Now You Can Make a Spaceship from Washing Machines and Virtually All Other Electronics.

Rating: 5/10 (30 June 2015)

Everything's fine. Everything but the ground story. And what's not fine is exceptionally bad, as in, really, really bad.
What I've always disliked about Steven Spielberg, whenever he is associated with a movie, regardless of whether he's producing it, writing it, or directing it, is that he has slowly transitioned from a perfectionist to a materialist. Maybe his specs need a new fit, or maybe he is just too ignorant to recognize the basic wrongs with his pieces. Sometimes, it's what you are instinctively capable of. Then, your wreck is justified. But receiving an enormous load of goo from a renowned personality, probably the most successful Hollywood celebrity (money wise, fame wise, and award wise) especially when he is in no way bound to tag himself to that pile of absolute garbage, is heart-breaking. And lately, he's been doing this a lot. Cowboys & Aliens being his worst sci-fi and mystery amalgam.
Super 8 is much like Cowboys & Aliens, except the cowboys. Instead of them, there are kids and county police, and army (which seems to be messing around with civilians for no genuine reason.) A massive train crash, followed by a secretive revelation about the deadly involvement of its stakeholder—the army—by the cause and victim of the crash ignites fear, confusion, and horror among the movie-making little kids of Lillian county. The contents of the train were slightly hampered by Joe Lamb, but it turned out, that it was just a mystery-stunt that had no practical importance to the movie itself. That content, by the way, vibrates like a dildo, is fast as a rocket, and is cubical, and it's claimed to be some kind of an equipment to resist the deadlier content of the wreck—a tree. Hahaha. Well, it's a Groot-like monster, an alien, so to say, who's interested in eating less important characters, and preserves more important ones. And, he's a f**king mechanic.
Super 8 is extremely vague, a half-hearted attempt at sci-fi, and a misleading movie. It's like those online websites that are trying to fool you by making you think that the live webcams—the supplementary Chrome tabs opening when you switch to porn—are actually live. If you believe that, you are good to go for the movie. If not, watch it for the kids. Because the drama that's incorporated into the so called sci-fi is "mint." The kids, their stories, and love stories, their parents, and all sorts of house stuff going on, is catchy. In fact, these are the only things that keep you stuck to your seats until the movie ends. And hey, watch the credits; the short zombie-film they were making plays then. But it's kind of desperate and sad that "drama" is what you find interesting in a sci-fi/thriller/mystery movie. That's the height of non-sensical money-grubbing bullshit this industry is plunging itself into.
J. J. Abrams is perhaps my most disliked director/writer for sci-fi. His Star Trek series is a total mess. His scripts, without mistake, lag all along. It seems like he was never prepared for writing in the first place. He writes, takes coffee, writes some more, sleeps, forgets about it, picks the pencil again, writes some more, but by that time, he has already forgotten what he talked about earlier, but doesn't bother to knock back a few pages to get it in rhythm. And that's exactly what he has done with Super 8. The idea itself was not so bad. But he has yet to learn that when you pick a theme, and corresponding characters, you have to stick with them to create details and story. Abrams, you are not yet Nolan to pick up totems. What exactly were those cubes? And why in such quantity? Where exactly did you use them? And if you had to show U.S Army as the primary villain of the movie, you should have gone into its depth, not just pick the very mainstream factors about it and shove it on the screen. Everybody knows the political and administrative pick they have. But do it with a class. You had Avatar to follow. Believe me, the archives are flowing with movies on army and its haters.
While I was watching the movie, I was almost fatalistic about it. There were some things extraordinary about the movie. For example, the chemistry between the kids, their suitability to the roles (although a little bit too bold, even though apparently they were shown afraid and confused,) their house stories (Charles, his sister (LOL,) Joe, his mother's death, the necklace, the accident and consequent quarrel of Mr. Lamb and Mr. Dainard, was all that made sense in the movie. While I think the kids were a good select, especially Elle Fanning, there's a heavy chance that their characterization was too flake. They were made to stick to certain things. Firecracker maniac, control freak, detective Pus*y—they all had their thing. The lead cast, however, did it sufficiently well to bring longing to the situation.
J. J. Abrams isn't t after all a bad director. He is just a bad writer, I guess, but not entirely so. He did write the kids' parts too. Bottom-line: When it comes to being associated with sci-fi(s), the guy simply doesn't have it. The depth, the understanding, and the subtlety with which logic (despite the movie being superficial) is distinguished from everything else. He's exactly like the pre-pubescents he portrayed in the movie: he thinks he can, but he can't, but he likes to give himself the benefit of the doubt, and so do most of the audience. But I'm not most.
I think Super 8 is just another regular movie you watch and forget, with the exception of Elle Fanning, who is kinda hot. No judgments; she is my age, after all.