"Super 8" isn't so Super after all

Rating: 7/10 (22 June 2011)

Super 8 wasn't so super. JJ Abrams practically tried to make it the next ET crossed over with The Goonies. It was also an obvious homage 70s/80s monster flicks and to Spielberg (who I bet he with his huge ego) is proud of it. It didn't even feel like JJ Abrams was even trying to make a good film. It might as well have been listed as a remake of ET. You could probably go and look at any film from the 70s or 80s and edit them all together and what you would get is this pointless disappointing film Super 8. It is the EXACT same story as ET but if it was crossed with The Goonies but barely any character development, stereotypical characters and situations for them and no good humour. The good thing about the characters were that the child actors were not that bad at all and I'll give them credit as I have nothing against their performances as they were perfectly cast but their characters created by JJ Abrams were just way too two-dimensional.
The monster wasn't even that great. It was a re-hash of the Cloverfield monster but a tiny bit less angry and not as big. Also he seemed like ET because he wanted to get off the planet and "go home". His back story felt exactly the same as the alien Paul from "Paul" about him being kept locked up and experimented on. The monster was way too over-hyped and won't be remembered in years to come. It seemed violent for no reason but yet really intelligent. Imagine the T-Rex suddenly being able to build a trap and DIY stuff but can also eat men off toilets, well thats what this one is.
The film started off good but seemed to fail. The dogs all disappeared in the film and ended up in the next towns but that was never fully explained. The main character Joel was supposed to have a dog but I didn't know he had one until he went searching for it and put up a "missing" sign on a billboard. The main story of the movie was basically a group of friends and one of the friends gets kidnapped by the monster and all of the other friends go and search and be brave little 13, 14 year old kids. That's practically the story and everything else before it seems pointless. At the end of the movie I didn't care about them. The ending even came quite sudden and if you actually watched the trailer then you would know what would happen in the end, the alien manages to go back to his home planet because this isn't an 18/R-rated film where the aliens don't get a good ending, the alien practically builds a spaceship that looks like ETs and then floats off while all of the public and military don't seem to be bothered by it even though they are looking at it. Even the military don't seem to care, funny how they were all secretive and protective about it and seemed to want to capture it back or kill it.
But the thing I do NOT understand is why is it every film this year that looked good turned out to be really disappointing or not that great? Yes I know trailers are meant to do this but this year they seem to be way over-hyping the films that they are advertising. Battle: Los Angeles had a great trailer and looked really intense and scary and the new "Independence Day" but without the humour and that ended up like watching a walk-through video for Call of Duty but with weird saucer-shaped headed aliens. Sucker Punch looked great too but it was boring, I even thought I was playing a video game because of how video-game it felt, forget Scott Pilgrim as being a video-game like film, I even though I would have to tap a few buttons to defeat a boss a few times. The film could have been great if there were a few plot changes and a character or two excluded. The great story would be that they escaped the institute and then the entire world seemed to be after them but instead the action was "fantasy moments" and was pointless because they weren't real. Super 8 was my last hope and now I do not think I can ever trust a movie trailer again.
Super 8 isn't a bad film, it just tries to pay so much homage to Spielberg and monster movies from the 70s and 80s and the film doesn't feel fresh or innovative. It felt lazy and Spielberg himself might as well have made a loose remake of ET and turned him bad and you would get Super 8 exactly. But what I don't understand is how is it I, a 18-year-old college student who adores movies can come up with great ideas with what these films can be but the film makers fail at doing it? My ideas for this movies aren't impossible, you could do them on the budget each movie has but every movie seems to be failing with scripts now and it's annoying knowing that professional Hollywood film makers can't even come up with a good film anymore. How is it I, and it's not just me it's my friends too, how is it we can come up with good ideas for films but Hollywood can't anymore? It defiantly seems like movies are now just business and have no heart to them (apart from the odd few of course, but the funny thing is these ones are done by less-famous film makers).