# Super 8 is great! (boxed spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 9, 2011, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899 "2011-06-09T19:17:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/81 "2011-06-20T12:41:18Z")
> [@YoSaffBridge](#): > > Like **Spoke** , I was looking for anachronisms, too. I was the same age as the kids in the movie in 1979. > > I remember seeing a clip of Reagan on the TV, but there was \*never \*any mention of him being President. He would have been in the public eye as a presidential candidate, though. I don’t remember seeing Reagan in the movie, but he would not have been in the public eye as a presidential candidate since he didn’t announce his candidacy until November 1979 and wasn’t the party’s nominee until summer 1980. Three Mile Island was earlier in the year, so it doesn’t quite fit with the summer of '79. One interesting omission that was caught by the author of an article I read online was that there was no mention in the movie about Skylab falling. I remember people talking a lot about Skylab falling and fantasizing about horrible consequences of it. Seems like something they might have brought up, more so than the Red Scare/Russian Invasion stuff, which I associated more with the 1980’s and Reagan. The issue of middle schools versus junior highs was not an anachronism at all. It’s more of a regional thing. My family moved from Pittsburgh (where we had and still have middle schools) to St. Louis in 1975, where we found the concept of junior high schools to be a bit unusual. I found the post-train crash intact car for the kids, and the only-half-destroyed truck and still-living teacher, to be very jarring moments. Not only was the car intact, but it was pretty well blocked in by debris in one shot, and shouldn’t have been that easy to speed away in. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/82 "2011-06-20T13:05:08Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > One interesting omission that was caught by the author of an article I read online was that there was no mention in the movie about Skylab falling. I remember people talking a lot about Skylab falling and fantasizing about horrible consequences of it. Seems like something they might have brought up, more so than the Red Scare/Russian Invasion stuff, which I associated more with the 1980’s and Reagan. That’s a very good point. The imminent fall of Skylab _was_ a national obsession in the summer of '79. It would have been a good cultural touchstone for the movie. Also, the movie [Alien](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/) was released in May, 1979. That might have been another appropriate thing to mention in passing. Maybe a movie marquee or something. ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/83 "2011-06-20T18:16:42Z")
I really liked it, a lot. It was a throwback to the Spielbergian movies of the 80’s - ET, The Goonies, Close Encounters, etc. Easily the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. There were flaws, but they didn’t bother me. The ending was cheesy, but ET’s flying on bicycles was too. I think a little bit of that is a perfect fit for this kind of movie, which is really a kid’s (young teen) movie. And the two main kids were great, especially Fanning. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/84 "2011-06-20T18:21:28Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Three Mile Island was earlier in the year, so it doesn’t quite fit with the summer of '79. As I remember the Three Mile Island clip was during the funeral of the main character’s mother, and then the main part of the film was four months later, just after the end of school. If you remember, the father wanted to send the kid to a football summer camp, but the kid wanted to stay to work on his friend’s film. BTW, I wonder what would have happened to the kid. I imagine him going to work for ILM eventually. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/85 "2011-06-20T18:36:31Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > I don’t remember seeing Reagan in the movie, but he would not have been in the public eye as a presidential candidate since he didn’t announce his candidacy until November 1979 and wasn’t the party’s nominee until summer 1980. I don’t remember seeing Reagan in the film, either, but then, I wasn’t looking for him. 🙂 Anyway, [he’d already run for President in 1976](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_reagan#1976_presidential_campaign) (the nomination was still up in the air until the '76 GOP convention), and was certainly in the public eye in early '79, as an influential member of the GOP, even if he had not yet announced his candidacy for the '80 election. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/86 "2011-06-20T19:49:34Z")
I was just thinking about this again, and I just realized I conflated it with another movie I hapened to see the same day - the American remake of _Let the Right One In_. That movie was set in the 80’s, and that’s the one that had Reagan on TV all the time. My drug damaged memory transposed the Reagan stuff into _Super 8_. My bad. ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2011, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/87 "2011-06-20T20:34:41Z")
I’m glad to hear that because I was beating my head trying to remember seeing Reagan in _Super 8_ and I started to wonder what else I missed. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/88 "2011-06-21T16:49:03Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > I was just thinking about this again, and I just realized I conflated it with another movie I hapened to see the same day - the American remake of _Let the Right One In_. That movie was set in the 80’s, and that’s the one that had Reagan on TV all the time. My drug damaged memory transposed the Reagan stuff into _Super 8_. My bad. Ha, no worries, it happens. I feel better now because I’m scratching my head trying to remember any scene with Reagan in it, much less where he’s referenced as POTUS. heh. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2011, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/89 "2011-06-25T01:15:10Z")
I saw this with some friends from work yesterday. We all liked it quite a lot, in a MST 3000 way. All four of us were born within five years of when the movie was set, and we were pleased to figure out within the first few minutes exactly when it was set due to the Three Mile Island ref on the tv. I have to say, that was the best train explosion that I have ever seen. Seriously, it’d be hard to top _that_. D\_Odds, I thought the same thing about a script rewrite, but what clued me in was Alice’s horror when she explained that her dad missed work. It would have made more sense if…well, you know. Joel Courtney impressed the hell out of me given that this is his first professional acting role. And Elle Fanning, it’s hard to believe how grown up she seems after having first seen her as a three-year-old in _[Taken](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I9tls_WEa8)_. And I thought the kids’ movie was priceless 🙂 The thing that creeps me out a little about the movie is that it was set just two or three months before my earliest memories start, but I can’t really explain why I have that reaction beyond the vague feeling of unease that weird things\* could \*happen before you’re old enough to be aware of them. ---
**Author:** ![Shawn1767](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shawn1767](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shawn1767)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/90 "2011-07-02T17:24:44Z")
Again, I was the same age as the main character in this movie in 1979 and I went to a Middle School, and hearing about people who went to “Junior High” was jarring to me when I first heard it. I’ve seen the movie twice in the last two days, (with different people, but i enjoyed it a lot). I agree that I thought about why they’d be moving something like this via train after all these years (that was something the humans chose to do), but there were some things that I figured were better left unexplained. I mean, some people had a problem with Cloverfield and War of the Worlds because things weren’t adequately explained. In both those movies, there were no scientists proclaiming “This is what the aliens want and this is why they are here!” To me, that’s refreshing because in real life, you might not get an explanation. Who knows why the alien needed what he needed in this movie? Humans on this planet cannot adequately explain why other species on Earth do what they do. Why do we think we’d know how alien technology or physiology works? Who knows why he built/did the things he did? That’s not the point of the movie. The point of the movie is how people move on after a tragedy. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2011, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/91 "2011-07-02T19:00:15Z")
> [@Shawn1767](#): > > Again, I was the same age as the main character in this movie in 1979 and I went to a Middle School, and hearing about people who went to “Junior High” was jarring to me when I first heard it. Must be a regional thing. In Kansas City, I went to a Jr. High back in the 70s. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2011, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899/92 "2011-07-24T02:32:28Z")
Saw it tonight and just loved it to pieces – turned to my friend at the end, and even before the credits ran and we saw the finished film, said “This was the best movie ever made.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/super-8-is-great-boxed-spoilers/584899.md?page=4)