Super 8

[Stefen]

I'm going to see tomorrow night. it's looking more and more like the movie Super 8 wants to be.

What?

[Ghostboy]

I'm going to see tomorrow night. it's looking more and more like the movie Super 8 wants to be.

What?

ATTACK THE BLOCK is nothing like what SUPER 8 is (or is striving for). It's got a Spielberg vibe, for sure, but it's not the awe-and-wonder-innocence Spielberg (which is what SUPER 8 is after), but more like the Spielberg who let other directors handle the movies that were just too far outside his developing brand for him to handle himself, even though his fingerprints are all over them.

[Stefen]

They don't seem very much alike to me, either. Other than involving children and aliens/monsters. Super 8 seems to be doing what it wants to do pretty well.

I really want to see them both.

[Ghostboy]

Having seen it, I was right about my above comparisons. However, Super 8 would make an AWESOME double feature with Attack The Block. In that order.

[Sleepless]

I'm not sure I get the hype about this film. I was discussing it with a co-worker and they said the reason they weren't interested in seeing it was that the trailer seemed just like an M Night film.

Can someone explain why I should be excited about this (other than just saying it's JJ Abrams)?

[NEON MERCURY]

Can someone explain why I should be excited about this (other than just saying it's JJ Abrams)?

bc these niggaz are up in dis!!!

[tpfkabi]

I think this is the first film I've seen at the theater since Inception?
I've wanted to see Tree of Life and Midnight in Paris, but it's not an option yet.

For me the CGI will keep it from being a classic kids' film like the aforementioned Goonies or ET. Sure those had special effects of the times, but something is infinitely more believable when it's handcrafted than computer generated in my book. Sloth is pretty ridiculous, but it's not too far-fetched from the real Elephant Man. Even the cheesy looking pirate ship on the horizon at the end is so much more endearing to me..

The director kid made me think of Buzz from Home Alone 1 & 2.
Fanning 47 impressed me after seeing her interview on Leno as a spastic teenager. She really did a good acting job in comparison to her true self.

But man, that train wreck was just ridiculously over the top for me.

p.s. Don't leave immediately when the credits start.

[pete]

I love Filmdrunk, but there are a lot of movies that I disagree with Vince on.  Atonement was good, damn it!

atonement was pretty terrible

I remember your complaints. I thought you read the film wrong.

yes and I remember your defense being "yeah [whatever I didn't like about the film] was the point" ish. I don't mean to hijack this thread though sorry.

[Ravi]

This was a mostly fun film, but once the kids found out what was going on the revelation wasn't that interesting, and it was sort of on autopilot from then on. But the performances were terrific, and the first half or so is really exciting. The film reminded me of what it felt like to be a kid making little movies with my parents' camcorder.

[Kellen]

It was an enjoyable Summer film.  Thought the kids were pretty good throughout, and I laughed quite a bit more than I was expecting too.  I wasn't a fan of the train wreck scene.

[Gold Trumpet]

Spoilers

The train wreck scene was too much and I would have lessened some of the later action scenes because the kids started to look like stand ins for action heroes, but I talked to another friend who saw it and she said the film was too slow. Guess it's a sign of the times.

However, I loved the movie. J.J. Abrams best decision was to let the movie just develop and keep the main explanation parts of the alien subplot until the far end - a little before the climactic chase sequences. Even when some parts of the alien story was starting to develop, more things between the two young characters were in greater focus. You can't make much interesting out of an alien story in this vortex so I loved how slimmed down it was. A love story between two young leads is predictable, but the film had enough within each scene that I never thought about the moving plot parts. The movie is definitely better than the Goonies. No question about that. And unlike any recent summer movie, I also want to own it.

[modage]

Ha, we are truly opposites.

Oh, the disappointment. Usually I would take responsibility for this, knowing full well how silly it is to rest an entire summer of film's enjoyment on the shoulders of one film. That's what I had done with "Super 8," but I didn't act alone. My accomplice was none other than J.J. Abrams, co-creator of "Lost," creator of "Alias" and director of two previous summer blasts "Mission: Impossible III" and 2009's "Star Trek." I enjoyed both of those films but there was nothing in them to believe that Abrams should be placed up on the level with Christopher Nolan as a filmmaker who knew how to build a better, smarter summer movie. But "Super 8" was different. This would be an original story, with a script by Abrams himself and no franchise limitations to hold back his imagination. Early footage looked great and the filmmaker employed his notorious veil of secrecy on every aspect of the project with details about the film coming out only recently. On top of all that, Steven Spielberg was producing the film and it seemed to have just a spark of that classic Amblin feeling. How could it go wrong?

Within the first minute of the film, I knew something was off and it never quite settled for me again. The very first lines of dialogue are spoken by an incidental character describing the relationship between the lead Joe Lamb (15 year old Joel Courtney) and his father ("Friday Night Lights" supercoach Kyle Chandler). The character described how it was going to be tough for Joe now that his mother was gone since his father wasn't used to being around much doing the day-to-day raising a child. It was the first line of dialogue spoken in the film, a line that any audience member would have figured out within minutes had it not been spoonfed to them with dialogue. And I'm not sure the film ever really recovered. That's not to say the film's heart wasn't in the right place. "Super 8" succeeds in establishing it's young characters as believable, enthusiastic kids. Elle Fanning in particular delivers a performance just completely beyond her years and compared to most summer spectacle that goes a long way.

Unfortunately there was that story to get to, the one that had been kept hidden from the public for so long. The film is basically about a group of kids who are making a zombie movie and witness a train crash that happens to be carrying an alien that's now wreaking havoc on their small town. Yep, that's basically it. If you're looking for a twist, or mystery or something to distinguish this from the dozens of other monster movies of it's type, it isn't the story. And that's fine, "Cloverfield" (which Abrams produced) had a similar hush-hush marketing campaign and the film was still an entertaining spin on a found-footage Godzilla movie. "Super 8" is disappointingly flat. Most of the attack sequences were staged poorly and featuring completely tertiary characters like "the gas station attendant" that drained them of their suspense. (The film could have really used producer Spielberg stepping in to sprinkle some of his "Jaws"/"Jurassic Park" magic on the suspense sequences.)

And when it was all over all I could think was "that's it?" That's the story you wanted to tell? The raw ingredients were all there for a classic but the script seems like a first pass. I've tried to imagine if I would have felt the same way about the film were Abrams name not on it and I think I would have. It's a solid C+ but I still believe he's capable of so much more. Most of the criticism I've read about the film has been that it's aping Spielberg too slavishly but having recently rewatched "E.T." I didn't find them to be that similar various surface details aside. The other easy mark is that there are too many lense flares but I hardly noticed them. "Super 8" isn't a bad film but there was no magic and certainly doesn't come close to capturing the wonder and awe of Spielberg's early films. And for a man obsessed with mystery boxes, he should have known better than to make one where the box was empty.

[Gold Trumpet]

Ha, we are truly opposites.

Hah, it can be a good thing.

[Stefen]

I thought it was really fun. Just a good time at the movies. It didn't have that sense of wonder that I would get when watching stuff like E.T. and The Goonies. It was a lot darker than I thought it would be.

Am I the only one who likes Abrams lens flares? Seems that way. I really like the way they look. 

Question for those who have seen it.

SPOILER (it's not letting me use spoiler tags. Says I don't have permission? 

What was the deal with the pets going missing? They just left but it never explained why.

[Gold Trumpet]

On your last sentence Stefen, my friend complained about that too. For me, since the story isn't Nolan-like and has an explanation for everything, I just think Abrams wanted to let that be. No real need to explain something that didn't factor into the story much at all. But I do imagine an early cut delved into it more.