Moving on. This review will be an unprofessional trying to be professional meaning that I will critically look at the film but by no means do I classify myself as a professional movie critic (although some movie critics are
pretty bad). Also, this "review" will have some spoilers in it.
Here's a little background information about Super 8 before I start the "review": Super 8 is about 8 friends who love to make movies, they are trying to make a movie at a train station when the director of their film sees that there is actually a train coming toward them. This is perfect, he thinks and he tells everyone to get ready and that they will film the scene when the train is passing by. Seems innocent enough right? Well for some reason a car gets on the train tracks and crashes head on into the train derailing the train and everything goes to hell. It turns out that there is an alien as cargo and it is let loose because of this crash. The army then comes to the town and looks for the creature. The kids and the main characters dad try to figure out what is going on in their town. Here's the trailer if you want to either know more or want a better explanation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpzUCA5i6zY
I saw the movie Super 8 on the weekend and didn't really think much of it, I mean it was an ok movie but I didn't really see anything great in it (besides the acting). However after I saw it I was bored and check out the reviews and to my surprise it got pretty good reviews from film critics. Now I'm not a film critic but I do have to say that I don't know why the critics gave it such high marks, I mean even Roger Ebert (my least favorite film critic on the planet but someone who people respect for some reason) gave it 3 and a half stars (and yet he only gave kick ass 1...).
Why exactly did this film get such high marks? Well one of the main reasons I believe is the aspect of nostalgia, now I wasn't alive in the 80s (ok fine, technically it's 1979 but close enough) so there was no nostalgic factor for me in the movie which might be why I don't care that much for when the film was set (although I do have to say it is cool how they did that). I did go see this with my parents though, and my mom pointed out that they messed up on some parts, such as saying that the 7 eleven they have there is modern. I'd like to say that this is true but I cannot because I wasn't around in that time and I could not see any old photos of a 7-Eleven unless they're too old.
Another thing could have been the way that the alien was reviled (it was actually pretty cool how the did this. The alien was in many early parts of the movie however the audience never got to see the creature until close to the end of the movie) although I think it might have been better if you never saw the creature or if you only saw parts of it like a leg, foot, hand, and/or arm. Maybe the acting also helped it get high marks? That could be true because the acting was pretty good, however the problem with this is that a movie could have great acting but that doesn't make it a good movie.
However there are quite a few major flaws in the movie. One of them was that the main character (Joe) notices that his dog is gone right away, but for some reason it takes him a day or two to realize that his dad has been kidnapped? How is this even supposed to work, he sees his dad every night so he should know that his dad
And speaking of the dog, the film does not show any dog ever again after the police find out where the dogs are. So did they get the dogs or did they just leave them in the town the dogs were in?
Another part I don't like is close to the end of the film when there's some symbolism, which I think is great, however the way that this symbolism is portrayed was a huge flaw. The part of the film I am talking about is when the necklace that Joe has is getting pulled to help make the aliens space craft and in the end Joe let's go of the necklace. The symbolism here is pretty good, it's showing that Joe is finally letting go of the past, however there is a major flaw here. The space craft has a gigantic magnetic pull, you see it pulling soldiers equipped with guns up from the ground, however Joe doesn't get pulled up, nor does his necklace break in half or go right through his hand due to the magnetism. This part of the movie could have easily been done if the director wasn't super happy about magnifying things.
The town where the movie takes place also gets set on fire (well the grass close to the town does, and that is why they evacuate the town) however the fire seemed to die down when the kids go back to their school to get information about the alien they are up against. I have no idea why the fire died down because I thought the point of the fire was to draw out the alien, not to evacuate the town. Maybe I was just missing something.
Another major major major flaw was that at one point Joe's love interest (Alice) was tied up and hanging from the ceiling. Joe gets her down but her feet are still bound together, not to worry though because there is a random person who doesn't have her feet tied? That just woke up and the camera goes to her, then back on Alice who suddenly does not have her feet tied anymore but Joe didn't cut the weird black cocoon thing that was binding her legs? Maybe the ghost did it! There's also an appearance of the police chief who was seen hanging from the ceiling but is suddenly on the ground without bound feet. Wow this ghost surely works hard! Yeah, this is just a huge flaw of the movie.
There might be some other major flaws I'm missing but I cannot remember any more right now. So besides those there are a few minor flaws (tanks that suddenly shoot rapid fire even though they can only have 1 shell at a time and have to be manually reloaded), a few things don't get explained, a guy magically survives a head on car crash with a train but the train is totaled. Explosives being carried on a train with cargo that seems too valuable to be in a train with explosives, the commanding officer knowing that people saw the accident and seeming like he will do something about looking for them but hardly does anything about it, the alien being too tall to actually be in one of the cargo holds on the train, ect.
In closing this is a decent movie, but if you look though it in the eyes of a movie critic it might not be that great. However, assuming none of you are movie critics or really care about analyzing movies (I think I'm the only one I know who does that, and I only do it sometimes like when critics say a movie is good. That is one of the reasons I like Black Swan so much, but it's not the time to talk about that movie), I think that it's at least worth a watch.
Also as a nice little side note I got a new follower :) Shout out to Incensis. I hope you will enjoy the future blogs.
Reminder for this blog: There's a difference between looking at a movie like a normal person and looking at one like a film critic, you can enjoy a movie a lot but that doesn't mean that the film is good from a critical view.
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