If you’ve ever watched a lot of Spielberg’s work, like: Close Encounters of the Third Kind; or E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial; or even The Goonies (which he produced and helped write), you can see why a film like Super 8 suits the Spielberg name. It has all the elements of his early work, where he mixed fantasy, science-fiction and adventure all with a family element added in the mix. J. J. Abrams is a director who’s been mixed up in science-fiction and action/adventure ever since his name has been written into the credits, from LOST to Star Trek. So when it’s been announced that Abrams’ was to direct and write a project that if you read the synopsis and was being done thirty (realizing it would be that long ago makes me feel old) years ago you would peg it completely for Spielberg it didn’t sound too farfetched or undesired.

If you go to the movies for the sake of nostalgia then this is the film for you. However, if you’re the kind of person who prefers your nostalgia digitized, remastered and on your high-definition television for you to see exactly what you loved rather than a rehash of it on screen in a room full of strangers, then you may find yourself a bit unsatisfied.

Super 8 did everything that it’s supposed to do and not a word, frame or explosion more. This was the film’s greatest strength and weakness at the very same time, it fed off its nostalgic elements without offering us anything new. It’s as if we were watching a traditional remake of a Shakespearean play, it would be great but something that we’ve seen before enough times to be bored with it. In the end it would’ve been more interesting for the filmmaker to try and do something a little different even if it meant ultimately failing, at least then the film would’ve been at the very least memorable for something other than reminding us all that Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a great film and we should all check it out again.

I’m a believer in the philosophy that being original is pretty much dead when it comes to plot, the Hollywood machine has done its job and removed all of the flair (for the most part at least), but it can always be found in the little details that a writer, actor and director can chose to embed into their art. Here however was a film which was left with a lot to be asked of it in that regard since it refused to try anything new.

With all that said however, that doesn’t make the movie a bad movie. It just makes it unoriginal, which if you take a look at the mass of films that come out every year isn’t something you can hold against it really. The film – overall – was technically brilliant, beautiful to watch and the story remained as engaging as it was three decades previously.

What was interesting however are the small details about movie making that the film indirectly tells you about while at the same time intentionally becoming victim to. Early in the film when Charles (Riley Griffiths) is talking about how he’s been working on his script and adding and changing things because of these tips he’s been reading in these articles of how to make a better film. It’s just those little nudges that Abrams, intentionally or unintentionally, makes to try and let the general audience get a view into what it’s like to write a screenplay and what’s generally accepted by the system as formulaic art.

Towards the film’s third act however it discards all those small moments of glimmering hope where the film is being introspective and illuminating on genre and filmmaking in general and just returns to being a monster film with children. While that’s not a horrible thing to do it does belittle the original outset of the film.

Rating: 8.0/10