As people who grew up in the 1970's and 1980's become dominant in Hollywood, a curious sub-genre of movies has sprung up: The Fan Wank Film. These movies are usually last ditch efforts to revive dying franchises in which studios hand over the directing reigns to self-avowed super fans who seek to carefully and lovingly emulate their favorite movies. We've seen a slew of these over the last ten years: Superman Returns, both Alien vs. Predator movies, Terminator Salvation, Predators, etc. These films usually treat their predecessors like sacred texts which must be worshiped and celebrated.
Ironically, one of the few original genre movies this summer, Super 8, is probably the greatest achievement in fan wank filmmaking. While not emulating any one particular movie, Super 8 seeks to capture the feel of classic movies directed and or produced by Steven Spielberg in the 70's and 80's. Those movies were known for featuring genre elements, ensembles of charismatic young actors, attention to contemporary detail, and plenty of warmth and humor. The were incredibly successful at capturing the landscape of childhood at the time and were very popular with kids. E.T., The Goonies, Poltergeist, and Gremlins are but a few of these movies.
Like the early Spielberg movies, Super 8 does a great job of setting its story and capturing details in its location and setting (although as a period movie). It also has a couple of very strong young actors in its lead roles and a lot of warmth and human drama which is often lacking in modern blockbusters. An interesting observation that has been made about the movie is that if the monster never showed up, Super 8 would actually make a decent coming-of-age drama.
Where it seems to go off the rails is in its science fiction story which is an alien-on-the-loose story so typical that it could be a SyFy Original Movie. The alien creature itself is a big overly-complicated monstrosity wholly lacking in personality. The presence of a big 2011 CGI creature is strangely jarring in a movie that is so meticulous in recreating Carter-era Rust Belt America. While I understand that the point of Super 8 wasn't to recreate a 1979 movie, I wonder if they had dialed back the special effects and designed something a little less ostentatious it would have made for a more effective monster.
Super 8 was directed by J. J. Abrams (and produced by Spielberg himself) who is best known as the director of Star Trek, the ultimate anti-fan wank movie, which took a beloved franchise and purposefully monkeyed around with it to make it different. Super 8 is successful up to a point, but it is unable to successfully merge its coming-of-age story to its science fiction story in the way of the films which it emulates.
Patrick Garone
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Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
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