We're No. 1!

REVIEW, TAKE TWO: Further reflections on Super 8

LINKS / FRESHNESS RATING: Daily Herald review of Super 8 / This post contains monstrous SPOILERS for Super 8

For a lot of us, movies are a bit like sports teams. When we like a movie, we start to root for it a little. We want other people, including movie critics, to also like it. And since the most readily quantifiable measure of any movie's "success" or "failure" is its ticket sales, we pay attention to box-office tallies with the hope that "our" movie will kick all of the other movie's butts. Anyone with a degree of affection for J.J. Abrams's Super 8, therefore, was probably pleased to see it "win" its opening weekend, beating out a relatively weak field to deliver its marketers at least a week's worth of "No. 1 movie in America" ad copy. The first-weekend haul of $35 million for Super 8 suggests that even a feeble entry into the marketplace by Green Lantern — or (less plausibly) a muscular showing by Mr. Popper's Penguins — will almost certainly unseat the champ, bumping it down the charts and beginning its long slide into home viewing platforms. Nothing about its weekday grosses suggests that Super 8 is about to suddenly demonstrate some killer second-weekend staying power, but one can always hope. One who, like me, is rooting for the movie, that is. Other thoughts:

Train Strain: I've never witnessed an actual train crash. It's probably a sight to behold. The train crash in Super 8 is definitely that. I enjoyed watching it, and at the same time came within just one more bounding, spiraling train car, or billowing orange fireball, of rolling my eyes. More than once actually. (It's a long train crash.) Is the entire train made of rubber bouncing balls? Did it somehow collide with the Great Wall of China? I get that it's supposed to be over the top, but there's a fine line that the scene doesn't quite manage to effectively straddle from start to finish. I had the same reaction watching the tank battle later in the movie. Mostly perfect, but definitely pushing it.

The Grunts On the Bus Go Splat, Splat, Splat: One of the more underrated thrills of the movie, I thought, is the nighttime attack on the military bus, with four of the young heroes, including the kid who always pukes, boxed up in the holding pen at the back. There's just one vehicle in the scene for Abrams's monster to toss around, but the action is just as nerve-wracking as in the noisier, more heavily populated "money" scenes.

No Country for Old Men: As a devotee of Kyle Chandler and the Coach Taylor-ness that he exudes when playing authority figures — and if you tend to think that's all he does, then I refer you to Peter Jackson's King Kong for an amusing change of pace — it was a little disappointing to see Joe's dad pull off an awesome jailbreak (after he's been cooped up by the Air Force) and then ... not really do all that much. Still, I greatly enjoyed the scenes of him attempting to manage the escalating crisis.

Master Spielberg: The parallels between Super 8 and producer Steven Spielberg's E.T. are obvious, but Abrams also impressively follows his idol/mentor's lead in another respect. One of the strongest elements of the movie is how long and how effectively it keeps the monster continually just beyond the edges of the screen, tantalizingly just out of sight. It's the same thing that Spielberg did so well all those years ago Jaws, and Abrams handles it like a champ. Of course, you sometimes end up over-promising when you keep your biggest secret until people are literally about to punch you in the face if you don't show them some-thing.

Another One of Those: So, yeah, I probably haven't really seen that exact monster in half-a-dozen other movies, but it felt that way. When we finally get a sorta-complete-look at what's been terrorizing the town, it's a bit of a letdown. The triangular face. The breathing orifices with fluttery skin flaps. The deep-set beady eyes. The rancor-from-Return-of-the-Jedi-like posture and body structure. I still love your movie, J.J. I was just hoping for more of a surprise.