Climbing Higher Pictures

J.J. Abrams has reached the point in his young career where he can already do almost whatever he wants. This has allowed him to create his passion project, an homage to classic Spielberg movies that looks to reignite the imaginative fire that propelled such hits as E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Having an idol like Spielberg is something many young filmmakers can relate to, but getting the chance to make your own Spielberg movie, well that’s something else entirely. Does Super 8 stand on its own as a classic of the genre, or does it fall short of its lofty ambitions?

Super 8 Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: A-

There was a time when youth was respected by Hollywood. It was a time before sheer and unadulterated consumerism co-opted children’s entertainment. Disney cartoons told classic stories that were as fresh and new as they were classic and timeless, and the sugar coated garbage of the Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers crowd hadn’t even been hinted at. Films like The Sandlot and Angels in the Outfield made children protagonists a force of character and story the likes of which would never be seen again, shaping an entire generation’s views on meaningful storytelling. This was the end of an era, an era which began more than a decade before, when films like E.T. were of the opinion that children’s stories didn’t have to treat children like idiots to be appealing. That talking down to children was as childish as pretending our imaginations simply disappear as we get older. These were films which looked up at the night sky and beheld it for the wonder that it is, not the pattern of visible radiation we would come to learn about as we got older. Movies kept the magic alive, and in the darkness of a movie theater, what you couldn’t see became almost as important as what you could.

These days, that magic is all but gone. Anything you can think of can be created in a computer, and therefore nothing really holds the weight of discovery anymore. Advertising campaigns rely on showing you as much of the movie as they dare, believing you’ll only be truly tempted to buy if you know what you’re getting going in. There’s no surprise anymore, no mystery, and J.J. Abrams remains one of the few Hollywood directors working today who takes the secrecy of his projects as seriously as their actual production. His new film Super 8 is an homage to the classic Spielberg movies he loved growing up, a combination of E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Jaws. But it’s a lot more than that. It’s a revival of the classic child protagonist, the youthful perspective that has begun to see the shades of grey that permeate the world, but is pure enough to appreciate them on only a superficial level. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone into a theater without a solid idea of what I expected from a movie, and I’ve got to say, it was a breath of fresh air.

Now, Super 8 is not for everyone. If you’ve got a predominately realistic outlook on the world, (your bathroom is full of non-fiction literature) you prefer your nine to five grind over dreaming of a better future, or you’ve strangled your inner child long ago and hung the lifeless corpse between your business slacks… this is not the movie for you. But if you, like so many of us, get a warm glow in your heart when you think about the power of those old fashioned cinematic masterpieces that transported you to another place and time, the “they don’t make em like this anymore” flicks that you hope to one day share with your children, and them with their children, then this is a movie that was made exactly for you. I won’t go into the plot or any major story points, because this is an experience, above anything else, which shouldn’t really be tampered by anybody in advance.

The children are great, and without them, there wouldn’t be a movie at all. Kyle Chandler is the most recognizable face in the cast, and even he won’t be familiar to anyone who hasn’t watched the TV series Friday Night Lights. The rest of the supporting performers just feel like real people, and it’s to the credit of the studio that they allowed a host of no-name talent to populate the little Ohio town where the film takes place. Because none of them are established actors, you don’t have any pre-conceived notions of them either, and it allows you to suspend your disbelief and just go along for the ride. Perspective plays a major role in the way the story is told, leaving the monster in the shadows until the last possible moment, and you really start feeling like one of the kids, drawn in without realizing it’s happening, transported without noticing, the way all the great films do.

There’s one major moment late in the film where a character experiences something which the audience does not, and it was the one moment that felt like a real let-down for me, as it forced the audience into a spectator position so close to the climax of the film, keeping the emotion from resonating in the way it was intended. I understand there are things that the filmmaker wanted to be kept solely in our imaginations, but not having this experience felt like a cop-out in retrospect. In fact, that tends to be the only thing holding the film back from time to time, a desire to maintain mystery at all costs, which makes the reveal of certain pieces of information all the more awkward. The things we are allowed to know just sort of spill out, and the stuff we desperately want to know is only really hinted at. It makes the film just a hair less satisfying than it could have been, and even when you shoot for something in the same league as classic Spielberg, it’s still disappointing when you fall short. Super 8 deserves a look for anyone seeking to relive that childhood cinema magic, and though it ultimately doesn’t succeed in every way, it’s the journey, not the destination, that makes it something special.