Doctor Submarine wrote:Perfect movie? I think so.
Sorry, I have to rule against you on this one. I enjoyed the film a great deal myself, it's exciting and funny and the pacing, at least in the first two acts, held me rapt. But a "perfect movie" -- as we use the term -- isn't a measure of how enjoyable a film is. It's a measure of whether or not there's a solid payoff for every set-up (aka "keeping every promise it makes"), and this movie fails to do so in some significant ways.
For one thing, the friggin super 8 film from which the movie takes its title. The setup is that the kids have inadvertently gotten footage of the subject of a major government cover-up. You'd think that the reel of film containing this highly sensitive information would be, like, important to the plot. You'd think a great big chunk of the plot would be the government trying to find and suppress this information. That's how it was sold. That's how it's set up. It's the name of the movie.
But...no. The super 8 film reel with the alien on it actually has almost no bearing on the story. We already know it's a creature by the time it's revealed, and the more significant revelation comes later, watching the teacher's old footage. The government really never discovers or cares that the film exists. The only thing it really does is convince the main character's dad that some serious shit is going down, which 1) he already kind of figured out, just without the monster part, and 2) happens offscreen.
That little reel of evidence should have been the film's MacGuffin. Have the government turning more and more fascist on this little town trying to cover up this info that they can't ultimately suppress. And/or, have the government confiscate the footage without the kids knowing why, and so they go on a single-minded, irrational Goonies mission to get it back from Big Gubmint because goddammit, that was the END OF THE MOVIE and we CAN'T AFFORD TO RESHOOT. And in the process they unravel this conspiracy and end up helping the alien get home.
Instead, as it happened, if the super 8 film hadn't caught the creature -- if the kids hadn't been present at the crash at all -- very little would have to be altered to make essentially the same movie.
Next item. As soon as they found all that footage in the teacher's trailer and they heard the bit about how the touch produces a psychic connection and a two-way understanding between creature and human captive, it was obvious (to me, anyway) that the alien was going to touch the main kid, realize that some humans are good and pure, and chill the fuck out.
But when it happened, it didn't actually have an effect on the plot. The alien was already just minutes away from reconstituting his ship; the kids (and we) already knew that the alien was just homesick and misunderstood. Nothing was actually accomplished by having that moment between kid and alien, other than that it prevented the alien from eating his head. But if he hadn't been there at all, the alien would still have reconstituted his ship and departed exactly when he did. If the kids had not been involved in the plot at all -- if they had simply not existed -- it would all still have turned out the same for the "alien vs air force" plotline. That's not good plotting.
Okay, there was a little bit of something about the kid finally understanding, in that moment, that you have to let go of the past; but other than having the locket he wasn't really emotionally crippled by his grief, not particularly filled with resentment or despair, not letting the past cast a shadow on his present or future. He was happy and active and fun to be around, probably the most well-adjusted character in the entire film. In this case it's a payoff without much setup.
I think the psychic connection moment should have come at the end of act 2, not act 3, and represented the turning point from the kids seeing the alien as a monster, like everyone else does, to understanding and deciding to help it (which they didn't do in any meaningful sense at all). Instead this movie, which has been built as a mystery, loses a lot of its steam because the mystery is answered and there's not much left for the movie/characters to do, aside from the save-the-damsel plot device. There was some interest in seeing the kids help the alien, but again, they ultimately didn't do anything to that end.
I probably would have had the little ship-cube stay in the boy's room instead of shooting across town (why even have the kid take the cube? It's another thing that had no purpose in the story. Aside from that we knew something was up with the water tower, but what did that gain us? They found the creature's lair through the cemetery, not the tower). Then the kids would have to go back into the quarantined town and get the last cube so the alien could finally put his ship together (because he'd need every single piece, naturally) and leave.
(BTW, if the air force is trying to prevent the alien from reconstituting his ship, has been doing this as its full-time concern for the last 40 years, why did they drive the all the trucks full of ship-cubes into the center of the quarantined area where they knew the alien to be at large? For that matter, why would they transport them on the same train in the first place? Durr.)
It's a fun summer movie. I enjoyed it. It's exciting and well-made on a technical level and I like the characters. I'd watch it again and buy the Blu-Ray and watch the featurettes and probably even listen to the commentaries, which I rarely do. But no. It's not a perfect movie by a long shot.
