“Super 8″ harks back to the days of wonderous 80′s films
There was a time when I was growing up when it seemed like Hollywood could not put out a bad movie. Starting with “Star Wars” and ending around the time of “Dances With Wolves” and “The Rocketeer”, year after year there was a flood of good movies which are classics to this day. Sometime in the early 90′s, movies shifted from storytelling with the effects as an enhancement to simply being quick-edited eye candy (I’m looking at you, Michael Bay). This started to become the norm and for me personally, my interest in movies started to wane simply because I missed the ability to absorb what I was watching on screen when movies were edited for such a quick pace.
“Super 8″ is a movie that harks back to those days of when stories unfolded in front of you without giving too much away too soon. Writer/director JJ Abrams allows us to relive those days when we’d melt in our seats and let us get engrossed in the film. Abrams gets it, growing up at the same time those of us the same time masterpieces by Lucas, Spielberg, Carpenter, Columbus, and Cameron graced the screen.
The film tells the story about a group of kids working on a horror film for a festival in West Virginia in 1979. While filming a night scene at a train station, they catch a spectacular train crash which was apparently caused by someone who wanted to stop that train. After the train wreck, strange things start happening; electronic devices like TVs and microwave ovens start disappearing, and then so do pets and people. When the Air Force steps in and start taking over the city, it’s obvious that there was something worth covering up on the train. When the Air Force tries to evacuate the town, it’s up to the kids to find a way back into town to find out what the truth is behind the cover up.
What I particularly liked about this film is how Abrams revealed a little of the creature at a time. Similar to how Spielberg did the same with “Jaws”, he kept the audience in suspense until the right point in the film where the reveal pays off the most. This is not a horror film, just as “Jaws” wasn’t. This is an adventure film that has something which today’s movies are lacking which is a cohesive story. Some people have been saying it pulls from Goonies, but other than a group of kids going on an adventure, the similarity stops there. This is a film that stands on its own, and will for many years to come.
Whenever a movie like this comes out I hope that more and more directors will put aside the ADD-type editing and return to the days of telling a story, not selling the CGI. Super 8 will be remembered in the same breath as “Jaws”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, and “E.T.”. That’s not to say that Abrams copied Spielberg, this is an homage to the movie making of the time. I mean, you can’t say that Abrams copied Spielberg directly because Spielberg never used as many lens flares.
Category: Entertainment
