Super 8

i watched Super 8 for the first time when i was 11 or 12, but i really didn’t get obsessed with it until i was in the seventh grade. by the time i was 13/14 i had rewatched this movie a handful of times and i was in love with it. the friend group, the aliens, the soundtrack, the lens flares — i loved the whole thing. i’ve written fanfictions about this movie’s characters. i started listening to Electric Light Orchestra and The Knack regularly because of the soundtrack. i started using their slang in real life (mint). this movie formed so much of my personality as a kid, and a lot of that remains to this day. i’m 23 now and i decided to rewatch this during my night shift, and i’m so glad that i did. i last rewatched this movie in 2019 i believe, so it’s been a while, but it still holds up so well.  i love that the main cast of this movie are children who just want to make a zombie movie. they’re all different in their personalities and interests, even if it’s boiled up to generalized tropes (stupid, bossy, pyromaniac, etc). the dialogue that takes place between these kids is so unironically funny that it makes their conversations feel so natural. i love the constant little quips to each other, teasing, and also the more serious talks that happen between Joe and Charles and Alice and Joe. the parents are great too, but the one that stands out the most to me is Louis. he’s such a complex character, and that’s something that i didn’t completely understand growing up. you can see that he’s truly guilty about what happened to Joe’s mum, and he’s taking that out on himself and (unintentionally) on Alice. but you also see how much he cares for her, and the ending makes you feel like things are going to be better for everyone afterwards.  the soundtrack is beautiful (that last scene when they’re watching the locket fly up to the ship makes me so emotional it’s not even funny). i don’t even know how this sci-fi movie can manage to have such a lovely score. and on the topic of music, when they include songs in the movie that exist in real life they’re always songs that came out in or before 1979, which is something that i’ve come to appreciate so much. my favourite movie is Dead Poets Society and it’s always bothered me slightly that a lot of the songs included in that movie aren’t from that established time period. but not in this movie! Don’t Bring Me Down, My Sharona, and Bye Bye Love are three of the songs i remember specifically from this movie and they’re all from the 70’s. that made such a difference to me in making it feel like it takes place in 1979 vs 2011.  and the ALIEN. i’ve always loved the design of the alien as a whole (i remember finding concept art once and i was obsessed). i’m not sure why, but it’s just such an interesting design. and i love what they did with the alien, almost humanizing it by making the characters and the audience emphasize with it. i mean all it wanted to do was go home! fuck the army.  and i love that they actually put The Case in the credits. that added such a cool little touch to the movie, finally getting to see the final creation of these kids that we just watched for the last almost 2 hours. and it’s actually really impressive! it made me want to make movies when i was a kid, i’m not even kidding.  i loved Elle Fanning growing up, and this movie was no exception. i watched this before realizing that i was a lesbian so i always thought i wanted to be Alice, but nah i had a major crush on her (in my defense this was when i was the age of the actors in the movie lmao). i guess that’s all that i’m gonna write about this right now. you can tell very clearly that i have a lot of admiration for this movie, the cast, the crew, and JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg. everyone did such a good job on this film, and it really was probably the movie that got me into movies as a whole — and partly why i kept writing stories when i was in middle school and high school (my version of making movies, which itself was something that i didn’t have the means to do haha). it’s just such a great movie, i’ll always love it and i will forever recommend it to people to watch. TLDR: so good. lens flares. production value. drugs are bad. poor guy, nobody cared about the sinkhole in his garage. this started my ELO and The Knack obsessions. and i too have not leaned out yet Charles, and i’m 23 so i feel your pain 😂