stuff Spielberg's imitators missed. At the time I thought to myself "this guy gets it" and so I was really excited by the trailer for this: finally we'll get a Spielbergian blockbuster by someone who has really paid attention to how they work. I came in hoping to like it, but now I guess my expectations were too high. Keep in mind I wasn't thinking about or looking to think about any of the above stuff the way you read it while I was watching the movie. I'm definitely a "sit back" kind of movie-watcher; I feel first and process later. While I was watching the movie I was surrendered to it as you suggest, but I nevertheless found myself feeling cheated and needing to actively cling to every little scrap that I did enjoy. All of this stuff you see here is my attempt, after the fact, to understand where those cheated feelings come from. And, by the way, I post that attempt on here in order to see whether my responses are warranted or not. People on here tend to be close watchers and challenging thinkers. I'm not interested in just showing off how well I can savage a kids movie and I hope I don't come across that way because nothing could be less interesting to me. I want to know if I'm wrong and can be turned on to a movie I wanted to enjoy more.

[mfunk9786]

I just meant that by focusing on something that was ultimately a very minor plot thread in this rich but intentionally formula-heavy film, you're criticizing one tree for being too scrawny (in your opinion) without realizing that you're surrounded by an entire forest. The father-son dynamic in this film was its structure, but not its heart. Joe needed to find himself something to find solace in that wasn't his mother, and that was never going to be his father, or his controlling best friend. In his process of finding comfort again (and that had everything to do with his interactions with the other kids, by the way) he not only found that person, but he also strengthened his bonds with his best friend and his father. I don't see the inherent flaw in telling the story that way.

[Foam]

But for this genre to work most effectively the heart should structure it. If the heart of the movie is supposed to be his finding the replacement for his mother in Alice, and I think the film may be attempting to do that, then the heart of the movie was already resolved long before it was over and possibly even before the halfway point. With the question of "Does Alice like Joe?" basically resolved, we have to worry about all the other aspects that it unfortunately wants to both treat as minor and use as structure for the next half hour. Wouldn't it have been better if it was the Alice problem (meaning the question of her affection for him rather than whether she dies or not) that was resolved immediately before the locket was given to the monster, rather than the father problem, since it's the Alice problem that really fills the gap the locket represents? Structure isn't just arbitrary, it places emphases, and this movie is basically inside out. Or something.