Super 8

The 2011 J. J. Abrams sci-fi thriller, Super 8, felt like it was gunning for a traditional return to classic 80s cinema, but managed to do much better than what many would’ve assumed. With solid reviews and a decent box office, this seemingly straightforward picture under the banner of Paramount did more than just coast on its premise, adding in just enough new things to counteract its formulaic origins. It is surprisingly difficult to find a balance between catering to nostalgia and suffocating people with too much familiarity, but this movie for the most part finds that right balance and resulted in a good time. After a workplace accident causes the death of his mother, Joe Lamb (played by Joel Courtney) feels incredibly lost and alone, especially since his town sheriff father, Jack (played by Kyle Chandler) is never around to properly grieve with him. Instead, Joe spends his time working on a zombie film with his best friend, Charles (played by Riley Griffiths), which he plans to enter in a Super 8 film competition. Getting the help of his other friends as well as a girl named Alice (played by Elle Fanning), who Joe has a crush on, the kids set out to direct this film outside of town at an empty train station, but are interrupted by a drastic train accident that seems to draw the attention of a local air force base, with Colonel Nelec (played by Noah Emmerich) eventually heading into town and forcing a curfew on the residences. After viewing the footage from the night and seeing something abnormal emerge from the crash, the kids eventually put together that the military have taken over their town in order to find whatever had escaped from that train, seemingly being aware of more than what they are letting on. Going from filming terror to being in the heat of it themselves when people they know start to get abducted, these kids will need to confront this alien and save all of the people it has taken. Super 8 is thankfully not just a nostalgia-baity picture, and genuinely tries to form a connection with its audience through its good performances, directing, visuals and atmosphere, and for the most part, succeeds in doing so, even though more cracks start to form as it reaches its conclusion.

The movie is glowing with signs that it wants to be a throwback film, and it doesn’t just come from the premise, but also from whose working behind the camera. Steven Spielberg, who is known for working on films that have helped immortalize this cinematic 80s personality like The Goonies and especially E.T, acts as a producer on this film alongside Bryan Burk (a frequent collaborator of director, J. J. Abrams) with both Spielberg’s production company (Amblin Entertainment) and Abrams’ production company (Bad Robot Productions) working together to bring this film to life. Abrams clearly has a love for science fiction with plenty of examples within his directing and producing filmography, but his later attachment to properties like Star Wars and Star Trek clearly shows a love for retro medial, and that mixed with Spielberg’s mostly timeless appeal and ability to construct retro content in a way that can be approachable, but adequately intense when required, seemed like a match made in heaven for this premise both helped create. On the surface, it feels like a very standard 80s kids’ film with a sci-fi spin, including expected tropes like interacting with an alien, a family burdened with a tragic lose, a whole slew of cartoony characters on both the good and the bad side, and a tone that fluctuates between rough but child-friendly, to harsh and pretty mean yet never to the point of being unwatchable. While the movie doesn’t physically feel like an 80s film due to Abrams having a much more modern style of directing, it gets the pieces and the attitude down pretty nicely, with it featuring plenty of cussing, un-pleasantries and just enough of a dirty quality to make it clear what its replicating without spell it out. What is nice is that while clearly playing to a specific style, it isn’t just doing it beat-for-beat and knows to when to change things up to not feel lazy. While the film is pretty predictable and becomes a little underwhelming, it is directed and paced in a way that you don’t always know where it’s going, and a good chunk of the film does a good job balancing between being a sci-fi alien picture and a down-to-earth coming-of-age film for kids. It can be likeable at times, but is also fairly good at the suspense, it has good atmosphere during both the soft and the harsh moments, and it clearly has a lot of passion put behind it. With that said, the film loses a lot of its strengths once it reaches the third act, where all the good build-up is demolished due to a bad payoff, character arcs are never given satisfactory conclusions, the tone starts to become a little too watered-down to be fun anymore, and it just zooms to the ending without any feeling of fulfillment or closure, it’s a really weak ending (which seems to be a common problem for Abrams as a filmmaker).

For characters that are written as very archetypal, a good cast is going to be needed in order to sell most people of this idea. The film isn’t home to any big names, but most of the people in this film are pretty good and work in this kind of a genre in a way that feels like old fashioned, but not to an extreme degree. The kids in this film talk like how you expect kids of this era to talk like; they swear, they can be pretty cruel and hurtful, they interact off each other in a bratty manner, and they feel very natural yet never to the point that they become unlikeable, they work quite well here and most of the actors do a good job making all of this feel very normal. While some of the secondary team members played by Ryan Lee, Gabriel Basso and Zach Mills feel pretty movie-esque and not like true people, the remaining three do much better. Riley Griffiths gives the character of Charles an attitude that is commanding and not always the most pleasant, but you can feel his passion as a filmmaker, and he handles the dramatic stuff okay enough. Joel Courtney is pretty good as the lead, taking what is a very generic leading character and bringing just enough life that he still feels genuine, but considering how much time is spent on his grief about his mother, the film doesn’t do a very good job addressing it, especially with his connection to his father, which is barely brought up and is shallowly put together by the end, so that is a little bit of an issue. Elle Fanning can be a little mixed as the character of Alice, with an odd delivery and a past that is sadly not as interesting as you’d predict it to be given how they build it up (they give a hint to something more under the surface, but it’s a very predictable issue), but she still does a good job, shares some good chemistry with Courtney, and seems to shine the best when she acts within these fan movies, as her dramatic chops and unique facial features really shine. There are a few shining spots in some of the background actors like AJ Michalka, Brett Rice, David Gallagher and Glynn Turman, who give off just enough cartoonish personality to add a liveliness to the world, but that doesn’t really come through on the antagonistic side, as they are played as very standard and are acted as accordingly. Kyle Chandler as the father is fine but doesn’t have any material to work with and therefore can’t leave an impression, and Noah Emmerich as the villain is played so generically that he barely even feels like a character, just a template for the genre.

As previously stated, the film doesn’t really look like an 80s film due to how it’s filmed and looks overall, with Abrams being a director who has a very specific style that can look a little grimy and dirty, but never old-fashioned (which makes sense given how much of a sci-fi and tech nerd he seems to be). Now this doesn’t mean that everything looks awful, because whenever the film is set in the daytime and it gets some nice shots of open fields or even a typical suburban household, it looks nice enough and can feel time appropriate, but it is whenever the film is shot in the dark where the problematic elements of his visual design start to show themselves. It’s often hard to make it, it’s not always shot the best outside of a few choice action moments, the lighting is too blaring and never feels realistic (those pesky lens flairs keep showing up in all of his and Spielberg’s projects so they were going to be plentiful this time around), the colors are hideous with smears of dirty green, yellow and brown doted all over the places (even when it isn’t fitting), and since the movie features a good amount of CGI that is a little hit-and-miss, a lot of scenes that feature pivotal turning points are shot in the dark in order to save on time and money. When it comes to the effects, they aren’t all great and can look distractingly fake in a movie that is trying to feel retro and classical, like the train crash and even the design of the alien itself (played weirdly by Bruce Greenwood in a non-speaking role), but others look pretty adequate, like whenever they have an explosion, so it’s a little bit inconsistent but not a huge detriment. The score for this film composed by Michael Giacchino received a lot of praise for how it captures the sound of those classic 80s films, and given how talented he is as a composer, it isn’t surprising to see him succeed again. It does a great job bringing a cozy timeless feel and it knows when to play up the slightly corny and showy nature of the piece without losing track of its tone. It can be soft and atmospheric, but also jarring and humorously dramatic, it is a very well-handled score.

Super 8 may not be as strong as the movies it is mirroring, but it doesn’t stop it from being pretty strong regardless. You’d figure that since the filmmaking feels very dissimilar to what it is trying to replicate that it would hinder the overall experience, but if anything, it benefits from it and makes it stand apart from being just another flimsy attempt at banking on nostalgia, instead forcing the film to earn the audience’s attention legitimately (which given the critical and box office results, it seemed to do). It isn’t a flawless picture and has trouble in some of its scripting decisions as well as an ending that just fails on all accounts (Abrams always starts the sprint off great, but continuously trips at the finish line), but it has a good cast, a pleasant familiar atmosphere, a memorable score, pretty good direction, and enough tweaks to the formula that it works as its own creation. Not quite a blast from the past, but still shows its love in every frame.