Laurie Juspeczyk spent 17 years in a bunker, or, Why Super 8 pissed me off
So I went to see Super 8.
And it was gorgeous and deliciously suspenseful. There are some things that ALWAYS work, you know? All the dogs disappearing, that always works. The army trucks rolling through a small town - that always works, especially when there's a soldier on the back with a geiger counter. There's also the most amazing train wreck ever set to film.
And there's Alice.
This group of boys are making a Super 8 zombie movie, and Alice is the girl they get to play the girl. Alice is maybe a year older than them, but the first time we see her it's hard to tell; she wears lipstick and bellbottoms and irons her hair. Elle Fanning is totally amazing in this role; you can see Alice's face go from child to hardened adult from one second to the next. She's fantastic to watch.
Alice agrees to act in the boys' zombie flick, and she turns out to be a preternaturally good actor. Creepy good. There's trouble at home; her dad is a drunk, their house is a dump; you wonder where those spooky renditions of heartbreak and zombie death are coming from.
And then
And then she gets kidnapped by a monster.
And she's out of the film for the third act, until the boys go to rescue her. And she's unconscious, and the hero has to SMACK HER ACROSS THE FACE to wake her up.
I mean. God. I honestly thought they were setting us up so that her spooky acting ability would be the key to resolving the story. She and the boy would end up rescuing the rest of the kids, and then her ability to empathize, to reach into herself and become the thing she was portraying, would allow her to mimic the monster's movements and communicate with it in Alien Sign Language.
You see, I thought she was going to save the day. I thought she was the hero.
I thought we were at that point in our collective narrative evolution, as a culture.
And then JJ Abrams can't think of a damned thing to do with her except have her become an object to be rescued (and struck across the face.)
This - I mean, usually I let this stuff go, but as I get older I'm getting more and more sick of it.
And it was gorgeous and deliciously suspenseful. There are some things that ALWAYS work, you know? All the dogs disappearing, that always works. The army trucks rolling through a small town - that always works, especially when there's a soldier on the back with a geiger counter. There's also the most amazing train wreck ever set to film.
And there's Alice.
This group of boys are making a Super 8 zombie movie, and Alice is the girl they get to play the girl. Alice is maybe a year older than them, but the first time we see her it's hard to tell; she wears lipstick and bellbottoms and irons her hair. Elle Fanning is totally amazing in this role; you can see Alice's face go from child to hardened adult from one second to the next. She's fantastic to watch.
Alice agrees to act in the boys' zombie flick, and she turns out to be a preternaturally good actor. Creepy good. There's trouble at home; her dad is a drunk, their house is a dump; you wonder where those spooky renditions of heartbreak and zombie death are coming from.
And then
And then she gets kidnapped by a monster.
And she's out of the film for the third act, until the boys go to rescue her. And she's unconscious, and the hero has to SMACK HER ACROSS THE FACE to wake her up.
I mean. God. I honestly thought they were setting us up so that her spooky acting ability would be the key to resolving the story. She and the boy would end up rescuing the rest of the kids, and then her ability to empathize, to reach into herself and become the thing she was portraying, would allow her to mimic the monster's movements and communicate with it in Alien Sign Language.
You see, I thought she was going to save the day. I thought she was the hero.
I thought we were at that point in our collective narrative evolution, as a culture.
And then JJ Abrams can't think of a damned thing to do with her except have her become an object to be rescued (and struck across the face.)
This - I mean, usually I let this stuff go, but as I get older I'm getting more and more sick of it.