Super 8: Second-Rate Rip-Off

In my review of The Hangover Part II, I asked why a filmmaker would choose to rip themselves off. This week we’ll ask why two filmmakers would choose to do the same thing, but then reconstitute their work into a singular form, hoping that the strengths will survive the transfusion.

Super 8 follows a group of middle school kids in 1979 Ohio as they attempt to film a low budget zombie movie. They’re caught up in a disastrous train accident, which allows some kind of creature to escape. Mysterious disappearances and technological breakdowns occur over the next few days, ultimately forcing the military to take control of the city. The kids band together to save one of their own from the monster’s clutches and, with a little luck, finish shooting their film using the destruction all around them.

The greatest strength of the film is its cast. The child actors, ranging from unknowns to Elle Fanning, are fun, believable, and occasionally haunting in their performances. The smaller scenes between them, often about the movie making process, friendship, or building models, become the moments that will stay with you long after you’ve forgotten about the over –the-top action sequences. Fanning in particular makes a huge leap forward for her career, but when you’re playing a character that the story consistently reminds you is an excellent actor, it’s hard not to take notice. For the adults, Noah Emmerich plays another evil military guy, and Friday Night Lights’ Kyle Chandler plays a sheriff’s deputy who is often stoic, except when yelling at kids. No idea where he learned that from…

It’s the creative input that’s on display here. The posters for the film have no information for you other than the partnership between J. J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg. But that’s really all you need to know. Super 8 exists so closely to Abrams’ own Cloverfield (as producer), that this film has been cited as a possible prequel to those events. Many of the action/chase sequences and his use of jump scares remains intact from there, as does the low budget camera work, and even the plot device of exploring characters’ histories through found footage. Some of the larger destruction scenes in this film seem out of place not being in Cloverfield. In particular, a scene where the boys are darting between tanks and cars, in an evacuated area, and no one stops to say, “Hey, you probably shouldn’t be here. With all of the death and such.”

It even seemed like Abrams had learned from Cloverfield that you don’t want to show your completely CGI monster, because then it becomes laughable and silly, destroying all terror you have created in our mind’s eye. He really didn’t learn a lesson on that.  In fact, we’re privy to a lot more face-to-face time with the monster in Super 8. Not a step forward.

But if the film takes a liberal chunk out of Cloverfield, then it’s action packed with borrowed moments from E.T., a film that you wind up wishing you were watching instead. And that’s not even a slight against Super 8, which is a fine film in its own right. It’s just that E.T. is so good, and you’re constantly reminded of that. The familial dynamics, the evil government agents, even the pacing and character dynamics/motivations all point right back toward a movie we already love.

But we loved it because it was then. E.T. is a lot less lovable as new a film in 2011. The seeming workaround for this winds up being the biggest problem of the film: it’s tone is completely lost. (And that’s not a LOST joke). While the boys’ growing up story, the time period quirkiness, and some of the family drama work well together, the action sequences are often so over the top that they reduce the rest of the film to background noise. Most confusing of all, the approach to tension and violence never finds an appropriate balance. An event could seem to have darkly comedic undertones, and then is crushed by a sudden flash of violence that steps over the line. You’ll keep re-evaluating whether you’re watching a family film or a decidedly more mature picture. That’s fine for me, but I don’t think the parents with small children sitting behind me appreciated it.

The film goes a little long, has a fair share of uninspired moments, and leads to a final confrontation that’s a stumbling block so bizarre that it reminds you it’s the ancestor of much better films. There’s an in-joke running through the movie about George Romero, a man who built his career on taking ten years between Of The Dead films to re-evaluate the messages he wanted to explore and to grow as a filmmaker. Then you’ve got Spielberg, whose similarly working within former storytelling. If there’s anything we can learn from Super 8 and the latest Indiana Jones film, it’s that Spielberg is much better off looking to the future then trying to recapture the past.

Because I liked E.T. much better, before he developed a taste for human blood.