'Super 8' is a 1970s Science Fiction/Horror/Thriller Plunked into the 21st Century

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'Super 8' is a 1970s Science Fiction/Horror/Thriller Plunked into the 21st Century
June 11, 2011
Mark Whittington
Yahoo! Voices

"Super 8" is an attempt to not only make a science fiction/horror/thriller movie set in the late 1970s, but to infuse it with late 1970s sensibilities as if taken out of time and plunked down into the 21st Century. It works better than it has a right to.

Some spoilers nay follow.

One of the other conceits of "Super 8" is that it is a homage (the unkind would say "rip off') of early Spielberg movies, made before he became a serious director. "Super 8" is not really a rip off, as the man himself has a producer's credit, lending his seal of approval. Still, would be a great exercise for the viewer to locate elements of other movies in the film.

The basic plot is that of "ET", only with a lot more explosions and violence and ET being very angry after having been an unwilling guest of the US government for the previous twenty years. Also ET looks more like the mama alien from "Alien" and behaves like her too. But it is not his fault, but ours as it turns out.

There are also elements of "Close Encounters" and "Jaws." The creature, as the shark, is not seen clearly at first.

The most jarring aspect of the film is its 1970s approach to how the military is depicted. The Air Force personnel who descend on the small, Ohio steel town in the wake of a horrific train derailment, followed by mysterious disappearances and vandalisms, are cardboard cut outs of very mean, secretive, military martinets who are always telling people that what they are doing is classified, when they are not lying and violating peoples' civil rights in the name of national security. Toward the end of the movie, they destroy the town trying to subdue the thing that they were transporting in the train.

Just as an aside, one can only wonder how the folks from the "Stargate" series, which more accurately and fairly depict military characters, would have handled the situation. One would assume far more intelligently.

"Super 8" is saved by the kid actors, whose unaffected, natural performances are joyful to watch. The kids, sort of like young Spielberg and his friends (including one who will grow up, if he manages to survive, into Adam Savage of "Mythbusters") used to, are making a movie about zombies, but stumble instead into a real life horror movie. They give what would have otherwise have been a turgid melodrama a much needed infusion of heart and innocence.

"Super 8" would have been a better movie had it been released in its era of 1978. Viewing it in 2011 is like watching one of those old Spielberg movies from an adult perspective. It is more of a curiosity than the wonderful thrill ride that it might have been.