Our old movie town has been repeatedly visited by aliens from time immemorial. In the 1950s public interest in space travel and extraterrestrial objects grew immensely. As a result, several successful films with large budgets and impressive special effects were produced, including The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another World (1951), The War of the Worlds(1952), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). However, the first movie revolving around extraterrestrial creatures was Rocketship X-M (1950), where a Martian woman is depicted as a mute with enormous black pupils. Ever since, aliens have been packaged and sold in hundreds of different ways. Often they are vicious creatures, threatening the very existence of mankind (Aliens, Body Snatchers, Independence day); sometimes they are refuges merely seeking shelter (District 9, Cocoon), while at other times they also prove to be our best friends on earth (E.T. the Extra- Terrestrial, Superman).
This Tuesday, I met a new member of the alien species at the Rainbow cinema. And he is definitely not your average four limbed or long tailed foreigner. This one is a subterranean araneae- a huge black spider-like (3 pairs of legs instead of 4) creature trapped on earth by audacious U.S. military officers, who are bent on using the poor monster as their lab pet.
Super 8 begins in early 1979, when a factory worker is shown changing the number of days since the last accident from 784 to 1 day. The camera shuts and the plot veers to the funeral of Joseph Lamb's ( Joel Courtney) mother, who died in the industrial accident. The discussions among the guests attending the funeral reveals the relationship between Joe, a 13 years old boy living in the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio, and his father- Jackson Lamb, a hardy police officer (Kyle Chandler); and offers an explanation for Joe's behavior, who is shown visibly distraught over the loss of his mother, sitting on a swing set holding his mother's locket, which contains a picture of her holding Joe as an infant.
In the mean time Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard) drives up to Joe's house disheveled and enters the house. After a brief moment, sound of yelling and dishes breaking can be heard from within and soon Jackson is seen shoving Dainard down the steps in handcuffs. Placing Dainard in the back seat of his patrol vehicle, Joe's father pauses to look at his son. Visibly upset, he tells Joe to stay home and he will return soon. Later in the movie Alice, Dainard's daughter (Elle Fanning), reveals that her father, an alcoholic, had been drinking the morning of the accident. A kind lady, Joe's mother had stayed to cover Dainard's shift, so that he wouldn't be fired. Unfortunately, she met with an accident and was crushed by a steel beam.
In the mean time Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard) drives up to Joe's house disheveled and enters the house. After a brief moment, sound of yelling and dishes breaking can be heard from within and soon Jackson is seen shoving Dainard down the steps in handcuffs. Placing Dainard in the back seat of his patrol vehicle, Joe's father pauses to look at his son. Visibly upset, he tells Joe to stay home and he will return soon. Later in the movie Alice, Dainard's daughter (Elle Fanning), reveals that her father, an alcoholic, had been drinking the morning of the accident. A kind lady, Joe's mother had stayed to cover Dainard's shift, so that he wouldn't be fired. Unfortunately, she met with an accident and was crushed by a steel beam.
Four months later, just as summer break begins, Joe and his friends Charles, Preston, Martin and Carey set out to shoot a scene of Charles' low budget zombie movie on Super 8 mm film, which Charles had intended to send for a competition. Despite having no driver's license, Alice takes her father's car to drive them to an old train depot, where the shooting was scheduled by Charles. During the shoot, Joe sees a pick-up truck drive onto the tracks towards an oncoming train, which causes a massive derailment. After an initial bout of chaos and confusion, the kids approach the truck and discover their biology teacher, Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman) behind the wheel of the truck. He warns them to never talk about what they saw - otherwise they and their parents will be killed.
The Air Force soon arrives at the sight and the kids flee in Alice's father's car. Unfortunately for them, the commanding officer, Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich), finds one of the used Super 8 film boxes that the kids left behind and suspects that Dr. Woodward had someone there to film the derailment. Colonel Nelec and his team then engage in looking for something that seems to be missing.
After days of strange phenomena like pets missing, kitchen appliances, car engines, and power lines disappearing, people being abducted, and so on, the Air Force commences "Operation Walking Distance" and deliberately starts a wildfire outside the town. This gives them a pretense to evacuate the entire town to the local Air Force base. At this base, when Joe runs into Dainard, the latter, thoroughly disturbed and hurt, informs Joe that a creature abducted his daughter, Alice.
Taking the help of a film store clerk, Joe and his friends break into Woodward's stash of confiscated items, hoping he may have hidden clues about the creature there, that might help them save Alice. In the papers, film, and audio recordings they find, they discover that the government imprisoned an extraterrestrial that crashed on Earth in 1958. The alien only wished to rebuild its ship and return home but was instead imprisoned and tortured by the Air Force in order to learn from the creature's advanced technology and intellect. The kids are also able to conclude from the film, that Dr. Woodward had collided with the train, not to kill it but hoping to free the creature.
In the meanwhile, Jackson goes to meet Nelec to find answers for the evacuation and all the recent air force operations conducted in the town but is placed under military arrest. However, he soon succeeds to escape.
On the other hand, Colonel Nelec and his men storm the school and capture Joe, Carey, Charles, and Martin as they work their way through Woodward's stash of files. Upon searching the youngsters, one of the men takes the locket containing the photo of Joe's mother. Nelec's team then place the children on a security bus and head back to the Air Force base. But on way, the creature attacks them and flips the bus on its side. Nelec's men are killed while Joe and his friends escape by breaking through the vehicle's glass windows. After the carnage is over, Joe recovers his mother's locket from the body of the soldier who took it, once again finding solace in the sense of safety it provides him.
Next, as the kids head through the town searching for Alice, they find the whole town under heavy fire from malfunctioning military equipment and Martin is injured. So Charles stays behind with him while Joe and Carey go on to find Alice.
Joe soon finds the creature's subterranean lair near the cemetery where his mother is buried. He manages to rescue Alice by having Carey use his fireworks as a distraction. They also rescue the town's sheriff and another woman, who had previously been reported missing. But as they make their escape, the creature recaptures the sheriff and the woman. Soon after, Joe is also grabbed by the creature, which takes him high up, close to his face. Joe is however not scared. He tells the creature: "Bad things happen, and it's no one's fault…I'm sorry." The creature understands Joe because of its ability of telepathy through touch and lets go of Joe, allowing him and his friends to escape.
Shortly after, all the missing metals reappear as a spaceship begins to take form around the town's water tower, just above the alien's lair. And as the metal pieces get sucked up into forming the spacecraft, Joe's mother's necklace is also hurled out from his pocket. And Joe finally decides to let go.
The movie ends with the star ship blasting off towards the creature's home planet while Joe and Alice hold hands.
The 1 hr 52 mins long movie had all that is required to make a great Si fi movie. A winning team like that of Famous Five or Hardy Boys, a grotesque alien- whose face in fact, loosely imitated that of E.T.'s and even the alien- infested black Spiderman, a producer who is highly experienced in this genre and even an audience eager to appreciate (how starved we are for good movies these days!). But something still went missing; and while we were leaving the hall at 11.20 in the night, the most common 8 comments heard were:
1) Could have been made much better
2) Spielberg's aging
3) Same old stuff
4) The creature was hardly shown much...too subtle
5) The kids could have done better- very poorly directed
6) Hopefully the other one (probably talking about Cowboys & Aliens) will be better.
7) Could have gone for Bridesmaids instead
8) Why was the movie called Super 8 again?... I thought there were 5/6 kids
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