Thanks to the Blockbuster Movie Pass, I Finally saw "Super 8" tonight! WOW!!! A good-ol' fashioned monster movie! Great suspense. Fantastic action. And best of all: no endless gore! Oh, yes there was carnage, but that was mostly left to your imagination. The slow reveal of the monster was just fan-freakin-'tastic!
This movie takes place in Ohio (though they have their geography all screwed up--nothing near Dayton has those kind of hills) in the very late 70s. By the music they used and Walter Cronkite being overheard talking about 3-mile Island my guess is summer of 1979. They ALMOST got it right.*
What a fun movie! It was reminiscent of the Stephen Spielberg movies of the time (ET, Poltergeist, Close Encounters). It had the same look and feel, and to me that is a good thing.
Spielberg was a producer, but JJ Abrams (the guy that violated the Star Trek universe) has his fingerprints all over this movie. Sorry to say, Abrams is the reason why I refused to see this movie in the theater. Of course the protagonists' fathers in this movie have to appear to be the worst kind of men anyone ever saw. It's part of the "Hollywood Script-Writing Handbook" and therefore mandatory that no family be well-adjusted in the moves.
And then we also have to have an intertwined puppy-love story to hold the interest of the "women". Got to have the date-movie love-interest and forced jealousy scenes that really have no business in the movie to "round out" the movie so women will go see it with the guys. I know I'm not being fair, but some of these scenes setting up the motivation for the ending of the movie stopped this film to a crawl! And the last scene of the movie was total sap. It is supposed to be a touching moment I really can't even describe lest I give something away, but it just didn't play for me! I know what it was trying to say, but I didn't buy it. Perhaps there is a director's cut somewhere that has the missing scenes that can sell it, but I'm just not buying.
However I have to point out that in the grand scheme of things this is a grade-A "B movie". This is a good thing. It is exactly what a good monster movie should be!
I am sad to say, Abrams can make a movie that doesn't make me want to throw my TV through the front window! Though a couple of the early scenes clumsily laying out the groundwork for character motivations had me saying "GET ON WITH IT!", if you like good old-fashioned monster movies sans gore and needless graphic carnage, but lots of action, explosions and endless peril (cue Monte Python), this is a movie to see!
*Nit-pick, the Sony Walkman was introduced in mid-summer 1979 as a "soundabout", not a Walkman. I still have one in my collection of useless crap. It wasn't until about 1980 that it was widely available in the US, and it sold for about $120 bucks retail in 1979 (About $300 of today's bucks) so a gas station attendant would not be likely to get one of these units, calling it a walkman in summer of 1979
*Nit-Pick 2 - Three Mile Island disaster happened in late March 1979. This movie gets started late early June (Ohio pubic schools generally release the week after Memorial Day.
This movie takes place in Ohio (though they have their geography all screwed up--nothing near Dayton has those kind of hills) in the very late 70s. By the music they used and Walter Cronkite being overheard talking about 3-mile Island my guess is summer of 1979. They ALMOST got it right.*
What a fun movie! It was reminiscent of the Stephen Spielberg movies of the time (ET, Poltergeist, Close Encounters). It had the same look and feel, and to me that is a good thing.
Spielberg was a producer, but JJ Abrams (the guy that violated the Star Trek universe) has his fingerprints all over this movie. Sorry to say, Abrams is the reason why I refused to see this movie in the theater. Of course the protagonists' fathers in this movie have to appear to be the worst kind of men anyone ever saw. It's part of the "Hollywood Script-Writing Handbook" and therefore mandatory that no family be well-adjusted in the moves.
And then we also have to have an intertwined puppy-love story to hold the interest of the "women". Got to have the date-movie love-interest and forced jealousy scenes that really have no business in the movie to "round out" the movie so women will go see it with the guys. I know I'm not being fair, but some of these scenes setting up the motivation for the ending of the movie stopped this film to a crawl! And the last scene of the movie was total sap. It is supposed to be a touching moment I really can't even describe lest I give something away, but it just didn't play for me! I know what it was trying to say, but I didn't buy it. Perhaps there is a director's cut somewhere that has the missing scenes that can sell it, but I'm just not buying.
However I have to point out that in the grand scheme of things this is a grade-A "B movie". This is a good thing. It is exactly what a good monster movie should be!
I am sad to say, Abrams can make a movie that doesn't make me want to throw my TV through the front window! Though a couple of the early scenes clumsily laying out the groundwork for character motivations had me saying "GET ON WITH IT!", if you like good old-fashioned monster movies sans gore and needless graphic carnage, but lots of action, explosions and endless peril (cue Monte Python), this is a movie to see!
*Nit-pick, the Sony Walkman was introduced in mid-summer 1979 as a "soundabout", not a Walkman. I still have one in my collection of useless crap. It wasn't until about 1980 that it was widely available in the US, and it sold for about $120 bucks retail in 1979 (About $300 of today's bucks) so a gas station attendant would not be likely to get one of these units, calling it a walkman in summer of 1979
*Nit-Pick 2 - Three Mile Island disaster happened in late March 1979. This movie gets started late early June (Ohio pubic schools generally release the week after Memorial Day.
