(Not So Great) Super 8

Rating: 5/10 (15 September 2014)

I'd hate to say this but this was the first JJ Abrams movie I watched. I don't feel so very lucky now.
I thought this movie was very mediocre and never stopped feeling like it could've just been bigger than how it already was. And when I bring up exaggerating, I mean by how mediocre movies in general really make me upset.
It's the same movie you've seen before, like ET which seems to be the most common comparison. I'd like to include Flight of the Navigator too, even if this movie isn't similar at all in terms of plot, but the same basic ideas are there: kid(s), alien(s), spaceship(s), government, etc. I see what they were trying to do, which is make a modern kid-alien movie, but it just doesn't work. We already have these movies and I don't know anybody who still breathes who needs another movie like this--it's unnecessary.
Unnecessary is a good word to use for a lot of things in this movie too, like a few of the characters that annoy me. People say the characters are the best part but their mediocrity in terms of how they were written bug me. Like, the female lead I can't help but feel like she has NO other reason to be there other than some *thing* for the main character to chase and I am so fed up with those kind of stories. I just can't be emotionally invested into it. I get it, I get why the kid wants to be with her and wants to be her friend and how their families have troubles but that's exactly why I don't care: it's all shoe-horned in. I feel like they just made up reasons just for the sake of making up reasons for these characters to connect. It's forced and really awkward.
I hate how this movie has an overload of clichés in it that really break the immersion of it. Like, I've SEEN the male child and father argue before because of over protection, I've SEEN young romance, I've SEEN aliens (which is just a tentacled monster, whoop-hee) interact with kids, I've SEEN the fat kid no one cares about get angry because his friend has the girl (by the way, what DOES that amount to? The whole subplot is entirely pointless and goes nowhere, not to mention I don't feel bad for the chubby kid at all). I've seen it all already and it's gotten very tiresome.
The ending especially annoyed me. There are a bunch of captured people hanging in the alien's lair. Why? Why did he keep them there? Why did he kill anybody? Because he's scared? Okay, that's fine, but why didn't they ever help the other people that were hung? Here's why it's so jarring when I see the main character save the girl, because I just wish it were something I could be emotionally invested in like if instead of some GIRL it'd be his brother who'd probably be hurt too by the loss of his mother, causing mixed feelings with the main character, now that'd be interesting. But no, he saves the chick, who cares, and then the alien gets inside his ship and the absolute worst moment of the movie is when the main kid's locket of his mother (never seen that before, wow!) is slipping through his fingers and about to be connected to the alien ship. And get this, this is the last thing that flies into the ship before it takes off, THAT ticked me off.
I get it, the ending is symbolizing he's letting go of his mother, but in such a cliché way that I can't feel any connection to it whatsoever, and this is coming from a guy who lost his mother as well. But it BEGS the question, did the alien spaceship really need that last trinket to finish itself? Really? Or no, is it just special coincidence? Either way, it's BS to me. They could've handled that so much better.
And then when the credits roll, it just raises MORE questions. What about the government officials still going after the alien after it escapes? What? Did they just let everybody back in town and tell the main characters to GO HOME? Wouldn't they question them and wouldn't there be a possibility of their lives spiraling downward now that they had such huge involvement with the alien? Probably not, because they'd probably come up with a cliché for that too if asked up front about it.
You may think I HATE this movie, but I don't. I only HATE how frustratingly mediocre it is and especially how I can't feel literally a single solitary connection to any of the connections themselves they're trying to give out to the viewer. A modern kid-alien movie, it is not. A movie trying to be a kid-alien movie that's modern, it is. It's sad because afterwords I saw Star Trek by JJ and while it didn't touch me emotionally (especially since I don't like Star Trek, at all), I thought it was a good movie. This makes me worry still about how Star Wars 7 is going to turn out. Do I worry that Star Wars 7 is going to be bad? Not at all, I'm worried that it's going to be a MEDIOCRE Star Wars movie.
If anything, it's a harmless movie, I guess. It's good for kids, but being an adult that LOVES movies like Flight of the Navigator (sorry to bring that up again), that's saying a lot. If you're nit-picky like me, you'll probably not like this movie at all. But if you're young, then maybe you'll get some enjoyment out of it, which I still don't think is a great thing because then you'll get older and realize how not great it really is.
I never heard of Super 8 until this year (2014) and I can see why.