Super 8 - Is it that Super!?

If you’re looking at Super 8 and thinking that it looks just like another summer blockbuster, very akin to ET, then you’re on the right track. And what a joy that is.  Super 8 is something you really don’t get anymore; a damn good blockbuster, that knows how to perfectly combine action and humour with a story of love and friendship.

Super 8 sticks to two very simple plot devices; leave certain things mostly unanswered, and focus on what’s important.  Although you know from the very beginning there’s something extraterrestrial involved, you don’t officially discover this until over half way through, and even then, it’s almost sidetracked.  Abrams, like Spielberg, uses the invasion to explore family relationships and friendships, so that the heart of the story lies here, and not in something alien.

Casting is thus vital and Super 8 nails it.  The kids run around wide-eyed on an adventure that will have every child in the cinema jealous and every adult nostalgic.  Schoolboy humour and bickering is balanced perfectly with a sense of close-knit and enduring friendships.

But this does not mean that the movie focuses only on these issues.  Near the beginning we witness a jaw-dropping train crash, and I mean literally, my jaw was on the floor.  The film has some beautiful special effects and action sequences, none of which are there to fill up room left by non-existent script-writers.  The film itself looks like it was filmed in the 80’s, having a very gritty and ‘real’ feel, and the soundtrack will have you close to tears.

What the audience is also left with, and Abrams is very forward about this, is that this is a movie about his own love for film, his own homage to Speilberg.  There are several beautiful moments when the kids, while out shooting the film that brings them closer to the strange events than anyone else in the town, run back to pick up their gear, despite whatever danger is ensuing.  Their love for film, and Abrams’s shines through, as do the several references to ET, like, for instance, all the kids cycling around on their bikes.

All of this makes you leave the cinema with a warm fuzzy Super 8 feeling inside you.  It’s big, it’s not hugely original, but it is so painfully well done that you can’t help but be swept up in the moment.  Super 8 may be the film that stands out this summer, but it’s soon to become a classic.

Roisin O’Brien