Alien movies invariably tell us something about the human condition, and Super 8 the latest film produced by Spielberg and directed by J.J. Abrams is one such movie. Set in the summer of 1979 the film is primarily about young friends in a small town in America who are using a Super 8 camera to make a zombie movie.
The film, which begins on a sad note, since the mother of the main protagonist – Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) has recently passed away in a tragic accident, takes a more sinister turn when this small band of film-makers witness a horrific train derailment whilst filming at a local railway station. Joe, who has seen a pick-up truck drive onto the tracks in front of the train alerts the others to the fact that the event was caused by human intervention. This is a fantastic film.From the very start when the train derails and the carriages blow up, the action never really lets up.This is a high paced, high action film, which draws you into the strange twists and turns that occur when the friends attempt to discover why their high school science teacher Mr. Woodward purposefully crashed his car into the train. Very soon we discover that Joe’s mother died because she worked a shift usually done by Alice’s (Elle Fanning) father, and that Mr. Woodward has been undertaking research on an alien invader since the 1960s. The friends discover after watching old black and white footage at Woodward’s house, that Woodward was literally touched by the captive alien and through that touch the alien communicated its desire to go home.
There are some amazing scenes in this film, especially those in which the alien is shown (or rather, partially shown) scavenging for electrical equipment and other mechanical parts in an attempt to build a space-craft. Strains of Spielberg’s ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) comes through here, in that it also included a stranded alien who wished only to return to his home planet. The film also pays homage to Spielberg’s The Goonies (1985) which tells of a group of kids who undertake a wild adventure after they have found a treasure map, for in Super 8 they find on Mr. Woodward’s body a map of America in which the train route and major stops are lined in red biro.
It’s easy to speak of the events within this film, but it’s more than just those facts. This film has a depth and real intellectual currency in the tensions that arise between Joe and Alice’s fathers and the strained relationships Joe and Alice have growing up in single parent families. Superficially, I suppose this film could be read as a comment on America, the consistent fear of an alien invader, the panic that occurs in the general public when security fails and the cover-up by the American army, who has chosen to conceal, rather than reveal information about the alien who has escaped lock down. But for me the film was about the alliances we choose to have with others and the pleasures or peril of such partnerships. These friends become involved in each others passions and are dragged into dangerous territory. At every point along the way they must form new alliances and take greater risks.
In the end Joe comes face to face with his fear and tells the alien ‘Bad things happen. But you can still live’ and it was at this point that I realized that (at least for me) the film was a metaphor of the bad thing that had happened to Joe and how the world around him in that moment and for months later began to disintegrate. I cried in the one scene that brought the whole film together (and this is a total spoiler, so please don’t read this if you’re going to see the film), when Joe, reunited with his father after the terror abates, witnesses the final and beautiful construction of the alien craft and the alien disappear inside it. In this scene, pieces of debris from the city appear magnetically drawn to a sphere on the top of a building; they swirl in the sky in a symphony of color and dance, and then settle into the intricate, technologically advanced alien contraption. But as Joe watches the completion of the spaceship the locket he holds belonging to his mother is drawn from his hands towards the craft. The silver casing opens to reveal an oval black and white photograph of him and his mother when he was a babe. We know in this moment that he can cling tightly or let go of her memory and his childhood. Of course he relinquishes it and this, being the final piece needed to complete the craft allows it to lift off and ascend to the heavens in a glorious blaze. (Read: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977)). I really enjoyed this film and would highly recommend it. And one of the cutest things is that whilst the credits are running at the end you finally get to see footage of the whole Super 8 film the friends were making, rather than just the fragmented pieces shown throughout the movie.
The film, which begins on a sad note, since the mother of the main protagonist – Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) has recently passed away in a tragic accident, takes a more sinister turn when this small band of film-makers witness a horrific train derailment whilst filming at a local railway station. Joe, who has seen a pick-up truck drive onto the tracks in front of the train alerts the others to the fact that the event was caused by human intervention. This is a fantastic film.From the very start when the train derails and the carriages blow up, the action never really lets up.This is a high paced, high action film, which draws you into the strange twists and turns that occur when the friends attempt to discover why their high school science teacher Mr. Woodward purposefully crashed his car into the train. Very soon we discover that Joe’s mother died because she worked a shift usually done by Alice’s (Elle Fanning) father, and that Mr. Woodward has been undertaking research on an alien invader since the 1960s. The friends discover after watching old black and white footage at Woodward’s house, that Woodward was literally touched by the captive alien and through that touch the alien communicated its desire to go home.
There are some amazing scenes in this film, especially those in which the alien is shown (or rather, partially shown) scavenging for electrical equipment and other mechanical parts in an attempt to build a space-craft. Strains of Spielberg’s ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) comes through here, in that it also included a stranded alien who wished only to return to his home planet. The film also pays homage to Spielberg’s The Goonies (1985) which tells of a group of kids who undertake a wild adventure after they have found a treasure map, for in Super 8 they find on Mr. Woodward’s body a map of America in which the train route and major stops are lined in red biro.
It’s easy to speak of the events within this film, but it’s more than just those facts. This film has a depth and real intellectual currency in the tensions that arise between Joe and Alice’s fathers and the strained relationships Joe and Alice have growing up in single parent families. Superficially, I suppose this film could be read as a comment on America, the consistent fear of an alien invader, the panic that occurs in the general public when security fails and the cover-up by the American army, who has chosen to conceal, rather than reveal information about the alien who has escaped lock down. But for me the film was about the alliances we choose to have with others and the pleasures or peril of such partnerships. These friends become involved in each others passions and are dragged into dangerous territory. At every point along the way they must form new alliances and take greater risks.
In the end Joe comes face to face with his fear and tells the alien ‘Bad things happen. But you can still live’ and it was at this point that I realized that (at least for me) the film was a metaphor of the bad thing that had happened to Joe and how the world around him in that moment and for months later began to disintegrate. I cried in the one scene that brought the whole film together (and this is a total spoiler, so please don’t read this if you’re going to see the film), when Joe, reunited with his father after the terror abates, witnesses the final and beautiful construction of the alien craft and the alien disappear inside it. In this scene, pieces of debris from the city appear magnetically drawn to a sphere on the top of a building; they swirl in the sky in a symphony of color and dance, and then settle into the intricate, technologically advanced alien contraption. But as Joe watches the completion of the spaceship the locket he holds belonging to his mother is drawn from his hands towards the craft. The silver casing opens to reveal an oval black and white photograph of him and his mother when he was a babe. We know in this moment that he can cling tightly or let go of her memory and his childhood. Of course he relinquishes it and this, being the final piece needed to complete the craft allows it to lift off and ascend to the heavens in a glorious blaze. (Read: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977)). I really enjoyed this film and would highly recommend it. And one of the cutest things is that whilst the credits are running at the end you finally get to see footage of the whole Super 8 film the friends were making, rather than just the fragmented pieces shown throughout the movie.
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