I think after a certain amount of time these threads tend to change to no spoiler tags. Alas it isn't so hard to toss up the spoiler tag, it's damn near impossible to unread something.

Keep in mind that YEARS have passed since the movies you mention and we, as an audience of moviegoers, have seen countless numbers of creatures since - so of course these ones aren't as memorable...but it isn't 100% the fault of the design, it's just that so many designs have been done to death. I thought this creature looked like

It did not make the cut.

I loved the movie. I thought the performances by the kids were great. I really appreciated that they were allowed to talk like REAL KIDS, swearing and all. You definitely get a Goonies feeling and some of the attack scenes really felt like cut scenes from Jurassic Park. Abrams did a great job of evoking Spielberg while maintaining his own sensibilities and the pace of the film was just right. I can't wait to see it again and flesh out more thoughts on it. 5/5

Solid 4.5 stars.

I loved it for the exact reason Suprmallet seemed to dislike it for: Abrams making a Spielberg film. There hasn't been a "Spielberg movie" like this in ages, so I'm glad to see someone like J.J. paying homage by giving us something that feels ripped from my youth.

Surprisingly, I liked all of the kids. None of them got on my nerves. I love how they acted like I'd expect kids to act, from the dialogue down to the facial expressions. Their story was extremely enjoyable to watch, which is of paramount importance since the focus isn't on the alien.

Speaking of which, I loved the Cloverfield vibe the film gave off. The alien mayhem is just background to the film's true story, but the destruction we got was awesome. In particular, the bus scene. My only real gripe, as was mentioned earlier, is that the alien looks derivative of everything else we've seen in Abrams' films. I had all these visions in my head of what it could possibly be, then it ended up looking like something I'd seen before. Disappointing, but not nearly bad enough to kill the film for me.

And great score by Giacchino. I left the theater with a huge smile. This is exactly the kind of summer movie I've been missing.

Sounds good the closest movie I've seen in recent years that captured that 80s kid flick feel was Monster House, unsurprisiginly produced by Spielberg (Dan Harmon wrote it but slammed it for basically being too scary for the intended audience, he since retracted but whatever -- Community still rocks.)

Sure hope my kids don't ever talk like that!
"This may be a movie full of kids. And this may be a production with a kid's sense of moviemaking wonder. But Abrams pumped his script up with so much profanity—much of it jumping out of the kids' mouths—that he sends a possibly unintentional but still crystal clear message to families: Don't even try to find out what's inside that train!" ..pluggedin.com/movies/intheaters/super8.aspx..

Most kids swear a lot when their parents aren't around. Especially with no adults around.

I'm sorry that your childhood motherfucking sucked.

To paraphrase Richard Donner and shooting The Goonies: when he shot the scene where the kids discover the pirate ship, he wanted genuine reactions so he didn't show the ship to them beforehand. What happened when he got to shoot the scene? Every other word out of the kids' mouths was either "shit" or "fuck" and he had to reshoot the entire thing again.

As I wrote on Twitter last night, I loved it. A complete throw back to the films I grew up with, but done on a much larger scale. The shots of the kids running through the neighborhood as it was being destroyed were my favorite as it brought back memories to the imagination I once had.

I thought the marketing for this movie was garbage. Thank goodness I didn't let that stop me from seeing it.

I friggin' LOVED this movie! Five out of five stars. Hands down the best movie of the year. Just incredible movie making at its finest...

Orndorf (****): http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/50346/super-8/
Me (**½): http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/50367/super-8/

Hey, I thought the marketing was very intriguing. I was all hyped to discover the "mystery" of this movie.The lead kid was decent, but ultimately kinda bland. Considering what the character was going through at the start of the movie, it should have been easy to connect with him -- but I felt the relationship between him and his father wasn't nearly developed enough for me to really care. Perhaps it speaks to the father not knowing how to connect with his son (like wanting to send him away for the summer), but it should have been really easy to shape and develop those characters for some real tear-jerking scenes. Elle Fanning was quite good and the stuff with her father worked somewhat better. I'd never seen her in anything before and was happy to discover she is just as talented as her big sis. The other kids were good in small doses, but bordered on annoying for me.

Ultimately, this move was too muddled. "Son of Rambow" was another recent film that explored a group of kids making their own movie and I felt that it was much more successful in exploring the passion/conflict friends can encounter when working on an intimate project like that. I didn't feel that camaraderie with the kids here -- it's like J.J. was too busy trying to make them into Goonies proximities while catering to fanboys with all the '70s nostalgia. Simply did not work for me. Between balancing all that with a '50s giant monster invades a small-town storyline, I felt it wasn't really successful on either front. Passable entertainment that I'm not very eager to revisit. I give it 5/10.

BTW, this could possibly have been the worst theatrical experience I've ever had: Crying babies, cellphones going off, distractingly forced laughter (every time the damn pyro kid with the braces popped up on screen) people arguing amongst themselves, the lady in front of me standing during the entire end credit sequence obstructing the screen. Assholes loudly analyzing the film amongst themselves: "This movie was like Stand By Me with shades of E.T.!"

I liked it until the "thing on the train" was revealed and then not so much. The acting was great but the "thing on the train" was really lame. I found it to be worse than Cloverfield which I never thought would be possible.

I disagree. My point wasn't that the design wasn't an immediate classic. My complaint is that in three movies now Abrams (who I know didn't direct Cloverfield but it's from his people) has had completely forgettable, uninteresting creature designs. In Cloverfield it wasn't a big deal because the monster was a MacGuffin. In Star Trek it didn't matter because the monster was on screen for all of a minute. But we're meant to care about this creature, and we can't because we can barely even remember what it looks like. It would still be a design failure, even if the movies I listed had never come out.

But isn't there a difference between making something inspired by films you loved in your youth as opposed to simply remaking the films you saw in your youth? I mean, it was so calculated that I could practically tell where the periods landed in the script. If a lesser filmmaker had made this movie some people here would probably be calling it a rip off and not an homage.


Really? I can't remember a single note from the score, and Giacchino is one of my favorite film score composers.

RoyalTea is correct

Okay, thanks for clearing that up. Don't know how I missed that when I saw it.

But Abrams didn't remake anything. Those films of that era were exactly like this - you could telegraph where almost all of them were going. Are you going to tell me nobody thought The Goonies would find the treasure? Or that E.T. wouldn't get home? He made this film specifically because it would fit perfectly in that time period, and I don't see why making it like those films of yesteryear is an automatic detriment. With the faintest hint of this film's plot, I could've told you where it was going. That's not the point - it's the experience of watching the film, and I enjoyed that immensely.

As for the score... memorable? Probably not, but I thought that it sounded perfect for the kind of film it was. Giacchino isn't one of my favorite composers, but I tend to enjoy what he does.

And, yes, you missed a shot. It sounds to me like you bummed out on what Abrams did while you were in the midst of watching the movie, and relevant information whizzed right past you.

Either that or I had trouble telling what part of the creature I was looking at because it was so poorly designed.

And we'll just have to agree to disagree. What you see as a loving homage to films of that period came off to me as a generic remake of the same, without any spark of ingenuity or invention.

Saw it. Definitely delivered in the whole homage to old school Spielberg department. I am sure Abrams was the director for the most part, but I can't help but wonder if this was like "Poltergeist" where Spielberg had a lot more input than one might think. The story is good until about the last third, and the creature is kind of disappointing and the ending felt schmaltzy (though the credits movie was genius). This is definitely a movie you see for the characters, who were written and performed very well. It's interesting that you can get two kids for a romantic story and it has more emotion and feel than most romance movies released in the past year. The chemistry between Courteney and Fanning was very akin to that of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in Adjustment Bureau. At such a young age they have way more ability than Shia LeBouf and whatever slo-mo bimbo he will have this next Transformers.

Saw it today. I enjoyed it. I really wanted to love it but can't. I just feel like something was missing. Don't think I will be watching again when it comes out on Dvd but will have to check out the scene after the credits because I left before then. I did like the feel of the movie though and it was great to see Coach Taylor again.

Just to be clear, there is no scene after the credits, but a very long scene during most of the credits.

from what I can remember (and what's stated on Wiki) the Rubik cube didn't come out til 1980 - not 1979 (right??)

Speaking of cubes :

Thanks for the answer, Suprmallet. I'm sure that explanation was at the exact moment I took a break. Damn my bladder!

I just saw Super 8. All I can say is....meh. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I saw one of the taglines was "original." Um...hardly. It started out as Goonies, Stand By Me, and the kid parts of IT. Then, it became 10.5, Godzilla (the taking of the electrical components) and War Of The Worlds. Then, it morphed into Cloverfield (but with a much better, more realistic looking monster) and ended with E.T. You could really see late 70s/early 80s Spielberg in it. It wasn't the least bit original. But it did have one good thing about it that these types of movies the last few years didn't have ; likeable human characters that you actually cared about what happened to them. You didn't have that with District 9 (ugh.) or the tom cruise version of War Of The Worlds. I really liked seeing the nods to my childhood. The guy at the gas station with an original walkman that he just obviously bought (he was reading the instructions), the news reports, and the E.L.O. and Blondie songs. And it was filled with awesome 70s cars, too. And I had no idea that Dakota Fanning's little sister would become such a great little actress. I give it three out of 5 stars. I may watch it again. But if I really want to see a movie like this again, I'd probably just put in the 50s War Of The Worlds or maybe The Relic.