As with all my reviews, this contains tons of spoilers. Read at your own risk.
I just got back from J. J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg’s mysterious blockbuster Super 8. All most of us knew before going in was that the film was about a group of friends who make amateur films with a Super 8 camera in the 1979. The kids are filming late at night at a train station when they witness an epic train-crash that releases… something… into their town.
It’s a no-brainer, especially given the two producers, that the film was being called “E.T. meets Cloverfield.” And of course it’s also no surprise that the film was so much more than that.
The film opens on a funeral – for a woman killed in a gruesome work-related accident. We meet her son, Joe and his dad, a deputy in the town. A mourner remarks that Jack’s dad doesn’t understand him like his mom did, and that he’ll have an awful time trying to raise Jack now. The story immediately jumps four months into the future and we see this prophecy has come true. Joe’s dad wants Jack to go to his old baseball camp for the summer. He says it’s “what we both need”. Joe would rather stay with his friends, and is more interested in art than sports.
Abrams keeps the exposition moving quickly – we meet the cast of friends making their zombie movie, including Alice, Joe’s obvious love interest. Alice was recruited to play the movie detective’s wife, a late addition to the movie. She is to provide some emotion for their film because – as Charles the director insists – it’s not a story unless you care about the characters. (At this point, J. J. steps out from behind the camera and winks at the audience)
The train crashes spectacularly and the Air Force arrives immediately. The kids escape and everything seems fine. But quickly spooky things start happening all over town, and it doesn’t take the town neurosurgeon to connect missing electronics, vanished persons and run-away pets with the mysterious crash and the soldiers.
This is the moment Abrams’ story starts to shine. A movie that could easily have devolved into a by-the-numbers monster movie becomes instead a meditation on pain and loss.
At its core, Super 8 is an 80s-style, character-driven film. It’s all about Joe and Alice, their dads and their friends. We learn that Alice’s dad, Louis, is sort of responsible for Joe’s mom’s death. Joe’s dad certainly blames Louis for it. As a result, Alice and Joe are forbidden to see each other. This has the predictable effect of ensuring that they spend most of the movie together.
In one particularly sweet scene between Joe and Alice, the film’s core message begins to unfurl. Alice has sneaked into Joe’s room late at night. In the course of their innocent, chaste evening together, Joe tells Alice about his mom, what he misses most about her:
“My mother had this way of looking at me… it was like I existed.”The monster is more than a monster (which Abrams ought to trademark or something). This monster destroying a small town is exactly what Joe has been feeling since his mother died.
Joe’s life has been completely destroyed. His center, his ground, that core that affirmed his existence was taken suddenly and without warning. Joe couldn’t stop it.
And now he can’t move forward (neither can his dad). He’s stuck holding onto the past, literally, in the form his mom’s silver locket he carries everywhere. Abrams brings the metaphor to the forefront as he slowly, masterfully reveals the monster. We learn finally that it is an alien that crash landed on Earth. While he was trying to repair his ship, he was captured by the Air Force in the person of Nelec – the true villain of Super 8. Nelec kept the alien, codenamed “Cooper”, experimenting on and torturing him until he hated all humanity. Now that Cooper has escaped, he is trying desperately to rebuild his ship, destroying Lillian, OH in the process.
Cooper kidnaps Alice, and Joe finds out after the Air Force has evacuated the town so they can destroy it and Cooper with it. Joe and his friends set out to rescue Alice. The final confrontation (and finally, the reveal!) between Joe and Cooper is beautiful. Cooper arrives back at its lair furious from its repeated confrontations with the USAF to find Joe stealing away the humans its captured. The (very brief) chase ends with Joe, Alice and Cary (the requisite pyromaniac) trapped against a wall, Cooper towering over them. Cooper grabs up Joe who screams out at him:
“I understand. Bad things happen. But you can live.”
From the mouth of a pre-teen, here is Abrams’ message to all of us. Pain and loss are real. From the very personal loss of a family member to the national pain of 9/11, bad things happen. All the time. They’re a fact of life.
Joe was trapped by grief. His dad was trapped by rage. Alice’s dad, Louis, was trapped by guilt. Cooper was trapped even after he escaped by his (legitimate) rage and anger. So too can all of us be. When bad things happen, we all want to wallow in our grief and anger and guilt. We start to live our lives reacting out of those dark places. We create real monsters, do real damage to those around us (and overseas). But Joe realizes what Abrams wants to teach all of us: we can choose to move forward. To forgive. To let go. To say goodbye. Forgiveness and love are the only way to move forward. The only way to live our lives instead of letting the Bad Times define us.
Cooper chose to live rather than to avenge. Joe’s dad chose to forgive rather than hate (he and Louis team up to find their kids, and find healing in a brief but powerful scene towards the end). And Joe finally chooses to let go, letting his locket go with Cooper’s ship as the monster that destroyed Joe’s world finally leaves.
