Here is an aggregation of logic issues and coincidences in "Super 8" people sent me:

* The kids just happen to be shooting their film at the train station when the train from the base just happens to be going by at the same exact time the teacher just happens to drive onto the tracks creating the huge accident. [This is more of a possible coincidence issue].

* The teacher at the kids' school just happens to be the guy who knew the alien from research years ago. [Again more of a coincidence issue].

* How does the teacher possibly survive that accident?

* If the alien is able to break out of the train after the accident, why doesn't it escape before?

* Where does all the dirt go from the huge hole in the ground the alien dug?

* When Alice (Elle Fanning) is racing away on her bike from her father and her father crashes his car, the alien just so happens to be around to snatch Alice. [Again more of coincidence thing].

* The alien, who has been capturing human victims in order to feed on them, is suddenly persuaded to allow Joe to live when Joe delivers the line, "Bad things happen... but you can keep living."

* It just so happens that Joe reunites with his father and Alice reunites with her father at the precise moment the alien finishes building its spaceship and leaves to go find its 'family.' [Again coincidence factor, not logic].

* Biggest complaint my friends had was that the train accident evidently violated the laws of physics (a head-on collison with a truck shouldn't have caused that much damage, especially since the truck didn't seem to have that much momentum behind it). I assumed that the alien and/or alien's cubes influenced things somehow, though my rationale for that is a little shaky. The kids do say that that kind of crash is "very rare," so maybe that was the excuse.

* Also, why on earth were the soldiers moving the alien in the first place? And why on an apparently unmanned train?

* The truck's driver being the school science teacher was far too coincidental and not set up at all as it should have been.

* The magnetic scene was also stretching believability and logic. It could pull the locket from Joe's pocket but not tug at their belt buckles?

* Why such a powerful creature who seems perfectly adapted to a underground living would develop technology to the point of space exploration.

* the inconsistency in the monster's actions: In one scene, the creature smashes up a gas station and a police car with all the care of a toddler toppling his building blocks. Then, in another scene, we're shown that all the engines on a used car lot were taken right out of their automobiles - with no damage to the shell of the car at all. Yeah, suddenly the violent, thrashing monster decided to gingerly remove engines from the cars and then carefully closed the hood to make his crime less obvious.

* After the train crash why did the military arrive on foot? Were they just jogging through this random small town on the train's cross country path?

Part 2 next.

Part 2:

- Why do they need to move the alien across country and on top of it... transport it on the exact same train as his cubes?

- The military collects all the cubes and puts them back in these specialized crates and they don't notices exactly 1 missing?

- The creature is brutal and unswerving to begin with and then very gently removes the engines from cars?

- So some reason during the suburban warfare, the soldiers say that they've lost control of their weapons... why? And if this is so, why hasn't the monster already controlled various weapons to escape?

- Beyond the convenience of the school science teacher being the same scientist in that facility... he has all his work in a trailer out back? The military hasn't come looking for him or noticed that he took a lot of research... including probably the only copy of those particular 8mm films of the monster?

- Why would the sheriff go and arrest Elle's father for staying home drunk? Wouldn't he go to jail for wrongful imprisonment? Why isn't he hung up on the actual person who caused his wife's death? Or was it actually her fault that caused the accident?

- If the monster does 'share' feelings with each of the people it touches, why didn't it feel remorse of all the people he's captured or even just for Elle? She couldn't have possibly wanted to cause the monster harm and she has a sad story just like Joe...

- Joe was able to hold onto his locket when the magnet water tower was picking up cars and yanking kitchen stoves through glass windows?

- The monster was pulling electrical cables down for his device but the town seemed to still get sufficient power.

- After getting all these cubes together, the military evacuates the town and goes after the monster... but the trucks with the cubes goes back into the town?

- This military is going crazy barging in whereever but they can't seem to locate a singular vehicle from that tire track? They don't investigate probably the only film store that can develop 8mm film after finding 8mm film at the crime scene...

- I'm assuming the monster was building a super electromagnet out of the water tower to get his cubes organized... but if the military already collected them all why were they behind held at the location? Why weren't they sent to their original destination like they were on the train?

Part 3 next.

Part 3:

* A large plot hole was how easily the kids and the stoner got his car out of the military base after the evacuation. One minute, they're sneaking through the car lot so as not to be seen, and we see that they're behind a chain-link fence with guards, then there's a "sleight of hand cut" and they're on the road, free as can be. This is a problem because it undercuts the gravity of the military evacuating the town and rounding them up. At first the evacuation seems like a significant development in the film and a serious obstacle, then they just breezily overcome it, so it's not really an obstacle at all.

* Why was the military randomly shooting up the town and why we're they caught in their own crossfire?

. The main action of movie takes place in early April, 1979 (Walter Cronkite references Three Mile Island on the TV). Rubik's Cubes, to which the white, alien cubes are compared, were not introduced into US markets until 1980. For all the attention given to creating an authentic 1979 feel, this anachronism was pretty disappointing.

2. Why was the emerging alien spacecraft selectively magnetic? Some airmen's guns are ripped away at full force, some remain easily in others' hands. The little pyro's braces stay effortlessly in his goofy mouth, but the protagonist's locket is gently lifted away. What's up with that?

* The monster/alien seemed to easily destroy any and every military person & civilian in his path the entire movie. after he breaks loose of his train car prison he spends the whole movie building this "machine" to get the pieces of his ship back. BUT, when he does originally break loose, all the pieces of his ship are scattered everywhere. Instead of just ripping those GI's to bits, getting his spaceship pieces and getting the hell out of there, he decides to run away. i understand that there wouldnt really have been a movie if that had happened, but it doesnt make sense that it didn't.

Feel free to dissect, explain or add others.

And thanks to everyone who forwarded their issues.

While I agree with you that emotional logic will trump rational logic, you first have to get the moviego'er to be emotional invested in order for them to be 'swept away in the story'.

Like you mentioned, maybe the people that didn't like the movie weren't the target audience... but isn't that like saying that any movie you don't like, you just weren't the target audience? Where's the accountability that maybe Abrams and Spielberg just didn't craft their story effectively?

The movie did make a lot of money and has a healthy ROI but that doesn't give a good representation of the people that saw it that were in fact not swept up in it's emotional logic. It's not like people that were disappointed got some of the money back. Maybe the only indicator of the audience would be if they made a sequel and if that did better or worse.

I would argue that everyone who bought a ticket started off wanted to be entertained and let suspension of disbelief take over there and the movie continually lost a portion of it's audience as the film progressed and the holes that Abrams / Spielberg didn't fix end up breaking that enchantment.

The audience wants to be emotional invested but it can't get there if enough logic issues shatter that reality. It's like Save the Cat and no Double Mumbo Jumbo... there's a certain amount the audience will put up with before you lose them.

I really liked the children component of the movie, but I did feel emotionally manipulated more than once and the whole alien thing just didn't work... Honestly, Super 8 would have been an amazing movie if it was just about a group of kids trying to shoot a Super 8 movie in the mist of growing up and dealing with their family issues... but then again that story line isn't "Summer Blockbuster".

The biggest problem I had with the movie wasn't issues with logic, but issues with the way tension was built up and released. I feel Super 8 was a lesson in how NOT to establish and release tension.

After the train wreck, there were many sources of tension, many questions that we had -- what was on this train, why is this teacher involved, what are the cubes, etc. It was very exciting! So much mystery! So much intrigue!

But the script failed in resolving these tensions appropriately, in an entertaining and rewarding fashion. I got very frustrated watching the movie, because I had to wait through over an hour of watching preteens awkwardly flirt until I got ANY answers to my questions.

And once I did get answers, I got the answers all at once. It was anti-climactic. One convenient little movie in a high school classroom resolved about 10 questions all at once.

In my opinion, I would've enjoyed the movie much more if the questions were answered throughout the movie, so I wouldn't have been as frustrated. And of course, each answer would bring up an even greater question, upping the tension from there.

Maybe so many tensions shouldn't have been brought up all at once, either, with the train wreck. Maybe we should've learned later that it was the teacher in the car, learned later that the military was involved, etc.

I watched Silence of the Lambs the night before I watched Super 8. Now THERE is a movie that does an EXCELLENT job with building and relieving tension. Tension is and always will be one of the greatest weapons in a screenwriter's arsenal! But if you misfire, like JJ did, it can be deadly.

I have to disagree with you here, Scott. Logic is logic. It's like math. It has no feelings one way or the other. Emotional logic only works if you actually feel something for the characters and the story. That is something completely subjective. That means for it to work the filmmaker has to be certain that the story and characters will connect with the audience, or at least a large enough portion of the audience to make it worthwhile.

So why can't there be both? It would have been so much more satisfying for the audience (both the cynical-analyzing-trouble-makers and the wrapped-up-in-the-spectacle-and-emotion audience members) if all these questions would have been answered in the movie. There's nothing better than watching a movie and getting those aha moments. Why was that thing... aha! That's why, how clever. Watching this, I was thinking the opposite. And there were so many questions and loose ends that it ruined it for me.

So the gamble, or the laziness, or “calculated choice” as you called it by the filmmakers was that people would be so impressed by a crashing train that they would exclude all logic? I don't buy it. Using that argument the Transformers movies would have the same effect. Fighting robots! Awesome! Who cares about anything else. Well, all the critics did, and anyone who's not impressed by listening to garbage cans rolling down a flight of stairs for two hours. I know it made boatloads of cash. But why can't it be a good movie AND make lotsa moolah?

Now, I'm not discounting the importance of emotional logic, nor the emotional drama on display in Super 8. It had some really nice moments. It was too much of everything though. This played like an early draft of a script. It needed some cleaning and tightening and some editing. It had too many ideas. Mr. Abrams should have focused on fewer storylines and really worked those out. That would have given this movie a longer shelf life. I can't honestly see that thirty years from now people will look back at the summer of 2011 and reminisce about this film the way we reminisce about E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Someone somewhere compared this to a cover band's version of a classic song. That is an apt description. It has all the elements of being something good. But ultimately it lacks the soul and the realness of the original.

In regards to TBSR's post about Ferris Bueller, here's what I commented earlier on his blog:

I would argue that a lot of people have dogs and it's not necessary to introduce a common thing like that in order to make it believable. There's a big difference between "Oh shit, there's a dog." and "Oh shit, there's a monster." ??

When we're talking about aliens, monsters and other occurrences that asks the audience to suspend its disbelief, there will automatically be more questions and therefore the filmmakers have to provide the audience with more answers, and those answers better hold up to logic. ??

The level of logic has to be higher than in "real life" situations.??

You're asking me to believe there's an alien on the train? Okay, I'll bite. The next thing you ask me to believe better be logical. You can't just stack the suspension of disbelief in layers and expect the audience to go along with it. It will eventually crumple. I think that's what happened with Super 8. There were just too many things that the audience was asked to accept.

@Teddy: If there's a lesson I would hope we could all take from this discussion, it's not to discount the value or importance of rational logic (or however one chooses to typify it in contrast to emotional logic). Obviously one aspect of a screenwriter's job is to create a story universe and part of that is to create a set of 'rules' or 'laws' that govern how that universe operates. And whenever we maneuver our story in such a way that it contradicts those rules, that is not only an opportunity to trip up a reader and yank them out of the story-immersion experience, it can also be an example of sloppy writing.

However the larger point is that for most movies, I think it's fair to say that while we go wanting to be fully engaged in all aspects of our consciousness (and subconsciousness, too), we want most of all to come away with an emotional response to the story. To be compelled by the story intellectually, certainly. And as noted for certain stories, even more so.

But that is not the stuff of a visceral response. The racing of our heart, the shiver down our spine, the flinch of our hands, the clutch in our breath, those derive from our emotional self.

And so this idea of "emotional logic" is not just about a sly way for filmmakers to get away with shit in the storytelling, it is fundamentally about the core of the entertainment experience for the moviegoer.

I think action writers like Shane Black, Quentin Tarantino, and the late Jeffrey Boam grasp this perhaps more innately that writers of other genres. In fact, I just remembered a quote I posted from Boam:

"Ultimately, plot is of little importance, more of a mechanical contrivance against which characters come to life. Plot tries to engage intellectually but that's not how an audience responds... Critics have said that Lethal Weaponis brainless, but that's not the point. I try to bypass the brain and go right to the senses. I want emotional reaction, not intellectual engagement. An audience wants to be wound up because it enjoys the pop at then end when it's liberated... People go to movies because they have a deep-rooted need to see a heroic figure go through physical torture and come out victorious."

As to whether Super 8 is a great film? In my eyes, no. It's a good movie. But through the eyes of my 10 year-old son? I would not be surprised if years from now, this is one of those movies he recalls as being an inspiration for his creative imagination. It hit on all cylinders for him.

@jarrett: I wonder if you had seen Super 8 without having seen The Silence of the Lambs so recently, perhaps you would have experienced the former a little better. With TSOTL, you are talking about - in my view - one of THE best movies in the last 25 years. I use it all the time when I teach because it works on all levels and in all ways -- characters, Plotline, Themeline, pace, motifs. Absolutely brilliant in every way.

@Scott - I'm slightly younger than J.J. Abrams but in the same generation so I'm certain we grew up on the same films. I was around your son's age when I first saw Close Encounters and it sure was an inspiration to me.

Maybe I'm getting old and cynical. I'm glad to hear your son liked Super 8. I hope it inspires him to be creative :)

jj abrams on ted,

"there are times when mystery is more important than knowledge"

http://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html

Of course, even SILENCE OF THE LAMBS has holes in it - for instance, who's idea was it to leave a genius serial killer alone with two middle-aged cops, including one who is terribly out of shape, and not even have so much as a remote video or maybe just one expert sharpshooter? Is the Philly p.d. that hard up? And how the hell did Hannibal Lecter kill two officers, disembowel one, haul aforementioned officer (and Charles Napier is not a small person) to the top of the cage and tie him up, undress the other officer, cut his face off, dress himself, dress the officer in his clothes, somehow get him on the top of the elevator, in the time he had without anybody noticing?

But mostly the movie is grounded enough so you don't think about that stuff for long after you've seen the movie...

In the case of SUPER 8, it wasn't so much that there were so many holes (although there were). It was that the emotional scenes - at least for me - were mostly so synthetic and unconvincing that I could be distracted by the logic holes. I thought the one scene where JJ Abrams was really firing on all cylinders was the "wife's" farewell that the kids filmed. If every scene had been that good, it would have been a masterpiece.

But for the most part, I felt the "emotional" scenes were synthetic and unearned. It got so I was thinking "OK, when's the next sobbing confession?" And Ron Eldard looked really stupid with those sideburns. YMMV.

i didn't really have a big problem with any technical logic issues. i had a problem with the fact that there was no protagonist with a clear goal and the alien monster had no emotional connection with Joe so as to justify the payoff at the climax where we're supposed to feel . . . something that the alien is finally getting to go home.

compared to ET, where Eliot (the sole protagonist) had a clear goal -- help ET get home before he dies -- Super 8's alien story felt as tacked on as it apparently was based on Abrams's version of the film's development.

in ET, we cry like babies because that alien and Eliot have formed a bond over the previous hour (in their case, literally). we are invested emotionally in whether ET dies before he can get back home.

in Super 8, we care to the limited extent that we don't want to see any feeling creature be killed by stock army heavies. but since Joe and the creature don't meet face to face until five minutes before the alien takes off, there's no relationship there for us to have any deeper connection with. and that storyline itself has virtually nothing to do with everything we've seen of Joe's internal struggles up to that point (which deal with the loss of his mother and romancing Alice). using the locket is just a cheap visual stunt to make us think that there is more heart to that moment then it's been set up for.

logic problems were the least thing on my mind by that time

That's a great point and one that was on the tip of my tongue - the emotional groundwork wasn't there. That's why a lot of the emotional scenes seemed synthetic to me.

One thing the movie got right was the casting of the explosives kid. I swear there was at least one buck-toothed little runt who looked exactly like him in every grade school class I ever had. And they were frequently pyromaniacs too, or at least up to no good.

I think the emotional tug of a father and son trying to move on after the tragic loss of a mother could have worked if only we'd seen the interaction with the mother. We don't really know anything of Joe's mother or what their family life was like before her untimely death. There really is no stasis in the world before we are provided with conflict. The mother is just backstory and I think that's one point that made identifying with Joe or his father all the more difficult. We can see that the aftermath of her death is a challenge for them to work through, but we really don't know what the loss truly means to Joe or his dad. I thought that was too big of an assumption for the audience to make; most of us either know or can imagine what the loss of a parent/wife might feel like but we don't get to see what this loss really means. Is it more difficult for Joe's dad because they had a very close relationship or was it rocky? My feeling was it was too easy of a tell when it should have been a show.

The point about emotional authenticity is a really important one and I'm glad you brought it up, Chris, DeafEars, and januaryfire. When I work with writers on their projets, it's something I hammer on all the time: You can not slap on some supposed fix after the fact, whatever there is going on with a character has to be innate to them and well in place before they enter the story universe of FADE IN.

But here we are, Super 8 being critiqued for manufactured emotion. Spielberg has certainly been critiqued on that score as well. And yet their movies are almost all successful and they are considered two of the brightest creative talents in Hollywood.

Part of the explanation is - again - I believe audiences want to feel something when they see a movie, a primary motivation. And so when faced with a choice of too little emotion or too much, even at the risk of coming off as excessive or inauthentic, overall audience reaction would, I think, tilt filmmakers toward the latter over the former.

I realize that is a gross generalization, but if pressed on the subject, I would simply say one word: Titanic. A movie by another one of the directors on the stage the other night at the DGA with Spielberg and Abrams.

This is the first time I’ve written about this film (which I’ve seen 3 times so far)

First and foremost, I think this film is suffering from bad marketing. People are going to see this expecting a ‘Cloverfield’-esque picture. It’s not that at all.

Much like M. Night’s films ‘Signs’ and ‘The Village’ were mis-marketed. ‘Signs’ isn’t about an alien invasion, it’s about –gasp- signs! And the other isn’t about a monster terrorizing a community, it’s about a village and the lengths ones will go to in order to protect the ones they love.

Marketing for Super 8 suggests it’s all about the train crash and this alien on the loose. That is a big part of the film, but that’s not what it is about. It’s about these kids trying to make this movie. That’s it. Pure and simple. If it wasn’t about that, would we have been treated to ‘The Case’ at the end of the film?

Joe’s story is obviously the main one we follow – dealing with the loss of his mother, having to let to let go of things (his first breakthrough is the scene where he finally TALKS to his father about their relationship in the way only a 13 year old can, the second when he tells Alice to NOT wish her father was dead, and in the end, finally connecting with his father and letting go of the locket)
The final moment is when he confronts the alien and says these things – he actually says them out loud, putting thoughts in to reality and connecting to something in a way no one else has in a long time.

The alien, the train wreck, the town getting shot up, the evacuation, the mystery box aspect, all of that is window dressing. (by the way, I wish we didn’t hear people refer to the mystery box thing all the time – as much as I never want to hear Lucas say the friggin’ word “MacGuffin” ever again but alas, this is the world we live in)

To be cont.

Part 2

Similarly to Joe, his father has to learn the same lessons – to let go, to connect and to forgive. I’ve talked with some people that wanted him to have this big heroic ‘to do’ and save his son. Been there, seen that – and in the end, how does that get him to where he needs to be any more than forgiving the man whom he blames for his wife’s death. Until he does THAT, he’ll never connect with Joe.

I talked to someone recently who saw the movie and hated it. HATED it! They’re in their mid-20s and began to mention this list of logical issues they had with the film – how they could predict that Joe would tell the alien that everything was gonna be alright and so on. The only response I could give them was ‘You watched the movie wrong. You weren’t supposed to watch this trying to figure out the next step or what the ‘twist’ was gonna be. This isn’t one of those movies.’

I wonder if there is a generation of movie watchers who are now conditioned to try and figure out the twist at the end. Brought up on a steady diet of M. Night’s early flicks and pseudo-intellectual films that are based on an end twist?

As far as plot holes and conveniences – you could argue a dozen of those for Spielberg’s films. “What, you’re telling me Roy just so happens to be on that strip of highway when he see’s a UFO?’ “Of ALL the backyards in this neighborhood, E.T. just so happens to go Elliot’s?” Hell you could easily pick apart my favorite film of all time ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ but I don’t because everything there is to aid the story.

These things happen and they may seem overly-convenient or illogical. But are they aiding in telling the bigger picture? A story of a man uncertain and unhappy with his place in life who gets this new view on every thing after an encounter with a UFO? Or a boy dealing with the loneliness of a divorce and happens to befriend an alien? Or a boy who must learn to forgive the random, senseless accident that took his mother’s life who has this amazing thing happen to his town.

I want more movies like Super 8. Movies that tell me a story and don’t shove it down my throat. That allow me to shut my brain off, knowing it’s taken care of by the filmmakers and won’t be abused with strobe light editing, bombastic music and thin stories.

I may be in the minority, but Super 8 worked for me. And then

Throughout the film there were these flash blue streaks (mostly near the top of screen). Then as I noticed these numerous and obvious logic issues to the story, I concluded that the story was trying to make you believe it was filmed with a Super 8 camera, by 13-15 year olds. So a film about kids making a film. And because of this, the logic issues made sense. It more closely resembled how a 13 year old mind works, including the look of the alien as a near spider-like creature. So, if you consider this, the film is actually brilliant.

@Erin:

“Of ALL the backyards in this neighborhood, E.T. just so happens to go Elliot’s?”

The movie follows Elliot BECAUSE he gets visited by E.T. Otherwise the film would have been about someone else, right?

In Super 8, if the film is about these kids making a film, as you said, and then all of a sudden there's a train crash and an alien running loose, that seems a bit contrived.

We're watching a film about these kids BECAUSE they witness the train crash. Otherwise, why bother? The story is only interesting because something extraordinary happens to these kids.

In fact, to me, the father/son aspect and the loss of the mother story felt tacked on - like an after thought.

You can blame marketing if you like but I think they marketed this film just fine. It was the product we bought that was disappointing. At least to me.

@Januaryfire: "I think the emotional tug of a father and son trying to move on after the tragic loss of a mother could have worked if only we'd seen the interaction with the mother. We don't really know anything of Joe's mother or what their family life was like before her untimely death. There really is no stasis in the world before we are provided with conflict."

I would argue that the stasis of this world is the grief that Joe and his father are living with, and the rift that has grown between them because of it. If the stasis was "happy life with mom alive", then the conflict would have been the accident at the mill shattering their lives. Instead, starting from a place of grief, the train crash/alien arrival leads to the adventure that helps them begin to put themselves back together again after mom's tragic death (or leads to a series of logical inconsistencies that make emotionally disconnected viewers butthurt, depending on your point of view.)

To weigh in on Erin and TL's point re the emotional core of the movie. One way I encourage the writers with whom I work to think about their stories is consider this question: Why does THIS story HAVE to happen to THIS character at THIS time? Generally you target the Protagonist, but as all the other characters are somehow related to the P's psychological journey, they come into play, too.

So in that sense, the tragedy of Joe's mother's death and the ensuing rift it creates between he and his father is precisely the reason why this story happens: From a psychological journey standpoint, it's all about working through grief and reconciling family members. And not just Joe and his father, but also Alice and her father, and - finally - the Alien and its own 'family' [off in the heavens somewhere].

Again this feeds into the emotional logic of the story: Someone complained about the ending, asking why when Joe and father, Alice and father finally find each other does that just so happen to coincide with the Alien finishing construction of its spaceship? Convenient, right? But per emotional logic, it was perfectly timed because that moment represents the emotional high point of the film: These three divided-to-united subplots all brought together. And of course, there is the final touch with the necklace-- which has become a talisman symbolic of Joe's mother -- released by Joe [and thereby symbolically his grief] to go up to the 'heavens' to be reunited with the mother's spirit.

Some people may look at this as a bunch of hogwash, but it's what Jung would call dipping into archetypes. They transcend time and are universal to all human beings, providing narrative bridges for the viewer to experience deep wellsprings of emotions.

Manipulative? To some, yes. Satisfying? To others, yes. Personally I thought the ending was one of the movie's best moments.

I guess you mean emotional logic in the sense of giving a good thrill. On that I can agree. But, I think the balance between emotional and rational logic was too far off to be effective--at least, it was for me.

Speaking of emotion, would the kids in the film really rebound so fast from all the disasters and horrors they underwent? Superkids, maybe. But not real kids.

And the train wreck, well, like all the other special effects in this flick, they were technically impressive but lacked something--dust and dirt clouds? gritty realism? I don't know, but it all looked like nice painted models going through some wiz-kids' software simulation = boring.

Here's my take on this film:

http://epages.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/super-8%E2%80%A6-stupor-8/